BAKU, Azerbaijan — Global and Indian experts at COP29 produced new evidence Thursday calling for clean air standards to become part of nations’ climate commitments, as cities across South Asia’s heavily polluted air corridor battled record-breaking smog.

In Delhi, authorities closed schools up to grade 5 and halted construction as pollution levels soared to almost twenty times the WHO’s safe daily limit. The crisis came just days after Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city just 25 kilometres from the Indian border, saw its highest-ever levels of air pollution. 

Under the clear skies of Azerbaijan’s capital, experts from the World Bank, WHO, and Indian health ministry were unanimous that air quality improvement should be included in the new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the self-determined climate targets nations set under the Paris Agreement. 

“Air quality targets and standards can be a perfect indicator of success if we are successful in targeting the causes of climate change,” Dr Maria Neira, WHO’s health and climate lead, told Health Policy Watch. “If we could select an indicator of how successful we are in achieving negotiations on climate change mitigation, I think we should use the levels of air quality that people around the world are breathing.”

Supporting this call for action is a new report released by the Clean Air Fund that shows how tropospheric ozone – a little-discussed ‘super pollutant’ – is linked to 500,000 premature deaths and an estimated $500 billion in economic costs annually. Air pollution from all sources contributes to more than eight million premature deaths each year, with economic costs exceeding $8 trillion, the report found.

The findings aim to support the push for including air quality standards in the third generation of NDCs – binding climate commitments due before COP30 next year under the Paris Agreement. Only a small fraction of countries currently include air pollution safety in their climate plans despite the health threat to millions worldwide.

Clean Air Fund’s founder and CEO, Jane Burston, said tackling super pollutants provides “huge opportunities” for improving climate, health, economic development, and equity.

“We know that developing countries are some of the few that have included things like black carbon in their nationally determined contributions, and that’s because a lot of these deaths and this exposure is happening in countries least able to afford action on it,” she added.

Super-bad for children

Tropospheric ozone and its super-pollutant siblings – including methane, black carbon, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases – are collectively responsible for nearly half of global warming to date.

Unlike other pollutants, tropospheric ozone isn’t directly emitted but forms when sunlight interacts with pollutants from aviation, shipping, agriculture and other sectors. Its health impacts can be severe, from reduced lung function to complications in type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. For children, this pollution poses an especially severe threat.

“Young children have smaller lungs,” Dr Soumya Swaminathan, an advisor to the Indian health ministry and former chief scientist at the WHO, explained. “They breathe much faster than adults, and they are shorter, so they’re closer to the ground, where there are more pollutants, and get more respiratory infections.”

Dr Valerie Hickey, who leads the World Bank’s environment department, also placed children at the centre of her argument.

“Your kid got up coughing so bad they couldn’t go to school does not lead on CNN,” she said. “Though if there are huge floods in Valencia, it does. Both are terrible, but [air pollution] is a public health emergency.”

Like climate change itself, air pollution’s threat isn’t only visible in extreme events such as Delhi’s current crisis, where PM2.5 levels have reached almost 300 micrograms per cubic metre.

“Every unit you go above five, you actually have a health impact,” explained Swaminathan, who co-chairs Our Common Air. “Even at 20, 30, 40 you start getting effects on the heart, respiratory system, and brain. So we need to take action to keep it as low as possible.”

“We have to be pragmatic and set interim targets and do a stepwise plan to reduce it,” she added. “That’s what the NDCs are all about.”

‘Smog diplomacy’

Half of the ten most polluted places in the world today are in four countries of South Asia – Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Health experts often say that air pollution knows no borders, an adage now forcing cooperation between long-standing rivals in what’s come to be known as “smog diplomacy.”

India and Pakistan, nations that have fought multiple wars since independence, are finding themselves pushed toward dialogue over their shared air crisis. This week, as their major cities Delhi and Lahore traded places as the world’s most polluted, officials in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, drafted a letter to India seeking talks on air pollution. 

“This is an area of the world where there isn’t always great experience with international diplomacy,” Hickey said. “Countries don’t always like each other, but they’re actually seeing that smog diplomacy is something that can bring them to the table.” 

The outreach comes as hundreds of millions in both countries face severe health risks borne from common problems plaguing both nations: farmers burning agricultural waste, coal-fired power plants, heavy traffic, construction and windless days trapping emissions.

The World Bank has launched a “multi-hundred billion dollar” to address this cross-border crisis, targeting the vast northern plains of South Asia, known as the Indo-Gangetic Plains, Hickey told Health Policy Watch.

The Bank has already committed to several regional projects in India, including a $350 million clean air management initiative plus $5 million grant for Uttar Pradesh, reportedly approved by the state cabinet and a pending $300 million loan plus $5 million grant for Haryana.

Similar programs are planned for Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh to address pollution that readily crosses borders due to the region’s geography and wind patterns.

“We need climate diplomacy, as a regional and global issue,” Raja Jahangir Anwar, Punjab’s Secretary for Environment and Climate Change, told CNN. “We are suffering in Lahore due to the eastern wind corridor coming from India. We are not blaming anyone, it’s a natural phenomenon.”

Image Credits: https://x.com/ThePeerAli/status/1856985454072963085/photo/1.