Development of Integrated Environmental Pollution Index for Industrial Clusters

Abstract

Recently, environmental concerns have raised public awareness of important issues such newlineas pollution, land use and natural resources which seriously demand for regulation. newlineHowever, considerable increase in population, coupled with the mounting demands from newlinesociety, have triggered rapid pace of industrialization and intensive resource extraction and pollution. Though economic growth and advancement in science and technology frontier bring positive changes in socio-economic demography, it has also been causing significant negative side effects on human health and environmental components. Depletion of natural resources, macro and micro climatic changes including global warming, acidification, air, soil and water pollutions have not only become a threat to biodiversity but also become a threat to human population itself. Pollution originating both from large-scale industries as well as small-scale industries contribute a significant part of total pollution especially in developing world, including India. The problem becomes even more aggravated due to unplanned growth of industrial clusters/townships wherein many of the industries have been flouting rules and norms. Many of these industries still rely on traditional technologies to produce end products with minimum production cost and expenditure at the expense of generating large amount of wastes and thus, polluting the environment in a big way. Therefore there is a need to formulate appropriate and effective policies to control pollution newlinewhich can be implemented strictly in all kind of industries by proper enforcement drive. newlineThe major challenge in implementing any policy of Environment Action Plans (EAP) is the identification of polluting industries and their location. This can be achieved by assessing the existing pollution emissions originated from different industry sources and taking corrective measures accordingly. However, it is also a difficult task for regulating agencies due to lack of reliable information on the nature and type of pollution emitting newline