India holds 15 of the top 20 spots in that category, according to the report, which was released this week by Greenpeace and IQAir AirVisual, a software company that tracks air quality data. The Pakistani city of Lahore and Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, also made the top 20, making South Asia — where governments are routinely criticised for failing to limit emissions and coal use —an especially toxic region. “At a country level, weighted by population, Bangladesh emerges as the most polluted country on average, closely followed by Pakistan and India,” the report said. Details from the report, which looked at data from more than 3,000 cities around the world, offer more bad news for India’s nascent movement to curb air pollution. In January, the government unveiled the National Clean Air Program, a five-year plan to reduce air pollution in 102 cities by up to 30 percent from 2017 levels.

Source: bd News24 March 05, 2019 16:07 UTC