Prioritizing Evidence Gaps: Air Pollution and Health Impacts of Climate Action

Globally, around 8 million deaths are associated with air pollution each year. The vast majority of these deaths are caused by anthropogenic sources of combustion, including energy production, power generation, transport, waste burning, industry and biomass burning (for household energy and agriculture). These activities result in a complex mixture of health- and climate-damaging pollutants with warming and cooling effects, including particulate matter, ground-level ozone, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxides and sulfur dioxides. Climate action to address these leading global sources of pollution in a way that results in net-cooling would offer short-term benefits to health while providing longer-term benefits to the planet.

We conducted a rapid scoping activity to identify and prioritize gaps in the evidence base that may be limiting cities’ and countries’ abilities to demonstrate the health impacts of climate mitigation actions targeting combustion source air pollution.

Read the report here.

Download the executive summary here.