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There is no dearth of scientific and global consensus that anthropogenic or human‐induced climate change poses an existential threat to human life. In 1824, Fourier first discussed why the Earth was warmer than could be explained by solar radiation and raised the issue of heat being trapped in the atmosphere. Tyndall then offered an answer by experimentally demonstrating that greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) can effectively absorb infrared radiation – the greenhouse effect. Building on Tyndall’s results, in 1896, Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize winner, Svante Arrhenius produced the first estimate of the sensitivity of global temperatures to increases in CO₂. By 1938, Guy Callendar demonstrated that the production of carbon dioxide by the combustion of fossil fuels was responsible for increasing the average temperature on Earth (Weart 2008; Hawkins and Jones 2013; Seidenkrantz 2018; NASA Earth Observatory website 2000). More recently, NASA, which has conducted a historic program of breakthrough research on climate science, has categorically warned that the Earth is trapping an unprecedented amount of heat, resulting in drastically warmer oceans and land temperature, with most of the warming occurring in the past 40 years and the seven most recent years being the warmest, with 2016 and 2020 tied for the warmest year on record (NASA website 2021).

Global scientific and policy consensus around climate change as a definitive and existential challenge is not a recent phenomenon (Haas 1990; Bernard and Semmler 2015). More than 16 years ago, Bill Allen, editor in chief of National Geographic, wrote that he was publishing the first of a three‐part series of stories focused on Antarctica, Alaska and Bangladesh on a topic – global climate change – that he was ‘willing to bet’ would make ‘people angry enough to stop subscribing’, but was doing so because these stories ‘cover subjects that are too important to ignore’ and show ‘the hard truth as scientists see it’. He added that he ‘can live with some cancelled memberships’ but ‘… would have a harder time looking myself in the mirror if I didn’t bring you the biggest story in geography today’ (Allen 2004). Today, that ‘biggest story in geography’ has already devastated, and is anticipated to destroy vulnerable lives spanning the world from Dhal Char, Bangladesh to New Orleans, Louisiana. Deadly forest fires, flash floods and heat waves span the globe, coral reefs are bleached, marine ecosystems are dying and low‐lying coastal cities face the escalating costs of inundation and erosion as both ocean temperatures and sea‐levels rise. But the capacity to adapt to and rebuild after calamitous climatic impacts, retreat to safer environs, and find new livelihoods is a luxury that millions who are exposed to endemic levels of fossil fuel related air pollution cannot afford.

The discomfiting truths are that the global community has long known that the morbidity and ill‐health burdens associated with climatic adversities will be borne by those who have done the least to contribute to per capita emissions of GHGs; and that the nexus between poverty, exposure to toxic levels of air pollution and inexorable climatic impacts will extract the harshest toll on the least resilient and most vulnerable among us. Back in 2007, the United Nation’s (UN) principal development agency, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) issued its Human Development Report that warned of five drivers or ‘tipping points’ by which climate change could stall and actually reverse human development: reduced agricultural productivity and increased food insecurity; heightened water stress and insecurity; rising sea levels and increased exposure to climate disasters; loss of ecosystems and biodiversity and amplified health risks, with the greatest health impacts felt in developing countries. Its warning remains prescient in this current time as the world reels from the combined effects of a global pandemic and the increasing trend of extreme climatic events. The 2007 Report was categorical about the global failure to act conclusively and decisively on climate change: ‘Failure will consign the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population—some 2.6 billion people—to a future of diminished opportunity. It will exacerbate deep inequalities within countries… In today’s world, it is the poor who are bearing the brunt of climate change. Tomorrow, it will be humanity as a whole that faces the risks that come with global warming’ (UNDP 2007, p. 2). A few paragraphs later, the Report went on to highlight that the world lacked ‘neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act’ and consequently failure to act, cooperatively on climate change would ‘represent not just a failure of political imagination and leadership, but a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in history’. Here, it specifically called attention to the fact that future generations would look harshly upon those who were provided with evidence, and ‘… understood the consequences and then continued on a path that consigned millions of the world’s most vulnerable people to poverty and exposed future generations to the risk of ecological disaster’ (2007, p. 2).

It is time to acknowledge the fact that the consequences of the global failure to act conclusively on climate change have been known to, and will continue inexorably to be borne by millions living in the poorest households, communities and countries, even as global negotiations to address climate change have been occurring for decades. Within the UN context, climate change was identified more than 30 years ago as a global challenge when the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a resolution sponsored by the Government of Malta, recognizing climate change as a ‘common concern of mankind’ (UNGA 1988). Intergovernmental climate negotiations have been going on for more than three decades broadly centred around two distinct but interrelated issues, both of which are associated with major technology, financing and capacity related constraints particularly for the smallest and poorest of UN member states:

 Mitigation or the reduction of GHG emissions that are seen as principally responsible for the rise in global surface temperatures.

 Adaptation or the human and/or ecosystem related responses to a range of adverse climatic impacts, such as sea‐level rise (SLR), increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather related events, effects on fragile marine ecosystems and coastal zone inundation, that accompany a rise in global surface temperatures.

The issue of climate change has galvanized the public more than any other global environmental problem. And yet, a comprehensive and effective global resolution to the climate change crisis that expressly addresses the health and morbidity costs associated with unclean air and polluting forms of energy has proven elusive over the years. 27 years after the first UNGA climate resolution was adopted, the UN Paris Agreement (PA) on climate change was gavelled into history after a marathon final day of negotiations on 12 December 2015. All UN member states universally pledged to undertake ambitious action, and agreed with the PA’s serious concern about ‘the urgent need to address the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels’ (UNFCCC 2015, p. 2). What made this 2015 New Year’s planetary resolution different from all prior UN climate resolutions and agreements was that it was the first inclusive, yet completely voluntary global climate change accord that covered all member states. The voluntary rather than legally binding aspect of the PA is in contrast to the overarching UN climate treaty, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as well as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (KP) to the UNFCCC. But, it is precisely the PA’s inclusion of the widest possible cooperation by all countries, and the entirely voluntary scaling up national climate pledges that serves as the global litmus test for distinguishing between climate hype versus verifiable climate action. On October 21, 2021, the United States (US) Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its first ‘National Intelligence Estimate on Climate Change’ and offered a stark ‘takeaway’: ‘Global momentum is growing for more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions, but current policies and pledges are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goals… Intensifying physical effects will exacerbate geopolitical flashpoints, particularly after 2030, and key countries and regions will face increasing risks of instability and need for humanitarian assistance’ (US ODNI 2021, p. i).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s largest compilation of scientific expertise ever convened on any global environmental topic, has persistently warned about climate change since 1988 via a series of comprehensive assessment reports (ARs). The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) ‘Summary for Policy Makers’ (SPM) cautioned that: ‘Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history… . Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen’ (IPCC 2014a, p. 2). But, the warming of the climate system could actually be much worse than anticipated with CO₂ being added to the atmosphere 100 times faster than at any point in pre‐industrial human history and more damage being done in the three decades since the IPCC was established than in the whole of human history (Wallace‐Wells 2019). The SPM’s stark reminder of irreversibility of climate change except in the case of a comprehensive and timely net removal of atmospheric CO₂ emissions is worrisome precisely because even after a complete halt of net CO₂ emissions, surface temperatures will remain elevated for several centuries: ‘A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO₂ emissions is irreversible on a multi‐century to millennial time scale, except in the case of large net removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere over a sustained period. Surface temperatures will remain approximately constant at elevated levels for many centuries after a complete cessation of net anthropogenic CO₂emissions. Due to the long time scales of heat transfer from the ocean surface to depth, ocean warming will continue for centuries’ (IPCC 2013, p. 28).

But now, the most recent IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group 1 SPM report has issued a grim warning: ‘It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred… . Since 2011 (measurements reported in AR5), concentrations have continued to increase in the atmosphere, reaching annual averages of 410 ppm for carbon dioxide (CO₂), 1866 ppb for methane (CH₄), and 332 ppb for nitrous oxide (N₂O) in 2019. Land and ocean have taken up a near‐constant proportion (globally about 56% per year) of CO₂ emissions from human activities over the past six decades, with regional differences (high confidence). Each of the last four decades has been successively warmer than any decade that preceded it since 1850’ (emphasis added, 2021, p. 5).

Figure 1.1 excerpted from AR6 SPM provides a grim schematic view of human‐induced global warming.

There has been ample global policy recognition of the costs of climate change being inequitably borne by the global poor. In 2009, a UN Report entitled ‘The Impact of Climate Change on Development Prospects of the Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States’ noted that: ‘Climate change affects all, but it does not affect us equally. Nor do we possess the same capacity to respond to its challenges. As is often the case, the most vulnerable countries ‐ particularly the Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States ‐ find themselves in the worst situation again’. The report went on to call for the 2009 UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen – billed as the Conference to ‘seal the deal’ – to ‘produce tangible commitments for the benefit of the most vulnerable to climate change’ (UN 2009, p. 4). But more than a decade later, as the dust settles from the 2021 UN Glasgow Climate Conference, a comprehensive and effective climate deal focused on addressing the needs of the poorest communities and countries is yet to be sealed. Timperly has provided compelling evidence of the broken $100 billion promise of climate finance that was pledged by richer countries in 2009 to help poorer countries adapt to climate change (2021). Also in 2009, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that for each year that passes the window for action on emissions reductions over a given period becomes narrower. It calculated that each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a 2 °C temperature threshold would add approximately $500 billion to the global incremental investment cost of $10.4 trillion for the period 2010–2030 and, more significantly, that a delay of just a few years would likely render that goal completely out of reach (IEA 2009, p. 52).

Figure 1.1 History of global temperature change (IPCC/AR6 SPM).

Source: IPCC (2021) AR6 WGI SPM, p. 7.

In 2016, the World Bank’s report ‘Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change and Poverty’ found that poor people are disproportionately affected by climate impacts and that climate change could push an additional 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030 (World Bank 2016). Meanwhile, the social upheaval and dislocation of millions living at the cross‐roads of extreme poverty and climate vulnerability was documented in ‘Groundswell ‐ Preparing for Internal Climate Migration’, which focused on Sub‐Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America (representing 55% of the developing world’s population). The report found that ‘over 143 million people’ could be forced to migrate as a result of SLR, water and food insecurity. The report’s key message that ‘poorest and most climate vulnerable areas are the hardest hit, and that vulnerable lives have ‘the fewest opportunities to adapt locally or to move away from risk and, when moving, often do so as a last resort’ while those who are ‘even more vulnerable, will be unable to move, trapped in increasingly unviable areas’ remains haunting (emphasis added, Rigaud et al. 2018, p. xxi). The grave impacts of climate change on vulnerable households, cities and countries has also been clearly signalled by a 2018 IPCC Special Report, ‘Global Warming of 1.5°C’:

 ‘Populations at disproportionately higher risk of adverse consequences with global warming of 1.5°C and beyond include disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, some indigenous peoples, and local communities dependent on agricultural or coastal livelihoods.

 Regions at disproportionately higher risk include Arctic ecosystems, dryland regions, small island developing states, and Least Developed Countries.

 Poverty and disadvantage are expected to increase in some populations as global warming increases; limiting global warming to 1.5°C, compared with 2°C, could reduce the number of people both exposed to climate‐related risks and susceptible to poverty by up to several hundred million by 2050.

 Exposure to multiple and compound climate‐related risks increases between 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming, with greater proportions of people both so exposed and susceptible to poverty in Africa and Asia’ (emphasis added, IPCC/SPM 2018, pp. 9–10).

Close to 20 years after the adoption of the first UNGA resolution, at a 2007 UN High Level Climate Summit, the Maltese Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi warned that the UNGA needed ‘new mechanisms’ for tackling the issue of global warming and its repercussions ‘in a more cohesive and concerted manner’, or ‘future generations would pay the price’ (UN News Centre 2007). Today, it is hard to duck around the evidence that current and future generations are indeed paying the price with much heavier morbidity and disease burdens exerted on those who are less able to withstand extreme climatic adversities, and have contributed the least in terms of per capita GHG emissions. Recognition that poorer and more marginalized households, communities, cities and countries will pay the harshest price as a result of their inabilities to withstand climatic impacts has been well documented (African Development Bank 2003; Roberts and Parks 2007; Bullard and Wright 2009).

In dealing with the adversities associated with climate change including dislocation and loss of life, the global policy community has long known that poorer, smaller and more vulnerable communities and countries will be left reeling as they lack resiliency and safety nets that allow for recovery and remediation. The existential threat posed by SLR was forcefully articulated by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore – a country lying no more than 4 metres above the mean sea level. At the 2019 National Day Rally Lee stated: ‘We should treat climate change defences like we treat the Singapore Armed Forces – with utmost seriousness. Work steadily at it, maintain a stable budget year after year … do it over many years and several generations. Both the Singapore Armed Forces and climate change defences are existential for Singapore. These are life and death matters. Everything else must bend at the knee to safeguard the existence of our island nation’. In adapting to climate change, Lee went on to point out that Singapore would borrow inspiration from Dutch ‘Polders’ – reclaimed land enclosed by dykes – that require pumps to remove excess water and are protected by sea‐walls (Chin 2019). In stark contrast to wealthier Singapore, which has marshalled resources to address the problem, coping with extreme climatic events will harshly impact poorer countries and communities especially small island developing states (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs). But, layered upon the challenge of coping with climatic adversities such as SLR, and evidenced in plain sight yet remaining largely unaddressed for millions of lives is the world’s single largest environmental health risk – air pollution.

On 25 March 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) – the world’s primary global organization mandated to respond to public health challenges – reported in a press release for the first time that 7 million people died – one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure (based on 2012 WHO data). As the WHO put it: ‘This finding more than doubles previous estimates and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk. Reducing air pollution could save millions of lives’ (WHO Media Centre 2014). But the grim reality is that WHO’s guidance on the related risks of climate change and air pollution predated its 2014 warning about air pollution. In 1997, just five years after the adoption of the historic UNFCCC, a WHO report entitled ‘Health and Environment in Sustainable Development’ referenced key environmental threats to human health which included: ‘Water pollution from populated areas, industry and intensive agriculture; urban air pollution from motor cars, coal power stations and industry; climate change; stratospheric ozone depletion and transboundary pollution’ (1997, p. 2). In 2015, the 68th session of the WHO Assembly adopted a resolution entitled ‘Health and Environment: Addressing the health impacts of air pollution’: ‘Noting with deep concern that indoor and outdoor air pollution are both among the leading avoidable causes of disease and death globally, and the world’s largest single environmental health risk. Acknowledging that 4.3 million deaths occur each year from exposure to household (indoor) air pollution and that 3.7 million deaths each year are attributable to ambient (outdoor) air pollution, at a high cost to societies; Aware that exposure to air pollutants, including fine particulate matter, is a leading risk factor for non‐communicable diseases in adults, including ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and cancer, and poses a considerable health threat to current and future generations; Concerned that half the deaths due to acute lower respiratory infections, including pneumonia in children aged less than five years, may be attributed to household air pollution, making it a leading risk factor for childhood mortality. Further concerned that air pollution, including fine particulate matter, is classified as a cause of lung cancer by WHO’s International Agency on Research for Cancer’ (emphasis added, World Health Assembly 2015, p. 20). By 2016, the WHO found 80% of outdoor air pollution–related premature deaths were associated with ischaemic heart disease and strokes, 14% with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and acute lower respiratory infections and 6% with lung cancer (WHO 2016a). A landmark 2018 report by the WHO highlighted that ‘climate change is the greatest health challenge of the 21st century and threatens all aspects of human society’, and expressly highlighted climate change as a ‘poverty multiplier’ (WHO 2018, p. 10).

Finding answers to the interlinked challenges of climatic impacts, energy poverty and toxic levels of energy related air pollution is now a global imperative from a public health perspective, and especially so within cities given the global trend towards urbanization. In the wake of the respiratory‐borne COVID‐19 pandemic that extracted a huge toll on those already suffering endemic disease burdens and unable to access health services, there is an urgency to understanding how exposure to air pollution and the lack of access to clean energy and health services intersect. This urgency for linked action on clean air and clean energy access is especially relevant to the future of the world’s most populous and polluted cities. In his 2019 speech to the C‐40 World Mayors Summit, the UN Secretary General highlighted the tremendous potential for cities as the loci for action on clean air, clean energy and climate resilience. He specifically referenced that cities consume more than two‐thirds of the world’s energy and account for more than 70% of global carbon dioxide emissions. His call for city‐based action on climate and clean air is exactly what is needed and yet is glaringly absent in long‐standing UN global goal silos on climate and clean energy: ‘Friends, cities are where the climate battle will largely be won or lost. With more than half the world’s population, cities are on the frontlines of sustainable … and inclusive development. With air pollution a grave and growing issue, people look to you to champion better urban air quality. With environmental degradation driving migration to urban areas, people rely on you to make your cities havens for diversity, social cohesion and job creation. You are the world’s first responders to the climate emergency’ (emphasis added, UN Press Release 2019).

It is indeed time to more effectively factor in the loci of cities as the frontline actors for climate and clean air responsive action, particularly in Asia and Africa. The global community has run out of excuses for delaying integrated action on polluting forms of energy and toxic levels of air pollution that worsens the lives of those least responsible for causing the problem of historical GHGs. Climate change has been explicitly and consistently highlighted as a ‘threat multiplier’ by numerous global entities, including the US Department of Defense which issued a publicly available 2014 warning: ‘Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty and conflict’ and ‘will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic diseases, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe’ (US Department of Defense 2014, foreword, WEF 2014). The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2019 Global Risks Report placed climate change as a primary risk with compounding/multiplier effects on human ill health, food insecurity, biodiversity loss bluntly highlighted the ‘climate catastrophe’ ahead: ‘Of all risks, it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe’ (2019a, p. 15). It is time to see that the propensity for extended sleepwalking into the entwined climate and air pollution crises is based on the illogic of having UN global silos that segregate increasing access to clean energy, curbing air pollution and addressing climate change.

By examining existing UN‐negotiated goal silos on climate change and sustainable energy, the aim is to evidence the need for integrated and localized action on the inherently linked climate and air pollution crises. Linkages between climate vulnerability, poverty and exposure to fossil fuel air pollution have been well documented by numerous UN and global entities, but persistent global goals/negotiations silos that segregate energy for sustainable development and poverty reduction goals from climate change goals have impeded the practice of integrated partnerships (Cherian 2015). Non‐nation‐state actors (NNSAs) such as local/municipal actors and the clean energy sector are principal responders to the integrated frontline on clean air, access to clean energy for all and climate change in urban areas that cope with toxic levels of air pollution. The aim of this chapter and this book is to focus on new frameworks for action by NNSAs on curbing short‐lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) which are associated with particulate matter (PM) pollution and offer public health and environmental benefits, but are not factored into the historic PA. To be clear from the outset, the need for linked action on clean air, clean energy access for the poor and climate change via NNSA‐driven partnerships and modalities cannot be viewed as a means to replace comprehensive global GHG reductions. New forms of city‐based measures should be seen as essential for addressing the more immediate imperatives of public health and reduced morbidity burdens associated with PM air pollution.

Figure 1.2 Global GHG emissions by gas.

Source: US EPA website (2021).

(Note: Details about the sources included in these estimates can be found in the Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Figure 1.2 (derived from IPCC’s AR5), the key GHGs emitted as a result of human activities at the global level are as follows:

 Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Fossil fuel use is the primary source of CO2. CO2 can also be emitted from direct human‐induced impacts on forestry and other land use, such as through deforestation, land clearing for agriculture and degradation of soils. Likewise, land can also remove CO2 from the atmosphere through reforestation, improvement of soils and other activities.

 Methane (CH4) Agricultural activities, waste management, energy use and biomass burning all contribute to CH4 emissions.

 Nitrous Oxide (N2O) Agricultural activities, such as fertilizer use, are the primary source of N2O emissions. Fossil fuel combustion also generates N2O.

 Fluorinated gases (F‐gases) Industrial processes, refrigeration and the use of a variety of consumer products contribute to emissions of F‐gases, which include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).

Mitigating GHGs should be viewed as critical to the future of human development. On 11 May 2019, sensors at the Mauna Loa Observatory (the premier atmospheric baseline station of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA]) confirmed, for the first time in recorded history, that monthly concentrations of CO₂ breached the 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold (NOAA/ESRL website 2019). Two of the world’s leading scientific organizations, the Royal Society (UK) and the National Academy of Sciences (US) provided a sobering assessment that even if emissions of CO₂ stopped altogether, ‘… surface temperatures would stay elevated for at least a thousand years, implying a long‐term commitment to a warmer planet due to past and current emissions… . The current CO₂‐induced warming of Earth is therefore essentially irreversible on human timescales. The amount and rate of further warming will depend almost entirely on how much more CO₂ humankind emits’ (emphasis added, 2020, p. 22). But, here it is also important to point out that there remains an imbalance between aggregate CO₂ emissions by countries and CO₂ emissions based on the population of each country (i.e. per capita emissions). Interestingly, the IEA over a decade ago also pointed out that GHG emissions from developing countries are likely to exceed those of developed countries within the first half of this century (IEA 2009) Although aggregate GHG emissions have increased dramatically over time, the major countries responsible for the largest aggregate shares of emissions have not changed significantly. Seven countries have consistently been amongst the top emitters on an annual basis and have driven emissions growth since 1850, namely, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Russia and more recently India and China. By way of comparison, three‐quarters of the 50 lowest emitting countries in 2014 are the same countries as in 1850 (Lebling et al. 2019). It is the stark distinction between per capita emissions seen in conjunction with the burden of disease accruing fossil fuel related air pollution that merits attention.

The inequitable morbidity and disease costs borne by those who rely on polluting solid fuels and who are exposed to toxic levels of fossil fuel related air pollution occurs within a global context where GHG emissions are unmistakably on the rise. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has produced an annual Emissions Gap Report for 10 years detailing where GHG missions are headed in comparison to where they should be to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The 2019 Emissions Gap Report provided a stark reminder that GHG emissions continue to escalate, despite numerous scientific warnings and political commitments: ‘There is no sign of GHG emissions peaking in the next few years; every year of postponed peaking means that deeper and faster cuts will be required. By 2030, emissions would need to be 25 per cent and 55 per cent lower than in 2018 to put the world on the least‐cost pathway to limiting global warming to below 2°C and 1.5°C respectively’ (2019, p. xiv). But the 2020 Emissions Gap report summary is even more sombre in its assessment: ‘Are we on track to bridging the gap? Absolutely not. Although 2020 emissions will be lower than in 2019 due to the COVID‐19 crisis and associated responses, GHG concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise, with the immediate reduction in emissions expected to have a negligible long‐term impact on climate change. However, the unprecedented scale of COVID‐19 economic recovery measures presents the opening for a low‐carbon transition that creates the structural changes required for sustained emissions reductions. Seizing this opening will be critical to bridging the emissions gap’ (2020, p. iv).Whether this opportunity to build back better, cleaner and greener is actually seized is quite literally up in the air, because on 20 April 2021, the IEA announced that in spite of COVID lockdowns, global energy related CO₂ emissions are on course to surge by 1.5 billion tonnes in 2021 – the second‐largest increase in history – reversing most of last year’s decline caused by the COVID‐19 pandemic. But the real question is what is being done and what will happen to those who are both climate vulnerable and lack access to clean energy in the near future? IEA’s Global Energy Review 2021 has estimated that CO₂ emissions will increase by almost 5% in 2021 to 33 billion tonnes – biggest annual rise in emissions since 2010, during the carbon‐intensive recovery from the global financial crisis. The key driver is coal demand, which is set to grow by 4.5%, surpassing its 2019 level and approaching its all‐time peak from 2014, with the electricity sector accounting for three‐quarters of this increase (IEA press release 2021) Figures 1.3 and 1.4 excerpted from the UNEP (2020a)Emissions Gap Report outline the growth in GHGs as well as the differences between absolute versus per capita emissions of the world’s six top emitters.

To better understand the linkages between clean energy, air pollution and climate change, it is useful to point out that access to energy (sources, services and technologies) has widely viewed as essential to human development in all parts of the globe. Smil in his detailed history of how energy has shaped all aspects of human society from pre‐agricultural foraging to fossil‐fuel driven civilization argued that energy is the only universal currency that enables all things to get done (2017). Conversely, the lack of access to cost‐effective, reliable energy as well as reliance on polluting solid fuels has been shown to impact negatively on income poverty, nutrition, gender and health inequalities, access to livelihoods and educational opportunities (Goldemberg et al. 1988; Sokona et al. 2004; Modi et al. 2006). The topic of ‘energy poverty’ was outlined very early on in the climate and energy global debate as a causal link to income poverty, health and gender inequities by Goldemberg et al. in Energy for a Sustainable World (1988). The multidimensional linkages between energy and inequalities related to poverty, gender and urbanization were documented in an early 2000 joint report (prepared by two of the principal UN development agencies and the World Energy Congress), which called for energy issues to be ‘brought to centre stage and given the same importance as other major global issues’ (UNDP/UNDESA/WEC 2000, p. 40). Access to modern energy services has been deemed essential for socio‐economic development and poverty reduction across countries, communities and households (Bazilian et al. 2010; Sovacool 2012). Srivastava et al. in their literature review of ‘energy access’ pointed to the fact that the terms ‘energy poverty’ and ‘energy access’ have been used interchangeably, and highlighted ‘an important distinction’ in that ‘energy poverty is more amenable to be defined as a benchmark’, while ‘energy access can be presented as a continuum linked to different income levels reflecting different stages of development’ (2012, p. 12). The recognized linkage between access to modern, cost‐effective, energy and environmental objectives related to climate change are what make the concept of increasing access to sustainable energy for all a central element of the debate on sustainable development (Rehman et al. 2012, p. 27).

Figure 1.3 Global GHG emissions from all sources.

Source: UNEP (2020b, p. v).

Figure 1.4 Absolute GHG emissions of the top six emitters (excluding Land Use Change emissions) and international transport (left) and per capita emissions of the top six emitters and the global average (right).

Source: UNEP (2020b, p. vi).

The WHO’s previously referenced 1997 report express focus on poverty and inequity ‘as two of the most important contributory factors to poor environmental conditions and poor health’; and its reference as to how integrated environmental and health policy interventions matter for air pollution abatement are worth recalling over 24 years later (1997, p. 6). The WHO emphasized that: ‘Indoor air pollution can be particularly hazardous to health because it is released in close proximity to people. The most prominent source of indoor air pollution in developing countries is household use of biomass and coal for heating and cooking, usually involving open fires or stoves without proper chimneys. A large number of studies in recent years have shown remarkable consistency in the relationship observed between changes in daily ambient suspended particulate levels and changes in daily mortality. Two different methods for estimating the total global mortality from suspended particulate air pollution exposures arrive at very similar total numbers (i.e. 3 million and 2.7 million), with indoor air pollution accounting for the vast majority of total deaths’ (emphasis added, 1997, p. 15).

The linkages between the lack of access to clean energy and air pollution were referenced in UNDP’s 2002 report entitled ‘Energy for Sustainable Development: A Policy Agenda’ which outlined the socio‐economic costs of the energy and air pollution imbalance experienced by poorer households: ‘Worldwide, 2 billion people are without access to electricity, and the same number use traditional fuels ‐ fuelwood, agricultural residues, dung ‐ for cooking and heating. Over 100 million women spend hours each day gathering and carrying fuelwood and water, and then spend additional hours cooking in poorly ventilated spaces. The stoves used often lead to significant health impacts, through the generation of pollutants that expose women and children to air pollution corresponding to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day’ (emphasis added, UNDP 2002, p. 30). In 2009, a joint UNDP & WHO study pointed out that the number of people estimated to die every year due to household air pollution (HAP) from poorly combusted biomass fuels was anticipated to rise by 2030 to around 1.5 billion (WHO/UNDP 2009). The health consequences of using biomass for cooking, lighting and heating in poor households were found to be staggering. In reviewing the lack of access to clean energy in developing countries, the joint report noted that 44% of those who die each year from HAP are children, while women account for 60% of all adult deaths (2009).

The health and morbidity dangers of small PM emissions from the ineffective combustion of fossil and solid fuels have been well‐documented and yet remain as unprecedented environmental health risks. As early as 2005, the WHO issued air quality guideline limits on PM pollutants that measured 2.5 μm or less – PM_2.5‐ and 10 μm or less – PM₁₀,‐ based ‘on the close, quantitative relationship between exposure to high concentrations of small particulates (PM₁₀ and PM_2.5) and increased mortality or morbidity, both daily and over time’ (WHO (2005)) Box 1.1 specifies the WHO guidelines. In doing so, WHO made clear that: ‘Small particulate pollution has health impacts even at very low concentrations – indeed no threshold has been identified below which no damage to health is observed. Therefore, the WHO 2005 guideline limits aimed to achieve the lowest concentrations of PM possible’ (emphasis added, WHO 2005).