Earth Today | Preserving blue skies, keeping clear lungs

WITH THE celebration of International Day of Clean Air for blue skies yesterday (September 7), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has once again urged ramped-up global efforts to clean the air – and in the process, safeguard human health.

“We all share one atmosphere. Now we must work together to protect it,” encouraged Inger Andersen, under-secretary general of the United Nations and executive director of UNEP, in a recording done in observation of the day.

International Day of Clean Air for blue skies, facilitated by UNEP and celebrated this year under the theme ‘The air we share’, is intended to enhance awareness and facilitate actions to improve air quality.

“Every breath we take keeps us alive; and every breath we take is killing us. This is the paradox humanity caused when we created economies and societies that pollute the air. Ninety per cent of the world breathes unsafe air. Short-lived climate pollutants are driving almost half of global warming. We are witnessing devastating wildfires, and darkening the skies with ash and harmful particles,” Andersen said.

“Pollution – of the air, land and water – climate change, and nature and biodiversity loss together form the triple planetary crisis. This triple crisis is a global emergency that only urgent and decisive action can solve,” she added.

Andersen has proposed the prioritisation of country cooperation; legislation and regulations to meet the World Health Organization standards on air quality; and monitoring and evaluation to not only identify sources of pollution, but also to track the impact of interventions.

Her recommendations come in the wake of stunning statistics about the linkages between air pollution and diseases from UNEP’s 2021 report, Actions on Air Quality: A Global Summary of Policies and Programmes to Reduce Air Pollution.

“The combined effects of ambient and household air pollution leads to an estimated seven million deaths each year … including half a million infants in their first month of life. These burden-of-disease calculations include stroke, heart attack, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancers, acute lower respiratory infections, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and the recently added associations with low birth weight and short gestation,” the report said.

“Left out of these statistics are the serious health consequences that have been associated with air pollution in the scientific literature, but for which data and/or methods do not yet exist in order to estimate attributable disease burdens on a global scale, or for which more research is needed to establish causal attribution in a rigorous and statistically robust way. For example, studies have identified associations between air pollution and asthma, cognitive decline and dementia in later life, pregnancy loss and infant mortality,” it added.

There is also a significant financial cost.

“The annual global welfare (non-market) costs of premature deaths from outdoor air pollution, calculated using estimates of the individual willingness to pay to reduce the risk of premature death, have been estimated at between US$3 trillion and US$5.7 trillion in 2016. They are projected to rise to between US$18 trillion and US$25 trillion in 2060,” the report noted.

The US$5.7 trillion, it explained, is equivalent to 4.8 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP).

“By region, the cost in 2016 ranged from an equivalent of 2.3 per cent of GDP in Latin Americ aand the Caribbean to 5.7 per cent in East Asia and the Pacific, and 7.3 per cent in South Asia,” it said.

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