While we often treat climate change and air pollution as separate issues, the reality is that they are tightly intertwined. Their causes overlap extensively, from the burning of fossil fuels to certain agricultural practices, and several pollutants contribute to both global warming and unsafe air. The two crises also have compounding, harmful effects on human health, ecosystems and economies.
Hidden assets: The economic and health case for climate and clean air action, the new Global Economic Assessment of Integrated Climate and Clean Air Action by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), paints the most comprehensive economic picture yet of what stands to be gained by tackling the two together. By examining a broader range of pollutions health impacts, which have traditionally been undervalued, as well as the benefits foregone when action is delayed, the assessment finds that integrated climate and clean air action is one of the highest-return investments available to governments today.
Whats new about this report?
The report is the first to quantify the combined economic value of climate and air pollution action within a single, internally consistent framework, rather than adding together separate estimates produced by different models. This allows the costs of action to be compared directly with the combined benefits of cleaner air and a more stable climate.
This matters not only methodologically. Pursuing the two agendas together generates an additional 0.2 per cent of global GDP in economic benefits, as some benefits only materialise fully when both challenges are tackled at once.
The assessment also takes a more comprehensive look at climate and air pollution risks than conventional analyses. These tend to focus on premature death and direct market costs, whereas the assessment adds in the costs of illness and non-market costs as well. These include childhood asthma, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, lung cancer and chronic respiratory disease, along with the effects of conditions like heat stress on worker productivity and quality of life.
And for the first time, the assessment identifies specific barriers that prevent or slow progress on integrated action and puts an economic value on removing them.
Just how good of an investment is it?
The assessment identifies 25 solutions that address climate and clean air challenges together, spanning six sectors. These 25 solutions are at the heart of the reports economic analysis.
Every US$1 invested in them generates around $15, once non-market benefits such as improved quality of life are included. Counting only direct market gains, such as lower healthcare costs and higher workforce productivity, the return is still around $4. That places integrated climate and clean air action among the highest-return public investments available.
Implementation of the 25 solutions costs 0.7 per cent of GDP over the coming decade, declining to around 0.5 per cent by the end of the century. For context, global spending on explicit fossil fuel subsidies was 2.18 per cent of GDP in 2022.
If implementation begins immediately, the benefits will grow from the equivalent of 2.8 per cent of GDP in 2035, to 4.5 per cent by 2050, and 11.4 per cent by 2100. The internal rate of return is 60 per cent. Market benefits alone exceed implementation costs within 10 years.
Why are these benefits so big?
The substantial benefits stem from two factors: air pollutions health toll is greater than most economic analyses have recognized, and the returns on action can materialize quickly.
In 2025, human-caused outdoor fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone caused an estimated 6.4 million premature deaths. Household air pollution caused another 2 million deaths, including nearly 300,000 children. PM2.5 exposure is meanwhile linked with an estimated 5.5 million new cases of childhood asthma, 4.2 million heart attacks, 3.8. million cases of COPD, 3.3 million cases of diabetes, 2.5 million strokes and 2 million cases of dementia every year. That amounts to roughly one in five new cases of each of these conditions worldwide.
The burden is not evenly shared. Around 95 per cent of premature deaths As put by air pollution occur in low- and middle-income countries.
Without further action, the share of the global population exposed to the most dangerous PM2.5 concentrations rises from 27 per cent in 2025 to 34 per cent by 2050. Full implementation of the 25 solutions would avoid 60 to 70 per cent of air pollutions annual health burden.
The benefits are not limited to cleaner air. By 2050, the 25 solutions could cut carbon dioxide emissions by about half, methane by 60 per cent, and major PM2.5 precursors by around 70 per cent, avoiding about 0.34C of global warming by mid-century.
These estimates are conservative. Air pollution also damages forests, ecosystems, biodiversity, buildings, and water and soil quality. These effects are real but largely unquantified here, because global data do not permit it, and their omission means the economic case is understated rather than overstated.
What are the 25 integrated solutions?
The report puts forth a package of 25 solutions that span six of the highest emitting sectors. Four focus on long-term decarbonization, including transitioning to renewable energy, improving industrial and household efficiency and electrifying vehicles. Twenty-one focus on clean air and near-term climate impacts from reducing super pollutants such as methane, clean cooking and heating, tightened vehicle and industrial emissions standards, better agricultural management, reduced agricultural burning, improved waste and wastewater management, forest and peatland fire prevention and phased-down hydrofluorocarbons, among others.
The assessment urges for all solutions to be implemented globally. But, pragmatically, the report identifies those that will deliver the largest near-term returns by region for example, clean cooking is the biggest win for South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean; preventing methane leaks and flaring are particularly important the Middle East, North Africa and the Russian Federation; and in higher-income regions where pollution policy is already strong, attention should be given to healthier diets and reduced international shipping emissions.
Every region would reap economic benefits that substantially outweigh the costs of implementing the solutions, but the benefit-cost ratios vary widely: 26:1 in Southern Africa, 21:1 in South Asia and 3:1 in Europe.
By 2050, full implementation of the 25 measures could cumulatively prevent 144 million air pollutionrelated premature deaths, including 96 million from ambient air pollution alone, and hundreds of millions of cases of chronic disease.
Why arent these solutions being implemented?
Knowing what the solutions are and implementing them are two very different things.
The assessment examines economic, technical social and institutional barriers, drawing on case studies from China, India, Mexico and Nigeria. It finds that globally these barriers delay implementation by an average of eight years. Institutional barriers, including siloed decision-making, weak enforcement capacity and poor coordination are the largest contributors, accounting for about 2.4 years of delay a delay that roughly halves the emissions reductions achievable by 2035.
Every year of delay forfeits more than 0.5 per cent (US$1.5 trillion) of GDP. Conversely, reforms that accelerate implementation could generate up to US$10 trillion in cumulative savings from avoided morbidity by 2040.
What do governments stand to gain?
The reports most resounding message is that integrated climate and clean air policy belongs at the center of economic strategy. Avoided health costs, productivity gains and reduced fiscal exposure to climate damages are economic objectives in their own right, and they are captured most fully when air quality and climate action are embedded together in national plans, fiscal frameworks and investment strategies.
Investing early and consistently in enabling conditions delivers the most profitable results. Government spending that shortens implementation delays does the most work in this regard. International financial support has its greatest effect in the regions where implementation constraints are the greatest, which are also those carrying the heaviest health burden.
Some of the largest potential gains are also the fastest. Clean cooking; methane controls addressing leaks, venting and transport; and air quality measures sit largely within national control and deliver direct economic and health returns in less than a decade, or within a single term of government.
