NEW DELHI -- For Ashok Kumar in New Delhi, one of the world's 10 most polluted cities, the inaction of the Earth Summit in Johannesburg is the equivalent of a "death sentence" at the hands of the developed world.

Like many others, Kumar, a 37-year-old engineer, rarely goes out without covering his face "to avoid choking" on the carbon monoxide fumes from the buses, scooters, trucks and auto rickshaws that congest the streets of the Indian capital. "For us, it is high time something was done. It might already be too late," he said. "The failure of Johannesburg means that wealthy countries have sentenced us to death."

According to scientists, just breathing in New Delhi's air at rush hour is the equivalent of smoking between 20 and 40 cigarettes a day.

Despite efforts by the Indian authorities to control the age of the capital's vehicles and the fuel they use, their emissions still account for 70 percent of the pollution in the metropolis. The non-governmental center for science and environment calls New Delhi "a legal gas chamber."

According to the central pollution control board set up by India's Environment Ministry, particles in the air in Delhi this week reached 162 micrograms per cubic meter. The highest permissible level is considered to be 100.

A recent UN study spoke of a three-kilometer (two-mile) "brown cloud" of pollution hovering over south Asia that could cause premature death for 500,000 Indians a year.

It could also disrupt rains in India, which this year has suffered from unusually severe drought in much of the country while certain areas are drenched by torrential rains. Munir Akbar, a pediatrician in the capital's suburbs, said that each year he sees "a sharp increase in the number of children's deaths or malformations caused by breathing problems linked to pollution."

"The lack of awareness in the world of the link between poverty, pollution and premature deaths is worrying," he said.

The World Health Organization says pollution of water and the lack of suitable drinking water is one of the major dangers in India, where poor sanitation has helped limit life expectancy to 59 years for men and 62 years for women.

Some Delhi residents, particularly those in the shantytowns, need to travel long distances to find drinking water, while the city's Yamuna river takes in an estimates two billion liters (520 million gallons) of used water each day, mostly industrial runoff.

In June, 300,000 fish died from chemical waste in the Yamuna at Agra, the Taj Mahal city south of Delhi.

The country of one billion-plus people, home to amazing biodiversity, also hosts massive environmental woes -- a major fall in water reserves, the disappearance of a third of its forests in the past half-century, the exhaustion or poisoning of 65 percent of its soil and an alarming rise in toxic plastic waste.

The summit that ended Wednesday in Johannesburg pledged to tackle poverty and a potential crash of the world's ecosystem. But the plan of action was greatly watered down, due in particular to pressure from the United States said delegates at the conference.

"The powerful have basically told us to carry on suffering and dying quietly," said Ajay Singh, a student in New Delhi of Environmental Sciences. "Our sole hope lies in concrete initiatives launched at the local level and not in promises expressed during a summit that had neither ambition nor positive outcome."