Background
Air pollution is one of the world’s greatest environmental challenges facing humanity today. The negative effects of air pollution on human health, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and climate are significant. The Health Effects Institute and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (HEI & IHME, 2020)[1] reported that 6.67 million global deaths and 213 million years of healthy life lost in 2019 were attributable to air pollution. The majority of these deaths occurred in Asian developing countries, including the Southeast Asia (SEA) region, because of excessive exposure to high levels of toxic air pollutants both indoors and outdoors.
Many air pollutants are phytotoxic, such as surface ozone and acidic gases of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), hence high levels of these pollutants cause adverse effects on forestry and agricultural crops. The deposition of atmospheric pollutants to the earth’s surface causes acidification and eutrophication that causes adverse effects on terrestrial and aquatic life. Several toxic air pollutants have climate forcing effects, they are also known as short-lived climate forcers. In particular, black carbon (BC) particles of submicron size, can strongly absorb solar radiation, hence causing significant warming, i.e. with the Global Warming Potential (GWP) at about 2000 times CO2 on a 20-year horizon[2]. BC particles deposited on the land surface will be washed off to rivers and end up in the ocean. It is estimated that about 29-49 Gg/yr of the global annual flux of BC washed into the ocean annually and would remain there for hundreds of years to affect the marine ecosystems[3]. BC is a strong short-lived climate pollutant (SLCP) hence reduction of BC emission brings in significant co-benefits to both air quality and the climate system.
The long-lived greenhouse gases (GHGs), e.g. carbon dioxide (CO2), SLCPs, and ozone precursors of NOx and hydrocarbon (HCs), have the key common sources of combustion hence the emission reduction can bring in multiple benefits to health, the environment, and climate. The assessment conducted by UNEP-WMO (2011)[4] highlighted that the emission reduction measures for BC (e.g. clean cooking, clean vehicle fleets or elimination of crop residue field burning, etc.) and methane (waste/landfill management, modified agricultural practices, and extraction and transport of fossil fuel) could simultaneously avoid the global temperature increase by almost 0.5oC by 2050, 2.5 million premature death, and 50 million tonnes of crop yield loss in the world annually. A more recent assessment by UNEP (2019)[5] pointed out that the implementation of the selected 25 clean air measures would help 22% of the Asian population enjoy air quality within 2005-WHO-AQG (annual level 10 µg/m3) by 2030, cut down 45% of ozone-induced crop yield losses for four main crops of maize, rice, soy, and wheat collectively, and reduce CO2 by almost 20% in 2030.
Figure 1: Rice straw open burning at the rice field in Pathumthani, Thailand (Photo taken on 30 August 2024)
Many countries in Asia have started recognizing the serious effects of air pollution on health and economics hence actions are being taken to address the problems. The link between air pollution and climate change is also increasingly recognized and, in some countries, the policy formulation started considering co-benefit dimension but only qualitatively in most of cases. The effects of air pollution on the marine ecosystems, forestry, agricultural productivity, and man-made materials have not yet been considered to the necessary extent to be included in the policy making process. In many developing countries, there is a lack of coordinated efforts for integrated air quality management that considers multi-pollutant and multi-effect assessment approaches for controlling major emission sources.
The co-benefit approach can simultaneously tackle both environmental pollution and climate change cost-effectively which particularly helps to gather resources to address the increasing air pollution problem in Asian developing countries. The approach relies on such strategies as improving energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable urban transport, and cleaner production. To develop and implement such an integrated approach, capacity building for stakeholders is strongly required. Regional and international cooperation is essential to provide additional capacity to implement the integrated air quality-climate strategies.
[1] HEI & IHME. (2020). State of Global Air/2020. The Health Effects Institute and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
[2] IPCC (2018). Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty (https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/).
[3] Mari, X., Guinot, B., Thuoc, C. V., Brune, J., Lefebvre, J., Angia Sriram, P. R., Raimbault, P., Dittmar, T., & Niggemann, J. (2019). Biogeochemical Impacts of a Black Carbon Wet Deposition Event in Halong Bay, Vietnam. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6, 439399. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00185
[4] UNEP, & WMO. (2011). Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone. United Nations Environment Programme and World Meteorological Organization.
[5] UNEP. (2019). Air Pollution in Asia and the Pacific: Science-based Solutions. United Nations Environment Programme.
Rationale
The Center will sustain and further develop the interdisciplinary atmospheric studies at AIT, from the atmospheric emissions to pollution concentration and deposition fluxes to the earth’s surface. The assessment of multiple benefits of atmospheric emission reduction will be considered based on the effects on human health, ecosystems including agricultural crops and marine, and the climate system.
The Center’s activities will make the atmospheric research at AIT to be better placed on the international agenda and further recognized. Additional projects will be secured by the funding support from donors and private sectors to strengthen the research capacity at AIT. The good reputation for interdisciplinary atmospheric studies, a hot topic presently, will increasingly attract students to enroll for study at AIT.
The human resources made available by the Center will also strengthen the research capacity in air quality at AIT. Presently, only one directly hired air pollution faculty member at AIT, as compared, for example, to a big team of faculty members in every leading university in Thailand. The additional human resources of professional staff from the Center will help to cover more research topics in the vast and ever-growing field of air pollution research. This would ensure that AIT will maintain its leading position in air pollution research which has been built up over the last 35 years. The Center is also aiming to strengthen environmental health studies that are not yet visibly incorporated into the current AIT academic programs. The Center will involve relevant faculty members in AIT in the activities and cover the time recovery cost. AIT students are involved in research activities to get exposed to real-life case studies while getting financial incentives through the student assistantship.
Currently, the impacts, for example, on health, acid rain, and crop damage are visible but not well quantified and investigated for Asian developing countries. Asia has experienced air pollution problems of long-range and transboundary transport nature, for example, the annually re-occurring forest fires in SEA, or acid rain precursors released from coal combustion in upwind territories would deposit in the downwind countries. For example, the atmospheric lifetime of BC ranges from a few days to one month, but after deposit to the oceans, BC may remain there for many years. The impact of BC after being deposited to the earth’s surface is much less known than its direct impacts on health and climate. In Asia, there is yet a comprehensive research conducted to quantify the long-term impacts of BC to the marine ecosystems. There is a need for capacity building to understand and quantify the effects so that science-based cost-effective solutions can be recommended. This can be done through coordinated atmospheric research efforts in Asia. AIT, an international university in Asia, can play a leading role in this effort. With its strong research capacity as well as networking experience, the proposed Air Quality Nexus Center will serve to tackle these regional needs.
To continue and further develop the capacities and experience built over the years, it is proposed to establish the “Center for Nexus of Air Quality, Health, Ecosystem, and Climate” under AIT, or “Air Quality Nexus Center” for short. It will be an institution-wide Center, cooperating multidisciplinary and cutting-edge research areas of the schools and other AIT Centers to foster collaboration and strengthen AIT research and education capacity. The goal of the Air Quality Nexus Center is to serve as a focal point to build capacity and conduct cutting-edge research in atmospheric sciences in Asia and beyond.