The environmental regulation program, the District's commitment to improve air in the capital

The Ministry of Environment of Bogotá announced on Wednesday that it seeks to reduce air emissions by 20% through the 'Environmental Self-Regulation' program, an initiative that includes contributing to improving air quality through eco-friendly practices.

This strategy aims to enable public passenger and freight transport companies to reduce emissions below the limits established through the measures established in Decree 174 of 2006, which provides for reducing pollution and improving air quality in Bogotá, one of the cities with higher pollution rates in the country.

“Air quality is an environmental problem that has no borders and that has become a challenge for different cities around the world. Bogotá is raising awareness in this area and has rethought its forms of production and mobility to reduce the negative impact that these practices can have on the environment,” said the District Secretariat.

In this regard, he noted that environmental authorities have strengthened surveillance, control and monitoring actions, as well as pedagogical initiatives in mobile sources operating in the capital, linking 100 per cent of the companies that are part of the Integrated Public Transport System (SITP), both Zonal and Troncal, and Collective Public Transport (TPC). In addition, between 2021 and 2022, 15 freight transport companies have joined.

He also highlighted that in 2020 the district administration implemented the Strategic Plan for the Comprehensive Management of Air Quality in Bogotá 2030, a roadmap that includes instruments to improve air quality conditions in the city, due to the high levels of pollution that the capital presents for several years. periods during the year, in which measures have been implemented that are consolidated in 45 projects that seek to generate the development of comprehensive and sustainable management of the sector.

“One of the lines of action is the restructuring of the Environmental Self-Regulation program for mobile sources, which aims to verify the environmental commitment of the types of transport services, integrating and articulating various strategies that allow the development of comprehensive and sustainable management of the sector,” said the Secretariat .

Experts say that the environmental emergency was lifted prematurely due to air quality in Bogotá

“The way to measure air quality in Bogotá is not the most correct and apart from that, a background study cannot be developed to verify the causes and real situations in which we find ourselves,” Alexander Reyes, an expert in environmental mobility, explained in Citynoticias last February when an environmental emergency was declared in the city.

At the same time, he pointed out that “we must develop much more appropriate protocols and processes that allow us to verify and understand what the air situation is like in the respective locations of Bogotá and at the same time what mechanisms and what forms can be used to mitigate them,” Reyes added at that time, which would show that there is a need to improve more effective measurement systems and protocols.

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