Bad air and polluted politics

Parliamentary proceedings were brought to a halt on Wednesday in Kathmandu after a heated exchange between the UML and opposition MPs over the use of the word ‘violence’ to describe the Maoist conflict. 

The real peacetime violence being perpetrated on Nepalis is actually political failure to control lethal air pollution.

Figures from the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) survey released this week, and the State of Global Air (SOGA) in June, show just how dirty the air is. Any government accountable to the people would act, after all, the prime minister breathes this same air.

Read also: Epicentre of pollution, Sonia Awale

Summary from the reports:

Nepal’s 30.7 million people are exposed to air much worse than the WHO threshold. 

19% of deaths in 2021 were due to contaminated air.

Bad air cuts the average lifespan of Nepalis by 3.4 years. Tarai residents live 5 years less. For comparison, heavy smokers lose just 1.9 years of their life. 

Sooty indoor air will kill nearly 34,000 Nepalis this year, and 12,700 will die from ambient air pollution. 

More than 6,000 deaths, mainly in the cities, were linked to ozone exposure. 

75% of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in Nepal is caused by breathing bad air. Air pollution is also the cause of 39% of all lung cancer cases.

Air pollution is now the biggest threat to human health in Nepal, shortening lives by 3-5 years in Kathmandu Valley and the Tarai with the worst concentration of particulate matter.

A new report by Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) released this week ranks Nepal as the third most polluted country in the world with its entire 30.7 million people living in areas where the annual average particulate pollution level exceeds the WHO guideline.

Even where outdoor air is clean in the high mountains, families are exposed to excessive indoor pollution due to soot from burning firewood, especially in winter.

The State of Global Air (SOGA) Report published in June has even more shocking figures: more than 50,000 Nepalis died from air pollution in 2021, accounting for 19% of all mortality, just behind high blood pressure.

The study also linked 75% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and 39% of lung cancer deaths to dirty air. 

Levels of surface ozone and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are also increasing due to vehicular emissions, triggering development of childhood asthma. 

Appalling as these figures are, they should come as no surprise. What is more appalling is the lack of political will to clean up.

“The political apathy to prioritise action against air pollution is the crux of the problem,” states environmentalist Bhushan Tuladhar, adding that solutions like stopping open garbage burning, and cutting vehicular and brick kiln emissions are easy to implement solutions. 

Just as the media and public call for action against floods and landslides after the monsoon starts, air pollution also becomes a topic when winter has already set in. Action on both should be a year-round effort.

Read also: 100, 101, 102, Shristi Karki 

Prashant Khanal works on air pollution and climate mitigation and was recently in Paris, where the mayor is pedestrianising streets to curb emissions and improve health. 

He says: “We simply do not have that kind of leadership nor political will. Awareness and individual action are all well and good, but we need regulatory measures to improve air quality.”

Vehicular and industrial emissions, open burning, wildfire smoke and crossborder transport of pollution are the main culprits. Most can be reduced by strictly enforcing national air quality measures, while we have to wait for India and Pakistan to clean up their act for transboundary pollution to go down.

Madhes and Lumbini provinces have even higher pollution levels than Kathmandu, especially when prevailing winds are from the south. This has worsened in recent years by longer-lasting winter fog.

Read also: How transboundary haze affects Nepal, Prabhakar Shrestha

If Nepal were to reduce particulate pollution to meet the WHO guideline, residents in the Tarai would gain 4.8 years of life expectancy, Kathmandu residents would live 2.6 years longer, and tens of thousands of lives would be saved every year.

The SOGA report puts deaths linked to household air pollution due to cooking with solid fuels at 33,900 compared to 12,700 by ambient suspended particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5). 

More than 6,000 other deaths have been linked to exposure to toxic ozone, mainly coming out of the tail pipes of motorcycles.

Climate breakdown and biodiversity loss are now getting more media attention, but the air pollution crisis does not seem to be waking politicians to the dangers although its impact on citizens is more immediate and localised.

Says Khanal, “Air pollution is not just a public health or environmental issue but has huge social and economic implications, the government needs to allocate money for its mitigation just as it is now doing for climate change.” 

Electrification of public transport and cooking are common sense solutions to improving air quality and public health in Nepal, with the country now generating more than 3,000MW of hydropower. This is set to double in the next five years.

Read also: Hefty fines fail to deter polluting vehicles, Sushila Budathoki

Instead of prioritising export of surplus energy, increasing domestic demand in transportation and household appliances would yield greater dividends in terms of public health, and reducing the petroleum import bill.

As the ongoing NADA Auto Show in Kathmandu proves, there has been a spurt in the sale of electric vehicles. Of the nearly 18,000 vehicles imported in Nepal last year, 12,000 were battery-powered. These are mostly private electric vehicles, but it is public transport and in electric stoves where the focus should be.

Read also: Rev your car (and charge it, too), Vishad Raj Onta

“Air pollution ranks as a huge concern to people living in Nepal, and the country also has some of the most open data for air quality information across South Asia,” Christa A Hasenkopf of the Clean Air Program at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago told Nepali Times.

But she added, “It is challenging to make progress on long term levels of air pollution when there is not a long-term goal in place, like a national annual standard for PM2.5.”

Despite shortcomings, there have been notable local initiatives. Lalitpur has been promoting itself as a ‘cycle city’ while Hadigaon has been working on pedestrianisation. Changunarayan has come up with an Air Quality Management Plan while Chandragiri wants to invest in controlling wildfires to reduce pollution levels.

Read also: Cleaner air with greener buses

Says Bhushan Tuladhar, "Local leadership and community ownership is what’s missing from a lot of our government initiatives. That is why pedestrianisation of Hadigaon worked and not Mayor Balen’s New Road expansion which was a top down directive with little community participation.”  

Transcontinental contamination

There is an anomaly in the new Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) report released this week. Particulate pollution in Nepal and South Asia in 2022 was 18% lower compared to 2021. 

Scientists are not sure why, but it is probably due to more rain that year which washed down pollutants from the air. If this decline is sustained, an average Nepali could live 10 months longer than what they would have if they were exposed to the 2021 particulate pollution levels.

“True progress on air pollution can’t be measured from one year to the next, it must be measured over several years,” says Christa A Hasenkopf of the Clean Air Program at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

Read also: Blueprint for a net-zero Nepal, Sonia Awale

Indeed, longer-term pollution trends suggest that Nepal’s average annual particulate matter concentration in the air increased by 49% from 1998 to 2022.

Warns Tanushree Ganguly of AQLI: “Despite the 18% decline in South Asia’s PM2.5 levels relative to 2021, people in South Asia are still likely to lose more than 3.5 years of their life as a result of breathing polluted air. This reinforces the need for sustained regionwide action.”

In addition to vehicular and industrial emissions, farm stubble burning after autumn harvest in India and Pakistan is now emerging as a major source of suspended particulates that are carried by prevailing winds to Nepal and Bhutan. 

When deposited on ice and snow, the soot particles add to the melting of glaciers caused by global warming. Some studies suggest that 30% of glacier thaw in the Indian Himalaya is caused by pollution-related loss of albedo effect on snow.

“Air pollution is a transboundary issue, and at least in South Asia, a coordinated regional approach can move the conversation towards joint solutions,” Pallavi Pant of the Health Effects Institute, which publishes the annual State of Global Air report, told Nepali Times.

Read also: Polluted Politics

Joint efforts to strengthen local technical and scientific capacity can help countries in the region establish and run advanced air quality monitoring systems, and use the data for decision-making.

Pant adds: “We can leverage available data and expertise to identify relevant solutions that can lead to cleaner air and better health. Air pollution can be related to policies addressing prevention and control of non-communicable diseases.”

Back in 1998, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka came together to sign the Malé Declaration on Control and Prevention of Air Pollution and Its Likely Transboundary Effects for South Asia. That collective is now mostly dysfunctional, but reviving it would be in the mandate of regional organisations like ICIMOD and SAARC, both headquartered in Kathmandu and working in a geopolitically volatile but seriously polluted region.

Ganguly has an idea about where to start: “South Asian countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan have similar PM2.5 levels, but different PM2.5 standards. Harmonisation of PM2.5 standards could be one way to foster regional collaboration.”