While COP26 focuses on the long-term impacts of human emissions in the atmosphere, other long-term effects have been felt for decades in the population of Latin American cities: those of particle pollution that, although they do not last as long as possible. Enough in the environment to determine global warming as others such as carbon dioxide do, they do manage to produce thousands of deaths and loss of quality of life throughout the continent. Thus, environmental pollution and climate change are, in the words of the United Nations Environment Program (PMNU), two sides of the same coin: that of maintaining well-being standards through the intensive use of certain energy and consumption formats. and production, both agricultural and industrial. The good news is attacking that one helps with the other. The bad news is that, as long as neither of the two is solved, their respective damages accumulate and even, in certain aspects, they even multiply.
Large metropolitan areas accumulate most of the environmental pollution. Not only by size: the congestion that comes with density and size increases emissions in a non-linear way, and also favors that they impact more people (the inhabitants of the cities themselves). The most prominent ‘black spots’ are on the outskirts of agglomerations such as Lima, Guatemala City, Monterrey, Medellín (embedded within a valley) or Brasilia (which suffers the penalty of being a city designed for the car). But also in nuclei not as big as La Paz or in a string of medium-sized cities in the Andean mountain range of Chile whose homes depend on fuels such as firewood or coal on a day-to-day basis.
Because the other clear geographic pattern that is guessed in the American distribution of environmental pollution (and that is reproduced throughout the world) is the economic one. Historically, this relationship has a peak form: during the early stages of growth, increased emissions indicate a strong adoption of fossil fuels and other resources to lean on to continue growing. But, at a certain point, the relationship turns around, because it opens up the possibility of using sources that do not generate particles (for example, substituting wood for gas in the kitchen) or that do so in a more reduced way (diesel engines). current combustion compared to previous versions).
The countries with the most deaths per capita due to pollution are among the poorest in the region, while those that have managed to reduce this rate tend to be those with the highest income. In the first group, it is household fuels (firewood, coal, but also kerosene and other fossil derivatives) that push up the majority, especially in Central America, Paraguay and (somewhat less) Bolivia.
Once this problem is minimized, particles abroad become the protagonists: in Uruguay or Costa Rica, 90% of deaths related to pollution come from there.
Consequently, it is actually indoor combustion that bears the clearest relationship with the degree of economic development, measured in GDP per capita. The particles in the exterior (neither those that have to do with ozone) do not present any link, suggesting that in Latin America (and, indeed, in most of the world).
Comparatively, combustion in the home is an easier target to beat, at least in light of the data: in the last 27 years, the vast majority in the reduction of deaths attributable to pollution in the region can easily be attributed to that had to do with private use, indoors.
Consequently, it has been precisely countries such as Guatemala or Bolivia that have reduced their per capita deaths the most in absolute terms. For Uruguay, Panama or Costa Rica, the relative improvements are just as important, but, starting from better levels, they mean fewer lives saved one by one.
This relative resistance to deaths from external sources of pollution is particularly well appreciated by the percentage of the population exposed to levels that the WHO considers to be excessive: practically the entire Latin American continent would be. Consequently, it is estimated that in places like Mexico one in every 18 deaths is related to pollution.
Multiplied effects
All these are precisely the immediate effects on people’s health in addition to those already produced by the uses of fossil fuels on the long-term climate. But in addition to them, environmental pollution can negatively influence global warming, producing a multiplication of costs. One of those ways is, according to UNEP: “Air pollution in the form of particles from diesel engines circulates all over the planet and ends up in the most remote places, including the polar regions. By falling on ice and snow, it darkens them slightly, which reflects less sunlight into space and contributes to global warming. ” UNEP offers another example along the same lines: “slightly warmer temperatures encourage plants in the sub-arctic region to grow a little more, and as they grow through the snow they cast a shadow that, when multiplied by millions of small plants, it also has the effect of darkening the Earth’s surface, which leads to further warming ”.
From this perspective, and although the final objective remains on climate change, at least some of the advances made in the current Climate Summit should improve the vital prospects of the inhabitants of Latin America on more than one front at a time.
Methodology and sources. Health effects data come originally from the Global Burden of Disease, World Bank; compiled and published in ‘Our World in Data – Air Pollution‘by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser.
You can follow CLIMA AND ENVIRONMENT at Facebook and Twitter, or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter
#air #kills #Latin #America