Improving Human Health Through a Market-Friendly Emissions Scheme, By Rohini Pande, 2011, Paper

Improving Human Health Through a Market-Friendly Emissions Scheme. Rohini Pande, 2011, Paper, “The goal of environmental regulation is to protect human health and livelihoods from environmental harms. The harm due to air pollution in India is very large. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) conservatively estimated that air pollution contributed to 40,351 premature deaths in only 36 cities of India in 1995, and that the total economic loss caused by air pollution in these cities that year was US$1,310 million (MoEF, 1999). While this harm is widely recognized, regulating air pollution remains difficult because many of the economic activities that create air pollution—from transport to industry and electricity production—are themselves important for growth. Tight regulation using traditional models could therefore itself do harm by lowering living standards.”