Delayed climate, clean air action costs $1.5tn yearly – UN

The United Nations Environment Programme and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition have warned that each year of delayed action would result in more than $1.5tn in lost annual benefits, equivalent to about 0.5 per cent of global GDP.

They also said every $1 invested in tackling climate change and air pollution together could generate about $15 in economic benefits.

The UN agencies disclosed this in a new report, Hidden Assets: The Economic and Health Case for Climate and Clean Air Action, released on Monday to mark the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies.

The report, described as the first comprehensive global economic assessment of integrated climate and clean-air action, said addressing the two challenges together would deliver greater economic and health gains than treating them separately.

According to the assessment, the annual economic benefits of implementing 25 identified measures would be equivalent to 2.8 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product by 2035, 4.5 per cent by 2050 and 11.4 per cent by 2100.

The report said the estimated $15 return on every dollar invested included market and non-market benefits, such as reduced healthcare expenditure, increased labour productivity, avoided climate-related physical damage and the economic value of preventing premature deaths and improving quality of life.

Even when non-market welfare benefits were excluded, it said, the measures could still return about $4 for every $1 invested.

Commenting on the findings, the Executive Director of UNEP, Inger Andersen, said the report had challenged the perception that climate action was primarily an economic burden.

“For too long, we have treated climate action as a cost to be managed and air pollution as the unfortunate outcome of development.

“This report shows the opposite: clean air is a key driver of development, health, food and energy security, and climate stability, an asset we must invest in.

“Proven solutions already exist. What we lack is the decisive leadership from governments, financial institutions, and businesses to deliver them with the speed and coordination this crisis demands,” Andersen said.

The assessment said air pollution remained one of the largest threats to global health and carried substantial economic costs through illness, lost productivity and pressure on health systems.

It estimated that exposure to human-caused outdoor air pollution, particularly fine particulate matter and ozone, was associated with 6.4 million premature deaths globally in 2025.

Household air pollution accounted for another estimated two million premature deaths, including about 300,000 children.

The report further linked outdoor air pollution in 2025 to 5.5 million new cases of childhood asthma and two million new cases of dementia, as well as millions of cases of heart attacks, pulmonary diseases, diabetes, strokes and lung cancer.

The UN agencies said the new assessment differed from previous economic assessments by incorporating the wider economic consequences of pollution-related illness, including healthcare costs, lost productivity and impacts on human well-being.

Speaking on the economic case for immediate action, the independent co-chair of the assessment, Elliott Harris, said governments and investors risked missing enormous economic opportunities by treating climate change and air pollution as separate policy issues.

“A benefit-cost ratio of 15 to 1 would attract capital instantly in almost any other sector.

“The only reason it hasn’t in an integrated climate and clean air action yet is that the returns are split across health systems, productivity and avoided climate damage rather than landing on a single balance sheet.

“Every year of delay costs the world more than $1.5tn in benefits we will not get back. Finance ministries and investors who keep climate and air quality in separate budget lines are leaving trillions on the table,” Harris said.

The report examined a package of 25 measures across six major sectors: energy and fossil fuel systems; industry; transport; agriculture and food systems; residential cooking and heating; and waste management.

The measures include expanding renewable energy and energy efficiency, scaling up clean cooking and heating, tightening vehicle emissions and fuel-efficiency standards, expanding electric vehicles and using low-sulphur shipping fuels.

Others include recovering associated gas to end routine venting and flaring, reducing oil and gas leaks, improving livestock and manure management, using fertiliser more efficiently, improving rice cultivation, ending crop-residue burning, strengthening solid waste and wastewater management and phasing down hydrofluorocarbons.

The measures also target short-lived climate pollutants, including methane and black carbon, which contribute to both climate change and air pollution.

The assessment projected that full implementation of the measures by 2050 could cumulatively prevent 144 million premature deaths linked to air pollution, including 96 million deaths associated with ambient air pollution alone.

It said hundreds of millions of cases of chronic diseases could also be avoided.

According to the report, several of the measures would deliver visible health and economic benefits within a single term of government, potentially strengthening the case for governments to prioritise them despite the long-term nature of climate change.

The integrated measures were also projected to produce significant reductions in greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions.

Compared with the report’s baseline scenario, immediate implementation would halve global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, reduce methane emissions by 60 per cent and cut major air pollutants, including black carbon, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, by about 70 per cent.

The measures could also avoid approximately 0.34 degrees Celsius of global warming by 2050 and 1.4 degrees Celsius by 2100.

The report noted that land areas generally warm faster than the global average, meaning avoided warming in many regions could reach between 1.5C and 2C by the end of the century.

By 2100, it projected that carbon dioxide emissions under the scenario would become net negative, while major air pollutants could decline by as much as 85 per cent.

The co-chair of the assessment and Professor of Environmental Policy at the London School of Economics, Simon Dietz, said the findings demonstrated the importance of integrating environmental policies.

“This report provides the most rigorous evidence yet that treating climate change and air pollution as separate problems causes us to underestimate the benefits of tackling either.

“When we modelled them together, the returns were larger than each could show alone, because the same sources, sectors and policies so often drive both,” Dietz said.

For Nigeria, where air pollution, dependence on fossil fuels, gas flaring, transport emissions, open waste burning and household reliance on polluting cooking fuels remain major environmental and public health concerns, the report’s findings highlight the potential economic gains from coordinated climate and clean-air policies.

The report, however, warned that the major obstacle was not necessarily a lack of available solutions but weaknesses in institutions and implementation.

It identified fragmented decision-making, limited enforcement capacity and poor coordination among government institutions as the most significant barriers to implementing integrated climate and clean-air measures.

Cumulatively, the barriers could delay full implementation by almost eight years globally, the report warned.

It said removing the obstacles through fiscal incentives, stronger regulation and measures that enable the private sector to deploy profitable low-emission technologies could accelerate implementation and unlock up to $10tn in additional health benefits by 2040.

The assessment therefore called for governments to integrate climate, air quality, health and economic planning instead of treating them as separate policy areas.

It also urged stronger institutions and enforcement mechanisms, alongside better alignment of public and private finance.

The report concluded that cleaner air could generate economic benefits quickly enough for the gains to outweigh implementation costs within a decade, while cleaner air would continue to account for almost half of the total economic benefits generated by the measures by 2100.