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Responding to the nexus between energy related air pollution, public health and climate mitigation becomes an unmistakably urgent policy imperative for all relevant stakeholders when seen in conjunction with UN’s broader goal of poverty eradication by 2030. According to the World Bank, 10% of the world’s population or 734 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day and experienced extreme poverty in 2015, compared to nearly 36% or 1.9 billion people in 1990. Extreme poverty was found to have declined to 8.6% in 2018. But the World Bank has recently estimated that the COVID‐19 pandemic will have a disproportionate impact on the global poor and will ‘push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty’, with ‘the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction’: ‘Had the pandemic not convulsed the globe, the poverty rate was expected to drop to 7.9% in 2020’ (World Bank 2020). It is within this development context of poverty reduction that the climate related health impacts and morbidity burdens of energy related air pollution needs to be understood. But there is now more than ever a pressing urgency to move beyond UN global goal silos on climate and sustainable energy towards more localized and integrated measures that are responsive to the needs of cities and communities on curbing fossil fuel related air pollution.

Since the adoption of the historic 1992 UNFCCC, which took eleven (11) intergovernmental negotiating sessions to be adopted, more than 25 annual cycles of intergovernmental negotiating meetings have occurred under the aegis of Conference of Parties (COPs) to the UNFCCC (Gupta 2014; Cherian 2012). Notwithstanding the rapid growth in global climate negotiations fora, securing a legally binding global climate change agreement still remains a quixotic goal. There has also been no shortage of policy prognostications and research related to climate negotiations ranging from game theory, regime, institutional governance analysis and climate justice perspectives (Haas et al. 1993; Luterbacher and Sprinz 2001; Giddens 2011; Stern et al. 2014; Bernard and Semmler 2015; Sjöstedt and Penetrante 2015). Robinson and Herbert (2001) outlined the need for integrating climate change early on with sustainable development needs. There is a considerable body of literature on sustainable development negotiations (Sachs 2015; Chasek et al. 2017; Kanie et al. 2017).

Enabling the active participation of NNSAs in global environmental governance to reduce institutional failure has been viewed as one of the most important tasks for policymakers seeking to improve the effectiveness of global governance (Hemmati 2001; Esty and Ivanova 2002). Gemmill and Bamidele‐Izu focused on the role of NGOs and civil society actors in global environmental governance and identified five major roles that civil society can play in global environmental governance: (i) information collection and dissemination; (ii) policy development consultation; (iii) policy implementation; (iv) assessment and monitoring and (v) advocating environmental justice (2002, p. 78). While climate change has galvanized civil society stakeholders’ actions ranging from the world’s most powerful CEOs to student activists, what needs to be reflected upon is that the implementation of the UN segregated goals on climate change, clean energy and curbing air pollution neither yield results nor allows for dynamic partnerships between NNSAs such as local governments and the energy sector. The COVID pandemic with its grave public health precautions of social distancing and global travel shut‐downs caused the necessary postponement of the 26th annual COP (COP‐26). But, the reality is that the decades‐old process of convening annual climate COPs which are now massive global juggernauts resulting in an alphabet soup of newly formed technical groups, ad hoc committees and escalating global air‐travel related emissions associated with transporting participants to diverse cities where these massive global climate conferences/summits are held. Despite the push towards ensuring a carbon neutral COP‐26, according to preliminary estimates by the host government’s official carbon accounting firm‐Arup‐ COP‐26 was ‘responsible for 102,500 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, which was twice as much CO2 equivalent associated with previous COPs held in Madrid in 2019 and Paris in 2015 and ‘four times as much as the earlier climate summits in Copenhagen and Durban, South Africa, according to figures compiled by The Washington Post’ (Booth and Stevens 2021). UNEP’s Executive Director, Inger Andersen in her foreword to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2020 pointed to the urgency of ‘changes in consumption behaviour by individuals and the private sector’ which included the need to redesign cities and make housing more efficient. But she was categorical about assigning blame for GHG emissions: ‘The wealthy bear the greatest responsibility in this area. The combined emissions of the richest 1 per cent of the global population account for more than twice the combined emissions of the poorest 50 per cent. This elite will need to reduce their footprint by a factor of 30 to stay in line with the Paris Agreement targets’ (UNEP 2020a, p. xiii). Ironically, evidence as to the rich versus poor emission imbalance was apparent when a slew of 400 private jets were used by uber‐wealthy climate celebrities to attend COP‐26 (Parsons 2021).

Feigning ignorance regarding carbon inequality is hard to justify. Over five years ago, climate change was inextricably linked inequality in Oxfam’s Report, ‘Extreme Carbon Inequality’. The report estimated ‘carbon inequality’ to be such that ‘the poorest half of the global population – around 3.5 billion people – are responsible for only around 10% of total global emissions attributed to individual consumption, yet live overwhelmingly in countries most vulnerable to climate change. Around 50% of these emissions meanwhile can be attributed to the richest 10% of people around the world, who have average carbon footprints 11 times as high as the poorest half of the population, and 60 times as high as the poorest 10%. The average footprint of the richest 1% of people globally could be 175 times that of the poorest 10%’ (emphasis added, Oxfam 2015, p. 1). Calling attention to the massive scale of loss, devastation and dislocation imposed by climate change, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights pointed out: ‘Perversely, while people in poverty are responsible for just a fraction of global emissions, they will bear the brunt of climate change, and have the least capacity to protect themselves … We risk a “climate apartheid” scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer’(emphasis added, UN News 2019a).

Another recent example of this ‘climate apartheid’ scenario albeit by the well‐intentioned wealthy was the 2019 convening of a by‐invitation only, celebrity‐focused, three‐day Google camp on climate change. According to an article in Ecowatch, this event which cost upwards of $20 million meant that the Palermo airport had to be readied ‘for the expected arrival of 114 private jets not to mention private helicopters, yachts and limousines used for the transportation of the various guests’. As the article notes, the modalities used to convene this event were in stark contrast to the event’s promised mission, ‘as a flight from New York to Palermo, Sicily, generates around 4.24 metric tons of CO2’, which is ‘a lot of carbon for just a few people. And, that doesn't include the greenhouse gasses emitted by the 2,300 horsepower diesel‐engine private yachts’ that several attendees used (Davidson 2019). The imbalance in per capita GHG emissions is unambiguous across and within countries and cities and makes the dissonance between those who lack access to non‐polluting energy sources yet also contribute the least in term of per capita emissions versus those who proclaim the need for climate activism by jetting around the world harder to ignore.

IPCC’s AR6 Working Group 1 SPM leaves little room for equivocation or doubt as to the global urgency of climate action. The climate response to a broader range of GHGs, land use and air pollutant futures than assessed in AR5 are considered consistently via five new emissions scenarios and include:

‘Scenarios with high and very high GHG emissions (SSP3‐7.0 and SSP5‐8.5) and CO2 emissions that roughly double from current levels by 2100 and 2050, respectively, Scenarios with intermediate GHG emissions (SSP2‐4.5) and CO2 emissions remaining around current levels until the middle of the century, and

Scenarios with very low and low GHG emissions and CO2 emissions declining to net zero around or after 2050, followed by varying levels of net negative CO2 emissions23 (SSP1‐1.9 and SSP1‐2.6)’ (2021, p. 15).

The SPM highlighted that: ‘Based on the assessment of multiple lines of evidence, global warming of 2°C, relative to 1850–1900, would be exceeded during the 21st century under the high and very high GHG emissions scenarios considered in this report (SSP3‐7.0 and SSP5‐8.5, respectively). Global warming of 2°C would extremely likely be exceeded in the intermediate scenario (SSP2‐4.5). Under the very low and low GHG emissions scenarios, global warming of 2°C is extremely unlikely to be exceeded (SSP1‐1.9), or unlikely to be exceeded (SSP1‐2.6)’ (2021, p. 18). Making assumptions about the global political will to move towards a very low and zero GHG emissions scenario currently strain credulity, but what needs to be publicly acknowledged is the scale of devastation that awaits millions across the world who lack the basic resources to adapt towards compounded climate, health and humanitarian crises.

Close to seven years after UN member states universally pledged to undertake ambitious action to implement the PA on climate change, it is long overdue time to ask what exactly is being done by the UN global community (including the global elite) to address the health and morbidity burdens that millions face at the harsh intersection between climate adversities and fossil fuel related air pollution. What set the 2015 PA apart from all prior UN climate resolutions and agreements was that it was the first inclusive, yet completely voluntary global climate change accord that covers all member states and therefore was markedly different from its parent treaty the 1992 UNFCCC and the 1997 KP to the UNFCCC. But, what this voluntary and non‐legally binding implementation of the PA means is that the scaling up of the PA’s commitments hinges entirely on the level of ‘ambition’ of the voluntary national pledges of climate action referred to as ‘independent Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDCs). In other words, the future implementation record of global climate action within the PA depends entirely on the individual national commitments of the world’s largest aggregate GHG emitting countries. What is unambiguous, however, is that the implementation of the PA is directly linked to global efforts to reduce poverty, food insecurity and human rights inequities, as reflected in the introductory or ‘chapeau’ section of the PA: ‘Emphasizing the intrinsic relationship that climate change actions, responses and impacts have with equitable access to sustainable development and eradication of poverty… Acknowledging that climate change is a common concern of humankind, Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity’ (UNFCCC 2015, p. 21).

The PA’s explicit recognition of the eradication of poverty, the right to health, along with the human rights and the rights of historically marginalized and vulnerable communities is critical in locating the argument that heavy reliance on polluting forms of solid fuels (biomass), and access to clean air should be considered as integral to and not separated from climate responsive actions. The PA entered into force on 4 November 2016 after ratification by three of the world’s largest aggregate GHG emitters – China, US and India. On 1 June 2017, the world’s second‐largest aggregate GHG emitter announced its decision to unilaterally withdraw from the PA and called for new negotiations. This call was rejected by several UN donor countries, including France and Germany who said that the PA ‘cannot be renegotiated’ (Stokols 2017). Meanwhile, the Foreign Minister of India (the world’s third‐largest aggregate GHG emitter) pushed back against the US claim that India’s ratification of the PA was ‘contingent upon receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars of foreign aid from developed countries’ by categorically stating: ‘India signed the Paris Agreement not because of any pressure or out of greed. We are committed to the environment and this commitment is 5,000 years old … I clearly dismiss both accusations’ (Indian Express 2017), But, India and China pushed back on the phrase ‘phase out’ in relation to coal and moved to replace it with ‘phase down’ in the recently concluded COP‐6 Glasgow deal. This move by India and China resulted in COP‐26 Chair, Alok Sharma stating that the deal struck in Glasgow was a ‘fragile win’ and that China and India would need to ‘justify their actions to nations that are more vulnerable to the effects of global warming’ (Cursino and Faulkner, 2021). The decades‐old reality that veterans of global climate change negotiations will attest to are that consensus‐based intergovernmental outcomes secured after two weeks of late‐night, back‐room discussions, are not governed by the need to protect the smallest and most vulnerable countries. Even before, the 2017 withdrawal of the US from the PA, the WEF highlighted the collective failure of the intergovernmental climate negotiations: ‘The risk of global governance failure which lies at the heart of the risk map, is linked to the risk of climate change. Negotiations on climate change mitigation and adaptation are progressing by fits and starts, perpetually challenged to deliver a global legal framework’ (WEF 2014, pp. 21–22).

Ciplet et al. (2015) demonstrated the international climate change policymaking arena has failed to act conclusively to fully address climate change. Harlan et al. (2015) provide compelling reasons for climate change being seen as a ‘justice issue’ given that marginalized communities and countries use considerably less fossil fuel energy while adverse climatic impacts are experienced vastly differently by the rich and poor as are climate responsive measures. As it turns out, the 2013 COP held in Warsaw, Poland, was sponsored by a range of energy polluting industries and ran alongside the International Coal Summit (which featured a keynote address by the then head of the UNFCCC) (Goodman 2013); and the 2018 COP was held in Katowice, also located in Poland and home to the largest coal mine in the European Union (EU) (Mathiesen 2017). Speaking to the 2018 Katowice COP assembly, the young Swedish climate change activist, Greta Thunberg provided a bleak assessment of UN climate negotiations: ‘We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground, and we need to focus on equity … We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again. We have run out of excuses and we are running out of time’ (Sutter and Davidson 2018). Speaking on 29 January 2019, Thunberg upped the urgency when she told yet another global assemblage gathered at WEF in Davos: ‘We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say … I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is’ (WEF 2019b).

Intergovernmental climate negotiations have not yielded conclusive agreement on key elements related to the PA related to climate adaptation needs of the smallest and poorest countries. The return to the PA negotiations by the second‐largest aggregate emitter sent a clear message, but the question that persists is whether the textual confines of the two‐week‐long cycle of intergovernmental negotiations will suffice in terms of integrated action clean air and clean energy for all? Tense and protracted climate negotiations have been the norm for decades. The final, plenary session of the 2018 24th UN Climate Conference in Poland had to be postponed no less than six times. In the waning days of 2019, climate activists across the world were left disappointed that the 25th UN annual climate negotiations meeting ended in utter disarray. Despite extending the two‐week Madrid conference for an additional two days, and after 25 consecutive annual climate conferences convened in diverse cities, countries failed to deliver essential outcomes such as setting a rulebook for the PA and designing a global carbon market. In spite of extending the two‐week 2019 25th COP in Madrid, Parties to the PA could only agree to a ‘watered‐down text’, which ‘reflects a failure to agree on the key outcomes that were needed at the summit: setting a rulebook for the Paris Agreement and designing a global carbon market’ (Keating 2019). In its summary of COP‐25, the UNFCCC Secretariat sounded hopeful that: ‘Despite Parties falling short of agreeing on issues related to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and on the launch of cooperative instruments – essential tools for enhancing the efficiency of mitigation efforts and increasing finance for adaptation – most technical issues relating to the market‐based and non‐market approaches under Article 6 were resolved in 2019. COP 26 will be tasked with sealing the deal on Article 6’ (UNFCCC 2020, p. 24).

The idea that comprehensive action on climate change and clean energy for the poorest and most vulnerable can be catalyzed by well‐intentioned celebrities who fly around imploring the world, or by the glacial pace of nation‐state‐driven textually based negotiations, while exposure to toxic levels of fossil fuel related air pollution for those cannot afford air filters/purifiers continue unabated is hard to justify. Decades ago, the UN sustainable development community universally agreed on the primacy of poverty eradication as a global goal and reaffirmed the same in both the 2030 SDA and the PA. The UN‐led global community has to face up to the facts that action on climate change needs to first and foremost address the needs of the poor and vulnerable, and that avoiding linked action to curb fossil fuel related air pollution contravenes the logic of its ambitious SDA. Today, it is hard to deny that our shared human propensity to pollute extends into the air we breathe, the food and water we consume, and is especially pernicious for millions who live at the intersection between energy related air pollution and adverse climatic impacts. It is precisely this linkage between inefficient and polluting energy sources and air pollution that merits urgent attention not just by the UN member states and organizations focused on the SDA and PA but also by NNSAs including the local and municipal governments, civil society groups, the energy private sector, as well as city and regionally based entities.

The UN’s SDA is anchored by 17 SDGs, including two entirely separate goals on affordable and clean energy (SDG 7) and climate change (SDG 13) (see Figure 1.6). What is unambiguous is that the SDGs and the PA both make poverty eradication by 2030 a central priority. The SDA’s ‘pledge that no one will be left behind’ is expressly focused on poverty eradication, but it includes two separate SDGs on sustainable energy and climate change: SDG 7: ‘Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all’ (SDG 7); and SDG 13: ‘Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’. What makes the SDA and the PA historically unique is that they share a priority on poverty eradication and are intended to be implemented in an integrated manner. Together, these two global agreements were envisaged to dramatically improve human well‐being and sustainable development in all countries. But the problem is that a detailed examination of two separate intergovernmental negotiating tracks on energy for sustainable development and climate change that were used to arrive at the SDGs and the PA revealed that the existence of segregated policy goals and targets on sustainable energy and climate change and an overall lack of integrated action on energy related air pollution (Cherian 2015).

Figure 1.6 SDGS in the UN’s 2030 sustainable development agenda.

Source: UN website, About the Sustainable Development Goals (2021).

With the 2030 full implementation deadline looming for the SDGs and the PA, it is time to ask what is being done in terms of integrated action to curb SLCPs and reduce public health and morbidity burdens associated with energy related air pollution exposure? Both the PA and the SDGs are voluntary agreements with no legal penalties or obligations for individual countries to meet commitments. It is time to ask whether UN member states should be the sole arbiters of global climate goals based on tense intergovernmental textually driven negotiations that have to date not considered actions to curb SLCPs and toxic levels of air pollution. The role of NNSAs – including local/municipal governments and the private sector – are arguably important in addressing the enormity of the challenges associated with intersecting challenges of climate change, lack of access to clean energy and air pollution. The gravity of the linked crises of climate change and air pollution crises necessitates looking beyond segregated UN policy and goal silos on clean energy and climate change and asking:

 How exactly has air pollution been addressed at the global and regional level within the UN’s broad SDA?

 Is there an integrated global policy nexus on clean air, clean energy and climate action that is responsive to the needs of those most impacted by energy related air pollution, lack of access to clean energy and climate vulnerabilities?

 What is the role for NNSA partnerships including regional and city‐based modalities that integrate action on clean air, clean energy and climate challenges in countries like India where the scale and scope of increasing access to clean energy and curbing air pollution intersect for millions of lives?

The identification of air pollution as the world’s single largest environmental health risk by the WHO merits a careful examination as to how globally responsive action on air pollution has been integrated with SDG 7 (increasing access to clean energy for all) and SDG 13 (climate). Are segregated policy goals on sustainable energy for all (SDG 7), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11) and climate change (SDG 13) adequately positioned to address the inequitable health burdens imposed on those who have contributed the least in terms of per capita GHG emissions but who rely heavily on polluting solid fuels for their basic needs? The year 2020 was billed as the year for conclusive UN agreement on the PA’s modalities. But, the COVID‐19 global pandemic revealed a less than palatable global truth, namely, a collective global failure or, more euphemistically put, a global disconnect between the early identification of climate change within the context of poverty eradication and the growing public health crisis of air pollution, both of which disproportionately and negatively impact on poorer households, communities and cities.

The historical role of NNSAs – fossil fuel and cement producers – in terms of anthropogenic GHG emissions has been far more significant than previously discussed. As highlighted in ‘Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010’ (Heede 2014). Heede’s analysis focused on commercial and state‐owned entities responsible for producing fossil fuels and cement as the primary sources of GHGs that have driven and continue to drive climate change, and found that ‘nearly two‐thirds of historic carbon dioxide and methane emissions can be attributed to 90 entities’ (emphasis added, 2014, p. 241). The powerful role of fossil fuel‐driven industry groups and countries in stymieing action at the national and global level is hardly surprising, but still worth highlighting in terms of the tenacious duration and hold of such lobbying efforts.

Baumgartner et al.(2009) demonstrated the impact of lobbying on policy changes – essentially in determining who wins and loses. Efforts to mitigate climate change unleashed enormous lobbying interests both within countries like the US and at the global level from the very start of global negotiations on climate. Over two decades ago, Ross Gelbspan highlighted what he termed ‘a most impressive campaign’, which he characterized as an ‘assault on our sense of reality’ within the US Congress which allowed for a successful war waged on science and which has been a ‘potent weapon on the international stage, permitting the corporate coal and oil interests ‐ in tandem with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other coal and oil exporting nations ‐ to frustrate diplomatic attempt to address the crisis meaningfully’ (Gelbspan 1997, p. 9). More recently, Brulle (2018) estimated that the lobbying expenditures related to climate change legislation in the US Congress from 2000 to 2016 was over $2 billion, constituting 3.9% of total lobbying expenditures. Led by fossil fuel and transportation corporations, utilities and affiliated trade associations, these lobbying efforts were found to dwarf those of environmental organizations and renewable energy corporations.

It is time to question whether the UN‐led global SDA can respond effectively to the needs of socio‐economically marginalized households, communities and countries lacking access to clean energy and clean air whilst suffering from adverse climatic impacts? What exactly does an examination of global or regional partnerships or protocols on climate, energy and air pollution reveal in terms of integrated and responsive action that can transform lives for millions across the globe? The COVID pandemic has exposed the tragic costs borne by those who are consigned to live at the nexus of public health neglect and existing chronic respiratory illnesses worsened by exposure to PM pollution that emanates from fossil fuel combustion and industrial pollution. According to a 2020 study conducted by researchers at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, ‘Air pollution and COVID‐19 mortality in the United States: Strengths and limitations of an ecological regression analysis’, individuals with long‐term exposure to air pollution are more likely to die of COVID‐19. This first of its kind study examined the link between long‐term exposure to PM_2.5 – generated largely from fuel combustion from cars, refineries and power plants – and the risk of death from COVID‐19 in the US. It looked at 3000 counties across the US compared levels of fine particulate air pollution with coronavirus death counts for each area. After adjusting for population size, hospital beds, number of people tested for COVID‐19, weather and socio‐economic and behavioural variables such as obesity and smoking, the researchers found that a small increase in long‐term exposure to PM_2.5 leads to a large increase in the COVID‐19 death rate. More specifically, the study found that someone who lives for decades in a US county with high levels of fine particulate pollution is 8% more likely to die from COVID‐19 than someone who lives in a region that has just one unit (1 μg/m³) less of such pollution (Wu et al. 2020). This happens to be a terrifying finding for millions who have lived with chronic exposure to PM_2.5 in the most polluted cities in the world. Additionally, what is troubling about COVID‐19 morbidity burdens on poorer, black and brown lives is what Gibbons outlined, which is that detailed studies of ‘past epidemics show the same tragic pattern repeating again and again’, infectious diseases more easily take hold in groups with pre‐existing illnesses, who live and work in crowded conditions and who also lack access to adequate health care.

Another 2020 study by Cambridge University researchers entitled ‘Links Between Air Pollution and COVID‐19 in England’ also found a link between the severity of COVID‐19 infection and long‐term exposure to air pollutants, including nitrogen oxides and ground‐level ozone from car exhaust fumes or burning of fossil fuels. Researchers explored the links between major fossil fuel related air pollutants and SARS‐CoV‐2 mortality in England. The study compared real‐time SARS‐CoV‐2 cases and morbidity from public databases to air pollution data monitored across over 120 sites in different regions in the UK. It found that PM_2.5 was a major contributor to COVID‐19 cases in England, and an increase of 1 m³ in the long‐term average of PM_2.5 was associated with a 12% increase in COVID‐19 cases in England. The study concluded that ‘a small increase in air pollution leads to a large increase in the COVID‐19 infectivity and mortality rate in England’; and that the study itself could be used as ‘a framework to guide both health and emissions policies in countries affected by this pandemic’ (Travaglio et al. 2021, abstract). Meanwhile, ‘Air Pollution and Risk of Death due to COVID‐19 in Italy’ also confirmed the ‘existence of a link between pollution and the risk of death due to the disease’, and more specifically reiterated ‘the need to act in favour of policies aimed at reducing pollutants in the atmosphere, by means of speeding up the already existing plans and policies, targeting all sources of atmospheric pollution: industries, home heating and traffic’ (Dettori et al. 2021, abstract). The conclusions and recommendations of all three studies are of particular relevance for cities like Delhi, India, which ranks amongst the most air polluted in the world. According to a 20 October 2020 BBC report, PM_2.5 levels in Delhi averaged around 180–300 μg/m³ – 12 times higher than the WHO’s safe limits – a depressing reversal as Delhi residents were able to breathe relatively clean air because a stringent lockdown brought industries and traffic to a grinding halt (Pandey 2020). However, a 26 March 2021 Reuters article referenced the fact that Delhi had been ranked as the most polluted city in the world for the third year in a row by researchers at IQAir, an organization that measures air quality levels of PM_2.5 across the world’s capital cities (Arora 2021). The harsh reality is that there is a paucity of data on the full extent of PM air pollution on human morbidity in cities in the developing world, let alone those that examine the impacts on long‐term exposure to PM air pollution on COVID‐19 given the current burden of disease and death experienced in countries like India, Brazil and South Africa where COVID variants are decimating lives.

There is now an increased urgency in focusing on the linkage between PM pollution related to the curbing of SLCPs within the context of sustainable cities in countries like India because cities are the loci where two inherently linked crises combine – climate vulnerabilities and toxic levels of energy related air pollution. The magnitude of the public health crisis that air pollution poses is impossible to escape in many cities. Cities are undeniably on the frontline for linked action on clean energy, air pollution reduction and climate resiliency solutions. Winning the interconnected battle necessitates integrated action that is directed via innovative and responsive city‐driven measures that do not need to depend on stalemated intergovernmental climate outcomes. The role of cities and the linkages between air pollution, clean energy and climate responsive action are discussed in greater detail in the chapters that follow. From the outset, it is important to underscore that climate and clean energy action falls clearly within the purview of individual nation‐states, but the urgency of the intertwined climate, clean energy and clean air access crises is such that there is a need to broaden the arena of participants and critically examine the track record of UN outcomes related to air pollution, climate change and clean energy access. Have intergovernmental consensus‐driven declarations of willingness to address climate change focused on specific energy related air pollution targets and goals that are directly responsive to those cities and communities where PM air pollution urgently needs to be abated? Put simply, it is necessary to confront the protracted pace of intergovernmental negotiations and look towards new forms of partnerships and modalities that can more effectively integrate access to clean air and access to clean energy for the poor via the reduction of SLCPs.

The main argument advanced is that addressing the nexus between curbing SLCPs and increasing access to clean energy for the poor does, in fact, require integrated and innovative partnerships that look beyond nation‐state‐driven intergovernmental outcomes and existing policy silos on clean energy, pollution and poverty reduction and climate action. While it is undeniable that national governments – sovereign UN member states – have typically set the rules and frameworks for climate and clean energy, it is also clear that innovative action has not waited for the fractured pace of intergovernmental negotiations. The annual pilgrimages of climate cognoscenti have not resulted in verifiable improvements in the lives of those who lack access to clean energy and are exposed to toxic levels of PM air pollution. Here, it is also useful to ask why the UN’s one and only successfully implemented regional air pollution protocol – the Convention on Long‐range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) – focuses only on Europe?

Regulatory efforts to curb air pollution have been and remain highly effective within the context of advanced industrialized countries, particularly in Europe. But there is a glaring absence of regional regulatory agreements aimed at reducing emissions of air pollutants within developing countries where the problem of energy related air pollution and lack of access to clean energy happens to be most pervasive. According to UNEP/WMO (2011), BC, which exists as particles in the atmosphere and is a major component of soot, has been demonstrated to be an SLCP. Both BC and O₃ are air pollutants harmful to human health, ecosystems and agriculture/food security. BC emissions result from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, wood and other biomass, and its negative impacts are felt by poor households that lack access to clean energy while O₃ is the third most important GHG contributor after carbon dioxide and methane. The UN’s 1979 CLRTAP, which includes the Gothenburg Protocol (established in 1999), sets legally binding emission reductions commitments for 2020 and beyond for all major air pollutants shown to damage human health including sulphur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ammonia (NH₃), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and fine particulate matter (PM_2.5). Administered by the UN’s European Commission on Europe (UNECE), the 7 October 2019 entry into force of the amended Protocol makes it the first ever binding agreement to target emission reduction of PM_2.5, which happens to be both an SLCP and a predominant public health concern for polluted cities and megacities across the world.

The 40‐year history of implementing CLRTAP and its protocols has been hailed as achievements that are ‘unparalleled’, and include the decoupling emissions and economic growth, cutting back certain air pollutants by 40–80%, recovering forest soils from acidification and avoiding some 600,000 premature deaths per year (UN News 2019b). But, there is a major global and regional disconnect in terms of addressing the linkages between air pollution and urban ill health for the rest of the world. The problem of PM air pollution impacts current and future generations living in developing countries of Asia and Africa at a scale vastly different from that experienced in Europe which successfully implemented one of the UN’s only regional air pollution protocols – the CLRTAP. The problem that needs to be addressed is that there are no similar regional protocols on air pollution that cover other regions of the world including South Asia where the scope and scale of the problem of air pollution is urgent, massive and brought to the fore by COVID related respiratory burdens of disease and death. The intrinsically linked PM air pollution and climate crises in countries like India – the third largest aggregate CO₂ emitter but the 21st per capita CO₂ emitter – is such that depending on the tenuous, incremental intergovernmental consensus‐driven outcomes can no longer suffice. The immediate sections provide context as to why the world’s largest environmental health risk – air pollution – intersects with access to clean energy for the poor and focuses on the need for integrated, localized NNSA inclusive action on air pollution, clean energy and climate actions.