Kashmir outlaws burning of leaves

srinagar — With air pollution worsening in New Delhi and beyond, Indian-administered Kashmir has decided to step up efforts to combat its own worsening air quality.

The state’s government announced last month that it would begin enforcing an existing ban on the burning of leaves and wood pruned from trees. The government said such burning is hazardous to residents’ health and ash from the fires contributes to the melting of glaciers in the region.

Kashmir has millions of fruit and other trees, including poplar, willow and Chinar, an oriental plane tree. Some are traditionally pruned in autumn and early winter, or produce leaves that fall as a thick red and amber carpet on the ground. Often the pruned wood and leaves are burned, with the ash combined with charcoal for winter heating or mixed into the soil to enrich it.

Under existing state environmental and municipal laws such burning is illegal, but this year the government has decided to enforce the ban, issuing circulars to district authorities asking them to strictly implement the law.

Dr Parvaiz Koul, head of internal and pulmonary medicine at Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences in Srinagar, said he believed burning was most likely contributing to a growing burden of respiratory disease in the city. The number of patients treated at Srinagar’s Chest Diseases Hospital rose from 95,000 in 2015 to 108,000 in the first 11 months of 2017, according to hospital records.

The government has proposed composting leaves as the most eco-friendly alternative to burning them, with the composted leaves used as fertiliser or converted into bio-fuel pellets.

“As of now, we are collecting the leaves and are asking the people not to burn them. Experts will guide us how to turn them into compost,” said Sofi Akbar, Srinagar’s chief sanitation officer. —