Читать книгу Air Pollution, Clean Energy and Climate Change - Anilla Cherian - Страница 11

Poverty and socio‐economic marginalization have been evidenced as putting women, children and the elderly in a seriously disadvantaged position in terms of coping with adverse impacts of climate change (UNDP 2007; World Bank 2016). Back in 2014, the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC identified three pathways by which climate change impacts on human health:

‘(1)Direct impacts, which relate primarily to changes in the frequency of extreme weather including heat, drought, and heavy rain;

(2)Effects mediated through natural systems, for example, disease vectors, water‐borne diseases, and air pollution; and

(3)Effects heavily mediated by human systems, for example, occupational impacts, undernutrition, and mental stress’ (IPCC 2014a, p. 716).

The IPCC finding that the health effects of climate change impact differentially and negatively on the global poor, including in the case of health risks associated with air pollution is categorically clear: ‘Climate change is an impediment to continued health improvements in many parts of the world. If economic growth does not benefit the poor, the health effects of climate change will be exacerbated. In addition to their implications for climate change, essentially all the important climate‐altering pollutants other than carbon dioxide (CO2) have near‐term health implications (very high confidence). In 2010, more than 7% of the global burden of disease was due to inhalation of these air pollutants (high confidence)’ (emphasis added, IPCC 2014a, p. 713). As referenced by AR5: ‘Put into terms of disability‐adjusted life years (DALYs), particle air pollution was responsible for about 190 million lost DALYs in 2010, or about 7.6% of all DALYs lost. This burden puts particle air pollution among the largest risk factors globally, far higher than any other environmental risk and rivaling or exceeding all of the five dozen risk factors examined, including malnutrition, smoking, high blood pressure, and alcohol’ (emphasis added, IPCC 2014a, p. 728).

The largest concentrations of the ‘energy poor’ (that is, people who are both poor and lack access to sustainable modern forms of energy) are currently in Sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia where the direct use of solid biomass has been well‐documented to be widespread (Energy Policy: Srivastava et al. 2012). HAP resulting from the burning of solid fuels (wood, crop wastes, charcoal, coal and dung) imposes natural resource constraints and destroys the lives of women and children who spend more time in front of polluted hearths (Gordon et al. 2014). Heavy reliance on solid fuel use has been associated with acute lower respiratory infections, COPD, lung cancer and other illnesses at the household level, and burning biomass also impacts on local environments by contributing to deforestation and outdoor air pollution. Quaderi and Hurst’s summary findings and conclusions in ‘The Unmet Burden of COPD’ (2018) regarding COPD’s ‘under‐recognition and inequities’ being particularly grave for low and middle‐income countries is highlighted in Box 1.3. The authors pointed out that: ‘Those who have never smoked tobacco can still get COPD – think ‘biomass COPD’ and find that peak levels of PM₁₀ in biomass‐using homes can be as high as 10,000 μg/m³, 200 times more than the standard in high‐income countries. PM_2.5 are finer particles which penetrate deep into the lung and have the greatest health‐damaging potential” (Quaderi and Hurst 2018, p.2).