Asian cities need to implement radical solutions: CSE

New Delhi, Apr 19: Asia is imbibing the auto-dependent model of urban growth followed by the West but it does not have similar capacity for cleaning up, resulting in a potentially disastrous situation.

The science of air pollution may be universal, the impact of toxins on out bodies may also be universal. The global business of cars was becoming universal as well, as was the pollution they spew.

But the answers and strategies to combat this ever-growing pollution were not universal, Centre for Science and Environment research said in its latest book 'The Leapfrog Factor: Clearing the air in Asian cities'.

This was because the capacities to deal with the problem and the resources available to invest in pollution control vary across regions, it said and added that Asia was imbibing the auto-dependent model of urban growth followed by the West but it did not have the capacity for cleaning up.

''It, therefore, will have to rethink its stategies.'' The Western model of growth was intrinsically toxic. It used up huge amounts of resources--energy and materials--and generated enormous quantities of waste. Within just 15 years of what economists called the post-Second World War economic boom (1945-1960), a period during which the West created unprecedented wealth, almost every industrialised city began to gasp for clean air, it said.

UNI