Excellencies and colleagues,
My thanks to Tobacco Free Portfolios for organizing this important event on Indoor Air Quality
We know clean air is a critical health issue. Breathing dirty air, indoors and outdoors, now contributes to more premature deaths than smoking with chronic illnesses like asthma also closely linked. One in nine people around the world are breathing air that is not safe.
So, we must address the main direct causes of indoor air pollution particularly in lower-income countries, where people rely on biomass and kerosene for cooking, heating and lighting. This is not a small challenge. 2 billion people globally lack access to clean cooking solutions. In sub-Saharan Africa alone 960 million lack access.
And why the UNEP-convened Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) has launched a Challenge Programme to accelerate the uptake of eCooking in Africa during the Unstoppable Africa event on Sunday, in collaboration with Modern Energy Cooking Services, supported by the UK.
We must address the threats posed by tobacco smoking.
Aside from the air pollution and massive human cost, there is a significant environmental impact from the tobacco industry.
Every year, millions of hectares of forests lost, greenhouse gases equivalent to three million transatlantic flights, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts laden with microplastics and chemicals discarded. UNEP partners with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control on this issue, because reducing smoking would be a huge win-win for human health and the environment.
And we must address outdoor air pollution.
Even if we were to eradicate smoking and dirty indoor fuels, polluted air would still enter our homes, schools and workplaces from outdoors. And outdoor air pollution is growing from transport, industry, agriculture and climate-change intensified wildfires. We must deal with these pollutants, such as particulate matter and its climate-relevant component, black carbon, carbon monoxide, ground-level ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide.
This entails moving to renewable energy and sustainable transport, strong air quality standards, integrating air quality and climate action, dealing with the open burning of municipal and agricultural waste and, crucially, increasing financing. Currently, under one per cent of international development support currently goes to air pollution.
The Coalition, and UNEP more widely, are collaborating with the WHO to raise awareness about the health and climate impacts of air pollution through BreatheLife and providing solutions-oriented guidance for air quality managers through a global platform: the Air Quality Management Exchange. The CCAC also supports country plans to factor household energy in Nationally Determined Contributions, make household energy consistent with climate goals and national air quality standards, and ensure clean cooking for all. As an international community, we have been working on cleaner cooking for decades - but progress has been too slow.
We need collective action for collective impact, with solutions across sectors, across departments and across agencies, backed by finance. This is a solvable problem. Together, we can address the direct sources of indoor air pollution. And ensure we let the right air in.
