Tehran Mayor, Air Pollution and the Debate Over City Evacuation

Schools and universities in Tehran are closed due to air pollution. Some news agencies reported that Tehran’s mayor said if the pollution had continued on Monday, the city would have needed to be evacuated. IRNA refuted this report in its coverage.

On Tuesday (26 Azar), some news agencies reported on Tehran’s air pollution, citing Pirouz Hanachi, Tehran’s mayor, as saying that in a meeting at the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, he stated that suspended particles in Tehran’s air on the night of Monday, 25 Azar (16 December) had reached a level where “the city would have needed to be evacuated.”

Some news agencies reported his comments to mean that if it hadn’t rained, the city would have needed to be evacuated. In IRNA’s coverage, it was reported that the capital’s air quality on Monday night “with increased concentration of particulate matter less than 2.5 microns with an instantaneous index of 167 entered a red state and became unhealthy for all groups.” However, IRNA “refuted” the claim that the mayor had said “Tehran would have needed to be evacuated,” attributing this denial to Pirouz Hanachi himself. These controversial remarks sparked debate such that Mohsen Hashemi, head of Tehran City Council, told ISNA: “Did Hanachi say this? Did he say closure or evacuation? There’s a difference between closure and evacuation!”

Closure is the only measure being implemented

Tehran’s mayor emphasized in that same meeting that to control air pollution, attention must be paid to reducing pollutants. Will anything be done in this regard?

The only measure authorities take in such cases is to close schools and suspend many routine activities of residents. Anushiravan Mohseni Bandpey, governor of Tehran, told IRNA that kindergartens, pre-school programs, and schools in all educational levels in Tehran Province except the two counties of Damavand and Firoozkouh will be closed on Tuesday, 26 Azar (17 December). All outdoor sports competitions and activities such as sand and gravel mines and similar industries are also “suspended until further notice,” according to Tehran’s governor.

ISNA news agency also reported the closure of all Tehran universities on this day. But what is the responsibility of other citizens in such circumstances? Air pollution is now at such a level that authorities themselves admit it no longer distinguishes between the elderly and children and is dangerous for everyone. Can the problem be solved with one day of closure? Past experience gives a negative answer to this question. In the coming weeks and months, Iran’s major cities and first and foremost the capital will have to be closed repeatedly. According to Anushiravan Mohseni Bandpey, the air pollution emergency committee will implement the odd-even plate restriction from residential doors.

But what will become of a country whose activities in its capital repeatedly come to a standstill? Experts have no answer to this question.

Air pollution in Tehran and other major Iranian cities is one of the serious threats to citizens’ health, with various factors contributing to it: old and non-standard vehicles, non-standard fuel quality, pollution caused by factories, and so on.

Public transportation vehicles also neither have the capacity to meet the needs of a multi-million person city nor has there been sufficient investment to modernize them, and they themselves are partly a factor in exacerbating air pollution.

According to experts, no serious and effective measures have been taken regarding any of these issues. Tehran has now become a network of multi-lane highways and streets where millions of polluting vehicles circulate. With rising gasoline prices, this problem not only decreased, but left citizens worse off in transportation.

The metropolitan area of Tehran faces a population growth rate of two percent, while surrounding cities face much higher growth rates, up to around 17 percent. Part of this millions-strong population now, with gasoline prices rising, has turned to public transportation, which does not have adequate capacity to transport them. Tehran’s mayor said metros face a shortage of 2,000 cars and attributed this to the “country’s economic conditions.”

“They haven’t allocated even one rial to expanding transportation”

Tehran’s mayor said on Tuesday, 26 Azar at the Tehran Chamber of Commerce meeting that “with the increase in gasoline prices by over 12 to 13 percent, the load on public transportation in the metro increased.” In other words, with the rise in gasoline prices, organizing transportation in Tehran now faces “newer challenges.”

Mohsen Hashemi, head of Tehran City Council, also said: “Solving the air pollution problem is a governance and cross-sectoral issue.” He continued: “In many countries, electricity is used as a heating method and they don’t allow the production of undesirable vehicles and they also support public transportation, and all these are governance issues involving different organizations.”

He also referred to the increase in people’s problems following the gasoline price hike, saying: “Since gasoline became expensive, they haven’t allocated even one rial to expanding transportation, and we see that now air pollution is in an appalling state.”

School closures not only made headlines today but also on the previous day (25 Azar). IRNA news agency, quoting Alireza Salimi, representative of local districts, reported that he, criticizing the successive closures of educational centers due to air pollution, called for the implementation of the Clean Air Law by Tehran’s mayor. A law that was passed in 1396 and obligated the Environmental Organization to prepare relevant regulations within three to six months and submit them for cabinet approval.

In Azar of year 97, and after removing some “defects” of this law and adding “reform proposals from executive agencies,” the cabinet obligated the Environmental Protection Organization to review the necessary reforms in cooperation with other agencies and present the results within 6 months. A deadline that passed long ago, yet there is still no news of implementing the Clean Air Law.

Experts like Kaveh Madani, who had followed closely the state of the environment and how laws and regulations related to it are “implemented” in the Islamic Republic, described the implementation of the Clean Air Law in a tweet as a “futile dream.”

Research by the Ministry of Health on seven major Iranian cities shows that 29,500 people die annually in these cities as a result of pollution. The only measure that has actually been implemented so far is that metro and bus fares were halved on Tuesday.

Source: DW