India is choking! Is crop burning to be blamed?

Stubble burning or crop residue burning has long been a major source of air pollution in India, yet efforts to curb it fail every time.

As per a new analysis put together by the climate tech firm Blue Sky Analytics, which is also a member of the worldwide coalition "Climate TRACE," India ranks first in crop burning emissions, accounting for around 13% of total global emissions for the 2015-2020 period.

The data collected suggests that even though there was a downward trend in forest and crop residue fires in India between 2016 to 2019, there was a 12.8 percent increase in emissions in 2019-20, bringing India's global contribution to 12.2 percent.

The source of these estimates includes human-caused fires, such as forest burns for conversion to agricultural land or crop wastes, as well as wildfire activity.

In conclusion, it was highlighted that there is a desperate need for verifiable data on emissions so that efforts towards climate change can be carried out with ease.

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