More than 660 million Indians live in areas that exceed the country’s standard for what is considered safe exposure to fine particulate pollution (PM2.5). To help improve India’s air quality, researchers from the University of Chicago EPIC India and EPoD have laid out five key evidence-based policy recommendations, featured in the video below:

The recommendations include:

• Improving emissions monitoring by better aligning incentives of auditors
• Providing regulators with real-time data on polluters’ emissions
• Applying monetary charges for excess emissions
• Providing the public with information about polluters
• Using markets to reduce abatement costs and pollution

The recommendations were outlined in a policy brief, titled “A Roadmap Towards Cleaning India’s Air,” aimed at facilitating knowledge sharing between policymakers, regulators and academics on pollution regulation and measurement.

EPoD co-Director Rohini Pande and Michael Greenstone, Santosh Harish, and Anant Sudarshan of EPIC India wrote an op-ed in the Indian Express that gives more details on the five things that India can do to combat air pollution.