Air Pollution, Clean Energy and Climate Change. Anilla Cherian

      Preface

      In the past few years, irrevocable losses have been experienced in the personal circles that each of us identifies as family/friends and in the intersecting circles that expand. This book has been written in the margins of grief, and in the midst of the real‐time widow work of making sure my sons who tragically lost their beloved father somehow didn’t shatter under the weight of sadness. But, writing a preface for a book that is inextricably interwoven with loss also comes with a sense of gratitude for the courage and loyalty of true friends, and for the tireless advocates who have spoken out for climate justice, especially those whose voices are no longer with us.

      The unprecedented scope and scale of climatic impacts present a clear and present danger to our shared planet. Sadly, there is ample evidence that the immediate costs of climatic adversities will be felt more deeply by those most marginalized who lack safety nets and resilience measures to adapt to extreme climatic change. We now need to unequivocally acknowledge that the collective global failure to address climate change represents the largest inter‐generational human rights violation of our time. Our collective failure to act conclusively to curb climate change condemns the poorest and most vulnerable among us who have contributed the least to the problem of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to suffer the most. It is also undeniably clear that poor and vulnerable lives will continue to be devastated if we ignore the costs of the largest environmental health risk – air pollution – facing some of the most populous cities in the world.

The sixth and most recent in the series of global scientific assessments issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) entitled ‘Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’ leaves little room for equivocation that the ‘extent and magnitude of climate change impacts are larger than estimated in previous assessments’ (2022, p.8). Some of the report’s findings regarding the inequitable impacts of climate change, air pollution and vulnerability are sobering: ‘Hot extremes including heatwaves have intensified in cities, where they have also aggravated air pollution events, and limited functioning of key infrastructure’. The ‘observed impacts’ were found ‘to be concentrated amongst the economically and socially marginalized urban residents’. The report goes on to point out that: ‘Global hotspots of high human vulnerability are found particularly in West‐, Central‐ and East Africa, South Asia, Central and South America, Small Island Developing States and the Arctic. Vulnerability is higher in locations with poverty, governance challenges and limited access to basic services and resources, violent conflict and high levels of climate‐sensitive livelihoods’ (2022, p 11‐12)^*.

      Now more than ever before, there is a global urgency in responding to the needs of those who are doubly threatened by exposure to toxic levels of fossil fuel pollution and vulnerabilities to climatic adversities such extreme heat waves, droughts, flash floods and coastal zone inundation The toll of disease and morbidity burdens accruing at the toxic intersection of air pollution and climatic adversity presents a global imperative that requires looking beyond the textual parsing of three decades of intergovernmental negotiations. The global trend towards urbanization requires ensuring inclusive, community and city‐based actions to reduce fossil fuel air pollution and curb short lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). From the perspective of decades of scientific consensus generated by numerous globally relevant institutions including the IPCC, it is important to be absolutely clear that emissions reductions of SLCPs cannot substitute for energy sector related GHG emissions mitigation. But, ignoring the grave impacts of SLCPs, and discounting the regional and national benefits for health, agriculture and food security that result from SLCPs emissions reductions is both ineffective and inequitable.

      Reducing particulate matter (PM) pollution) including PM_2.5 emissions that emanate from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, wood and other biomass is critically important from a human health perspective. What has not yet been adequately addressed within the context of global climate change negotiations is that one of the principal components of PM_2.5 – black carbon (BC) –is known to be a SLCP. BC emissions have also been found to be directly linked to serious, adverse regional and in some case more localized climate change impacts including regional rainfall and weather patterns, and also most importantly in the loss of annual production levels of rice, wheat and maize. What this book argues is that increasing access to clean air and sustainable energy for all is integral to climate responsive action and to reducing the grave human health impacts of energy related air pollution. Curbing PM_2.5 emissions offers a demonstrable win‐win on multiple fronts‐ climate change, clean air and clean energy. The book builds upon the argument that the interwoven crises of fossil fuel air pollution and climate change are well documented and extract the harshest tolls in the poorest households and communities. It discusses how responses to these interlinked crises cannot be relegated to being addressed via segregated UN global goals and policy silos. It finds that scaled up global partnerships that can jointly address energy‐related pollution, mitigate climate change and address the needs of the poorest communities across the world are long over‐due. The public health risks and costs that loom for some of the most populous cities in the world as a result of PM pollution should not be ignored any longer. It is now or never for broadening and deepening responses on clean air and clean energy for all.

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