Although it is often an afterthought for many living in the developed world, air pollution is actually the largest immediate global environmental threat to human health, estimated to kill at least seven million people a year, far more than even Covid-19 at the height of the pandemic. Indeed, air pollution is the fourth-biggest cause of death around the world. Air pollution also exacerbates climate change, negatively affects critically important ecosystems, lowers crop yields, and is highly detrimental to economic growth.
Source: The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2023
According to the latest report from the Clean Air Fund, which studied funding from international donors between 2015 and 2021, there is now room for optimism in the global struggle to achieve the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): for the first time in history, governments, multilateral institutions, and development banks are now spending more money on clean air than on fossil fuels. However, despite this achievement, air quality projects are still receiving less than 1% (approximately $2.5 billion per year) of all development aid funding.
Research has shown that every $1 spent on air pollution control yields an estimated $30 in economic benefits, which is why the Clean Air Fund and others such as the Climate Policy Initiative are strongly recommending that donors increase their funding for projects to improve air quality.
“Cleaning the air saves lives while simultaneously combating climate change. It’s the one single thing that has the biggest ‘bang for your buck,’ but only if you fund it,” said Jane Burston, the executive director of the Clean Air Fund.
Based on the Clear Air Fund’s analysis of financial flows, approximately $1.5 billion of international aid was spent in 2021 on fossil fuel projects like constructing coal plants, a dramatically lower figure than the $11.9 billion that was reported in 2019. Meanwhile, development aid financing for outdoor air quality projects reached $2.3 billion in 2021.
“The funding is good, but it’s just not increasing quickly enough,” said Burston.
Why does clean air matter?
According to the United Nations, air pollution is responsible for one in three deaths from stroke, chronic respiratory diseases, and lung cancer. Air pollution is also responsible for one out of every four lethal heart attacks. However, air pollution issues are not distributed equally as the most affected areas are in urban conglomerations in low and middle-income nations in Africa and Asia.
Nonetheless, a whopping 98% of all cities around the world with more than 100,000 residents fail to meet the WHO’s air quality guidelines. Indeed, an astonishing 98% of all the people in Europe are breathing polluted air, which causes some 400,000 deaths every year, and air pollution is twice the WHO’s recommended limits for two-thirds of the people in Europe.
Beyond its immediate effects on human health, air pollution is also a significant contributor to climate change. Emissions such as methane and carbon dioxide which result from burning fossil fuels (from energy generation as well as transportation and domestic heating), deforestation, and agriculture can lead to results such as extreme weather events, which in turn can cause heat-related illnesses, the spread of vector-borne diseases, an increase in sand and dust storms, and disruptions to food and water supplies.
Thus, by investing in clean air, donors can directly save lives. Unfortunately, some of the worst-affected regions are receiving the least amount of funding for air quality projects. For instance, between 2017 and 2021, African countries were the beneficiaries of just 5% (or $760 million) of funding for outdoor air quality projects despite the fact that five of the nations with the worst air quality in the world are located on the continent. At the same time, however, five heavily polluted Asian countries (Bangladesh, China, Mongolia, Pakistan, and the Philippines) received 86% of funding during this same period.
Source: The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2023
“When governments take action to clean up our air, they unlock benefits both for the climate as well as for health and economic development. It’s time for policymakers and funders to raise their ambitions,” said Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and current Board Chair of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (PMNCH).
See also: Top 10 cities with the worst air quality on Earth
Who is tackling air pollution?
According to the Clean Air Fund’s 2023 report, just ten donors provided 97% of the funding for projects to improve air quality: Japan ($5.1 billion), the Asian Development Bank ($5 billion), the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank ($1.2 billion), Canada ($658 million), South Korea ($539 million), the World Bank ($407 million), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development ($299 million), the European Investment Bank ($112 million), France ($93 million), and the United States ($64 million).
Source: The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2023
This high concentration of funding from such a small group of funders is a key indicator that tackling air quality is not seen as a critical issue by many, which is why the Clean Air Fund is strongly recommending that OECD-DAC donors substantially increase their financing commitments for clean air projects. Thankfully, the new president of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, has made access to clean air an essential component of his mandate.
Air quality projects per sectors
In terms of development projects that were directly targeted at improving air quality, most went to transportation (66%), energy (24%), and waste reduction (7%). Just 0.3% of funding went to agriculture, despite food waste, land-use changes (such as deforestation), crop burning, and livestock emissions being significant contributors to air pollution.
Source: The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2023
Improving air quality in transport projects included investments in cleaner fuels, electric/hybrid vehicles, public transportation systems, and railways as well as building cycling/walking paths and more efficient traffic planning and management. The largest of these projects were all located in Asia, with the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Air Quality Improvement Program in China (financed by the Asian Development Bank) alone accounting for $2.9 billion of the $6.5 billion spent worldwide on combating air pollution in the transportation sector during the reported period.
In terms of the method of financing air quality projects, 92% of funding was provided in the form of loans (38% of which were in the form of concessional or low-cost loans), with grants accounting for just 8% of the total. As such, many of the most at-risk nations are being burdened with additional debt, further restricting capacity for these governments to tackle other sustainable development needs.
With air pollution being a major threat to human health and a significant contributor to food insecurity, climate change, and poverty, governments, multilateral institutions, and development banks are strongly urged to dramatically ramp up funding to tackle the toxic emissions which threaten the well-being of every person on the planet.
