Indoor air pollution kills a staggering 4.3 million people a year in the developing world
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
The world’s greatest environmental
threat disproportionately harms women and children, particularly in the
developing world: it is indoor air pollution.
The World Health Organization estimates that indoor pollution kills 4.3 million people a year,
mainly because 2.8 billion people still use firewood, dung and coal for
cooking and keeping warm, breathing polluted air inside their homes
every day. Indoor air pollution from cooking and heating with open fires
can cause harm equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
And, because of
their greater involvement in daily kitchen activities in societies where
indoor cooking is prevalent, women experience higher personal exposure
levels than men. During long hours spent indoors at their mothers’
sides, young children, too, are breathing more life-threatening
pollutants than adult males.
It is well known that air pollution in
cities like Beijing or Bangkok is far worse than in developed-world
cities like New York. On average, developing world cities are 10 times
more polluted. But what most don’t realize is that the indoor air in the
homes of almost half this world’s families is 10 times worse than the
outdoor air in Bangkok. For most women and children, the polluted public
spaces of emerging mega-cities are dramatically cleaner, in terms of
air quality, than their own smoke-filled homes.
To put the issue in perspective, take the
much more talked-about environmental problem of global warming. WHO
estimates that currently 141,000 a year die from global warming, while
4.3 million die right now each year from indoor air pollution—a figure many times higher than even the 250,000 annual deaths from global warming WHO anticipates by 2050. Of course, this does not mean global warming is an unimportant environmental issue, but clearly indoor air pollution should be given high priority as an urgent concern of humanitarians.
The good news is that it is comparatively cheap to tackle the issue.
One effective step is to provide half of these 2.8 billion people with
improved cooking stoves, which dispel smoke to the outside through
chimneys and vents. That alone would save almost half a million lives
each year, and avoid 2.5 billion disease days. The cost would be around
$5 billion a year, but this investment would yield economic, social and
environmental benefits amounting to $52 billion a year.
Right now, we are presented with an
important window of opportunity to influence environmental priorities as
the world’s 193 governments are gearing up to select a set of development and environmental targets for the next 15 years through the United Nations. These new targets are set to replace the very successful Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that expire this year.
My think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus,
has asked 60 teams of top economists, including several Nobel laureates,
to evaluate the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits
of some of these proposals, to guide policy makers in the direction of the targets expected to do the most good.
The experts have not only looked into air
pollution, they have addressed a wide range of the top environmental
challenges for the next 15 years. Several of these are particularly
consequential for women.
Take access to water and sanitation: Even
though we have seen improvement, 750 million people have no access to
any safe source of drinking water, and 2.5 billion – almost half of the
developing world – lack even a basic latrine. Beyond the economic impact
on families, the inconvenience and demoralizing drudgery it leads to,
this deficit actually kills 360,000 people each year.
And, again, women are harder hit than
men: The shortage of sanitation and places to wash in the slums
exacerbates their insecurity. Apart from the disease that spreads from
unclean water and lack of sanitation, not having access to facilities
means long walks to community toilets which, especially at night, vastly
increases the risk of rape and other gender-based violence. Amnesty
International did one study aptly titled “Risking Rape to Reach a Toilet.”
Most slum residents use shared pit
latrines, with as many as 50 to 150 people sharing one location. It can
take 10 minutes to walk from the user’s home to the toilet. To avoid the
perilous journey, some women are forced to resort to “flying
toilets”–disposing of human waste by throwing it into the open in a
plastic bag.
Moreover, most water is fetched by women:
More accessible sources could save them 40 minutes per day. Getting
water and sanitation for everyone by 2030 means installing more wells,
boreholes and springs to serve 3 billion people with basic sanitation.
This will not be cheap. It is likely to cost $45 billion annually, but
the results would be massive: 170,000 fewer deaths from contaminated
water and 80,000 fewer deaths from improper sanitation.
Similarly, research suggests that women
are more likely to die in climate disasters, because they often haven’t
learned to swim, they have restricted mobility because of their clothing
and, in some cultures, women leave their homes and evacuate a
threatened area too late because they wait for a male relative to
accompany them. In total, about 10,000 women a year die from weather related disasters compared to 4,500 men.
The world’s most pressing environmental issues are entwined with human rights challenges. When
world leaders meet at the UN in New York in September to agree on the
final set of global targets for the next 15 years, we should demand that
they focus on the smartest solutions to the environmental ills that do
the most harm.
Dr. Lomborg researches the smartest
ways to improve the environment and the world. He is one of TIME
Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, one of the 75 most
influential people of the 21st century according to Esquire magazine,
and one of the 50 people who could save the planet according to the UK
Guardian.
Lomborg has repeatedly been named one of Foreign Policy’s Top
100 Global Thinkers. With his think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus, he
works with 100+ of the world’s top economists and 7 Nobel Laureates to
identify the most effective solutions across development and
environment. His latest book is Prioritizing The World.
