COMSATS Webinar: Air Quality Under South-South Cooperation

With one in nine deaths globally attributed to poor air quality, the United Nations states that poor air is the single greatest environmental health risk of the post-modern era. The World Health Organization notes with rising concern that 98% of all cities in developing countries with populations larger than 100,000 face air quality beyond acceptable health limits. It is, therefore, critical for the Global South to take account of rapid urbanization and institute urban planning measures to secure their populations against worsening air quality. The apparent North-South Divide in air quality and the associated public health burden is exacerbated by fundamental sustainable development challenges facing the South – resource constraints, inability to generate data, gaps along the science-policy nexus, lax policy formulation and implementation, and over-reliance on carbon-based development.

Air quality is a cross-cutting issue for the Global South, as evidenced by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It links directly to multiple Sustainable Development Goals: Health (Goal 3); Affordable and Clean Energy (Goal 7); Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (Goal 9); Sustainable Cities (Goal 11); Responsible Production and Consumption (Goal 12); Climate Action (Goal 13); and Partnership for the Goals (Goal 17). Simultaneously, the Paris Agreement promotes climate mitigation, which can realize co-benefits for public health in developing countries, with air quality improvements built into the framework of de-carbonization pathways. For countries in Global South require putting continual efforts towards raising the level of awareness among policymakers, the private sector and civil society.