Air Pollution, Clean Energy and Climate Change. Anilla Cherian
immediate policy intervention, but the ability of improved biomass cookstoves to reduce exposure to HAP that meet health standards remains questionable and there is limited evidence as to adoption and use barriers. Ochieng et al. call, therefore, for additional research on policy interventions that can reduce exposure including focusing on poverty eradication as the means to advance towards cleaner energy (Ochieng et al. 2018).
It is also necessary to highlight the massive gaps in knowledge and data on air pollution – indoor and outdoor – directly relevant to developing countries. While studies have examined the relationship between air pollution and cardiorespiratory diseases, there is a shortage of data and assessments of the health risks across regions and within vulnerable populations. Hajat et al. (2015) pointed out that most North American studies have shown that areas where socio‐economically marginalized communities dwell experience higher concentrations of air pollutants. Research from Asia, Africa and other parts of the world has shown a general trend similar to that of North America, but research in these parts of the world is limited (Hajat et al. 2015, p. 440). Lelieveld et al. (2015) pointed out that it has proven difficult to quantify premature mortality related to air pollution, in regions where air quality is not monitored, and also because the toxicity of particles from various sources varies. Using a global atmospheric chemistry model to investigate the link between premature mortality and seven emission source categories in urban and rural environments, outdoor air pollution, mostly by PM2.5, was estimated to lead to 3.3 million premature deaths per year worldwide, predominantly in Asia. Under a business‐as‐usual emission scenario, the contribution of outdoor air pollution to premature mortality was estimated to double by 2050 (Lelieveld et al. 2015, p. 367). Curbing fossil fuel related air pollution in an urgent global imperative. Access to clean air is directly linked to access to clean energy for households that rely on polluting forms of energy, as well as growing levels of urban outdoor air pollution in many of the most congested and populous cities of the world. The lack of access to clean air and energy is an essential element in not just carbon inequality as defined by Oxfam but also by extension pollution inequality. From the immediate perspective of this book, access to clean air is viewed as fundamental to improving human health and well‐being and poverty reduction. The following section outlines the scope of work undertaken in the remaining chapters.
1.4 Outlining Scope of Work: Brief Overview and Caveats as to Limitations
In outlining the scope of work in the chapters that follow, it is useful to begin with issuing caveats that circumscribe the limitations of the chapters and also flag the realization that synergies on clean air, clean energy and climate change requires exponentially increased responsive and innovative actions by NNSAs and governments. IPCC’s AR6 SPM has outlined just how pervasive climatic impacts are likely to be: ‘With further global warming, every region is projected to increasingly experience concurrent and multiple changes in climatic impact‐drivers. Changes in several climatic impact‐drivers would be more widespread at 2°C compared to 1.5°C global warming and even more widespread and/or pronounced for higher warming levels. All regions are projected to experience further increases in hot climatic impact‐drivers (CIDs) and decreases in cold CIDs (high confidence). Further decreases are projected in permafrost, snow, glaciers and ice sheets, lake and Arctic sea ice (medium to high confidence) 40. These changes would be larger at 2°C global warming or above than at 1.5°C (high confidence). For example, extreme heat thresholds relevant to agriculture and health are projected to be exceeded more frequently at higher global warming levels (high confidence)’ (2021, p. 32). In spite of the consistent build‐up in warnings about global warming emanating from the IPCC and other global entities, there is evidence of global negotiations and policy silos that have consistently separated out energy for sustainable development from climate change objectives, which is a concern that is explored further in this book.
There have been a growing number of powerful voices calling climate change the biggest existential crisis to face our shared planet. Within the UN’s broad umbrella of sustainable development, the topic of climate change as an institutional/governance challenge has been widely researched for years. But, responding to global climate change has proven to be a vastly complicated task, and one that is made even more complex when contextualized within the SDA and PA’s universally agreed upon priority of poverty eradication. Then, there is additional challenge of providing a means of understanding three different yet linked topics – air pollution, access to clean energy and climate change a which have been consistently addressed by within segregated UN negotiations and policy tracks. Having separated out policy tracks and negotiated outcomes – silos – on energy for sustainable development and climate action are hard to rationalize within the broader SDA framework. Simply put, having long‐standing global silos on clean energy access, climate change and air pollution reduction is illogical since fossil fuel energy is a key driver in climate change and PM pollution. And yet, it is precisely these goal silos on clean energy, climate and air pollution that need to be broken down and transformed into an integrated action‐oriented agenda.
It is important to emphasize the fact that there is a tremendous amount of policy and analytical work being done by a wide range of entities and researchers on all three of the topics – clean/sustainable energy, clean air and climate change which, the remaining chapters in the book cannot remotely attempt to cover in any complete manner. Consequently, the aim of the remaining chapters are to attempt to build upon and tie together diverse threads of excellent research that has been done by so many others. The discussion contained also needs to be understood as being subjective and cannot be construed as being anywhere near as comprehensive in scope as needed to fully address the scale of PM pollution and climate change experienced by those most vulnerable within developing countries. Additionally, it is important to underscore that the broad topics of climate change, sustainable development and clean energy are some of the most heavily researched today. At the outset, it should be noted that the chapters of this book are narrowly circumscribed in their scope, and also do not purport to provide an in‐depth or historical view of UN climate change or energy for sustainable development negotiations. Key topics such as climate finance, adaption and resilience building as well as, energy and climate justice are recognized as crucial but nevertheless fall outside of the immediate purview of the discussion undertaken. Equally importantly, the overall focus on providing broad perspectives based on a categorization of countries as ‘developing’ should be seen as nuanced, and by no means can be considered as definitive and are reflective only as globally understood within the context of the UN SDA and PA.
At the core what is being argued is that it is time to look beyond the confines of intergovernmental negotiations, and to ask what can be done if access to clean air and clean energy is considered integral to responding to climate change by NNSAs including cities/local communities. The entwined climate change and fossil fuel air pollution crises pose double burdens for millions of lives and need to be addressed in an integrated and inclusive manner. The central aim therefore is to provide evidence that PM pollution extracts the heaviest tolls on the poorest and most vulnerable people and communities and that the global community has done little to address the world’s single largest environmental health risk. The heavy reliance on inefficient energy devices (open fires and traditional cook stoves) as well as inefficient sources of energy such as solid fuels and traditional biomass in poor households in developing countries, particularly those in sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia has been documented to result in incomplete combustion of and release of SLCPs including BC which has serious health and short‐term climatic impacts (UNEP 2013). Emissions that result from the incomplete/inefficient combustion of solid fuels and traditional biomass are released as a mixture of health‐damaging indoor air pollutants such as BC, that have short atmospheric life spans but result in significant negative impacts to human health and climate change at the national and regional level (UNEP/WMO 2011). A key premise advanced is that the nexus between climate resilience, clean energy, poverty reduction and urbanization urgently needs to be transformed by the increasingly dynamic role of NNSAs including municipal and energy sector stakeholders.
Some of the key issues addressed and questions raised in the chapters are as follows:
What is the scope of agreed global guidance on NSA partnerships related to the proposed global partnership mechanism