Type: IOCR

The 2019 World Air Quality Report was recently released

World Air Quality Report

• The World Air Quality Report is released by the pollution tracker IQAir and Greenpeace.
• The report focuses on PM2.5 as a representative measure of air pollution.

Highlights of the report

• India accounts for two-thirds of the world’s most polluted cities — 21 of the most polluted 30 cities; 14 of the highest 20; and 6 of the highest 10 — in the report.
• Among countries, when population is taken into account, average PM2.5 pollution is highest in Bangladesh, followed by Pakistan, while India is at number 5.
• China is at number 11 in the list of countries affected by population, with population factored in. Chinese cities achieved a 9% average decrease in PM2.5 levels in 2019.
• While cities in India, on average, exceed the WHO target for annual PM2.5 exposure by 500%, national air pollution decreased by 20% from 2018 to 2019, with 98% of cities experiencing improvements.
• It said 90% of the global population breathing unsafe air.

Top polluted Indian Cities

Back2Basics

PM 2.5

• PM 2.5 refers to particulate matter (ambient airborne particles) which measure up to 2.5 microns in size and has a range of chemical makeups and sources.
• It is widely regarded as the pollutant with the most health impact of all commonly measured air pollutants.
• Due to its small size PM2.5 is able to penetrate deep into the human respiratory system and from there to the entire body, causing a wide range of short- and long-term health effects.
• Particulate matter is also the pollutant group which affects the most people globally. It can come from a range of natural as well as man-made sources.
• Common sources of PM include combustion (from vehicle engines, industry, wood and coal burning), as well as through other pollutants reacting in the atmosphere.

The Future for the World’s Children Report 2020 was recently released.

About the report

• The report was released by a commission of over 40 child and adolescent health experts from around the world after assessing 180 countries.
• It was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and The Lancet medical journal.

What is Flourishing Index?

• Flourishing is the geometric mean of Surviving and Thriving.
• For Surviving, the authors selected maternal survival, survival in children younger than 5 years old, suicide, access to maternal and child health services, basic hygiene and sanitation, and lack of extreme poverty.
• For Thriving, the domains were educational achievement, growth and nutrition, reproductive freedom, and protection from violence.

Threats to Children

• The report highlights the distinct threat posed to children from harmful marketing.
• Evidence suggests that children in some countries see as many as 30,000 advertisements on television alone in a single year, while youth exposure to vaping (e-cigarettes) advertisements increased by more than 250% in the U.S. over two years, reaching more than 24 million young people.
• Studies in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and the U.S. — among many others — have shown that self-regulation has not hampered commercial ability to advertise to children.
• Children’s exposure to commercial marketing of junk food and sugary beverages is associated with the purchase of unhealthy foods and overweight and obesity, linking predatory marketing to the alarming rise in childhood obesity.
• The number of obese children and adolescents increased from 11 million in 1975 to 124 million in 2016 — an 11-fold increase, with dire individual and societal costs, the report said.

What is Sustainability Index?

• Under the Sustainability Index, the authors noted that promoting today’s national conditions for children to survive and thrive must not come at the cost of eroding future global conditions for children’s ability to flourish.
• It ranks countries on excess carbon emissions compared with the 2030 target.
• This provides a convenient and available proxy for a country’s contribution to sustainability in future.

Highlights of the SI

• The report noted that under realistic assumptions about possible trajectories towards sustainable greenhouse gas emissions, models predict that global carbon emissions need to be reduced from 39·7 gigatonnes to 22·8 gigatonnes per year by 2030 to maintain even a 66% chance of keeping global warming below 1·5degrees C.
• No country in the world is currently providing the conditions we need to support every child to grow up and have a healthy future alarmed the report.

India’s performance

India ranked 77th on a sustainability index that takes into account per capita carbon emissions and ability of children in a nation to live healthy lives and secures 131st spot on a flourishing ranking that measures the best chance at survival and well-being for children.

Performance of nations in SI

•  Norway leads the table for survival, health, education and nutrition rates – followed by South Korea and the Netherlands.
• The central African Republic, Chad and Somalia come at the bottom.
• However, when taking into account per capita CO2 emissions, these top countries trail behind, with Norway 156th, the Republic of Korea 166th and the Netherlands 160th.
• Each of the three emits 210 per cent more CO2 per capita than their 2030 target, the data shows, while the U.S., Australia, and Saudi Arabia are among the 10 worst emitters.
• The lowest emitters are Burundi, Chad and Somalia.
• According to the report, the only countries on track to beat CO2 emission per capita targets by 2030, while also performing fairly — within the top 70 — on child flourishing measures are Albania, Armenia, Grenada, Jordan, Moldova, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Uruguay and Vietnam.

A new Greenpeace report has estimated the global cost of air pollution from fossil fuels at around $2.9 trillion per year, or $8 billion per day — 3.3% of the world’s GDP.

Cost of air pollution

India is estimated to bear a cost of $150 billion, or 5.4% of the country’s GDP, which is the third-highest absolute cost from fossil fuel air pollution worldwide.

China and the US are estimated to bear the highest absolute costs from fossil fuel air pollution, respectively at $900 billion and $600 billion.

Loss of lives

• Globally, air pollution is estimated to cause 4.5 million premature deaths each year.
• This includes 3 million deaths attributable globally to PM2.5, which is one of the principal pollutants in northern Indian cities including Delhi.
• Globally, PM2.5 is also estimated to cause the loss of 62.7 million years of life, 2.7 million emergency room visits due to asthma, 2 million preterm births and 1.75 billion work absences.
• The 2 million preterm births include 981,000 in India and over 350,000 in China.

Economic cost

In India, exposure to fossil fuels also leads to a loss of around 490 million workdays, the report said.