







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 1 (2): 87–89, July 2018 

 
CONVERSATIONS 2: Air Pollution 
 

Regionalizing Air: On the Possibilities of Transborder 
Collaborations 

 

Rohit Negi  
 
The transboundary nature of air pollution is well recognized today. Already 
by the end of the nineteenth century in England, the spatiality of air toxicity 
was beginning to be seen as generalized rather than precisely located 
(Whitehead 2011). This is increasingly true of North India’s air pollution 
discourse. To be sure, the tendency to view pollution as ‘Delhi’s problem’ 
remains popular. This city focussed imaginary is constructed, for instance, 
via Delhi’s positioning as the world’s most polluted city, its repeated 
comparisons with Beijing, and by exceptional actions such as vehicle 
rationing and converting the public transport fleet to run on compressed 
natural gas. 

In particular, atmospheric scientists who use remote sensing are quick to 
argue that smog episodes take a regional form, and have deployed concepts 
like the ‘airshed’. During the November 2017 smog, it was suggested that 
dust storms blowing in from the faraway Middle East were a contributing 
factor. Fires with origin in Indonesia and industrial effluents from China’s 
Pearl River Delta are similarly blamed for pollution in, respectively, 
Singapore and Hong Kong. It is against this backdrop that the following 
questions become relevant: under what conditions do administrative 
units—whether nation-states or provincial governments—collaborate 
towards effective pollution abatement actions? And what would it take for 
parties in the National Capital Region (NCR), where four different states 
and the central government interact, to meaningfully cooperate? 

 
 Associate Professor, Ambedkar University Delhi, Lothian Road, Delhi 110006; 
rohit@aud.ac.in 

Copyright © Negi 2018. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i2.41  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i2.41


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [88] 

In their analysis of the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air 
Pollution (CLRTAP), which brings together 51 countries of Europe and 
North America to monitor and ameliorate air pollution, Lidskog and 
Sundqvist (2012) elaborate on what they consider the preconditions for 
such collaboration. These are, first, the establishment of working channels 
of communication (or ‘roads’) between different administrative units; 
second, doing the political work of finding mutually agreeable achievable 
goals that are progressively scaled; and third, bringing science and policy 
together to define a clear plan of action implementable across the region. 
The authors do not, however, problematize a straightforward relationship 
of contemporary states to science—even though countries like the US have 
moved in a decidedly post-truth direction—in fact, they assume it. These 
developments have heightened suspicion of not only the sciences that study 
ecological concerns but also of transnational environmental collaborations, 
such as the emergent climate change regimes. This is a knee-jerk reaction 
that turns on what it considers its simultaneous defence of narrowly defined 
national interests and individual freedom (Wainwright and Mann 2012). 

Closer home, and as Ashish Kothari notes in this issue, the Indian civil 
society has long complained about the state’s lack of seriousness in its 
response to environmental concerns. To this one may add the considerable 
unevenness between departments and provinces in terms of an engagement 
with scientific debates (CSE nd). In November 2017, as smog enveloped 
the NCR, some of these issues came to light. Aerial images suggested that 
smoke released by the burning of farm residue in the agricultural belts of 
the Indo-Gangetic plains was largely responsible (see Priya Shyamsundar’s 
intervention in this issue). The regional nature of the issue was clearly 
visible even though the media was largely fixated on Delhi. Keen to expand 
the geography, the chief minister (CM) of Delhi called the CMs of Punjab 
and Haryana for an emergency meeting. This invited immediate scepticism 
from the Punjab CM, who argued that his government did not have the 
resources to incentivize an alternative means of residue disposal and, 
moreover, it was a national issue, and the central government should be 
therefore leading the efforts, rather than Delhi.  

The present government’s environmental stance in turn is not consistent. 
The prime minister has asserted seriousness at global events even as his 
government has been accused of pro-corporate bias. The current minister 
of environment, forests and climate change has repeatedly attracted 
criticism given his frequent downplaying of air toxicity. In November 2017, 
for instance, he suggested that the smog did not constitute an emergency 
since it was not as bad as the Bhopal gas disaster. 



[89] Rohit Negi 

In this scenario, establishing effective monitoring and proactive regional 
collaboration, though challenging, remains urgent. While supplementing 
technical capacities is important, political representatives’ role is more 
critical. They must bring together diverse publics for continuous knowledge 
sharing and discussions, and lead efforts to develop a shared understanding 
of the problem and of suitable interventions. Drawing lessons from 
experiences like the CLRTAP is a good place to begin.  

 

REFERENCES 

Centre for Science and Environment (nd). “The Delhi Story.” 
https://www.arb.ca.gov/research/hsawards/talks/anumita_roychowdhury_haagen
-smit.pdfaccessed 21 January 2018. 

Lidskog, Rolf, and Göran Sundqvist. 2002. “The Role of Science in Environmental 
Regimes: The Case of LRTAP.” European Journal of International Relations 8(1): 77–
101. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066102008001003  

Wainwright, Joel, and Geoff Mann. 2012. “Climate Leviathan.” Antipode 45(1): 1–
22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01018.x  

Whitehead, Mark. 2011. State, Science and the Skies: Governmentalities of the British 
Atmosphere. Somerset: Wiley. 

https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066102008001003
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01018.x

