Tackling air pollution in mountainous cities
02.09.2016
Policy makers, experts and practitioners from Asia and Latin America met to discuss the challenges and available tools for managing air quality in mountainous cities at a session held on the sidelines of the 17th International Union of Air Pollution Prevention and Environmental Protection Associations’ (IUAPPA) World Clean Air Congress and ninth Clean Air Asia (CAA) Better Air Quality Conference in Busan, Korea. The conference is taking place from 29 August to 2 September 2016. The session, which was organized by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), served as a platform for mountainous cities in Chile, China, India, Mexico, Mongolia and Nepal to share experiences, discuss challenges and learn about available tools with representatives from cities that have made significant progress in improving their air quality.
Highlighting lessons from Mexico City and Santiago de Chile – two cities in Latin America that are confined by mountains – Luisa Molina, President of the Molina Center for Energy and the Environment, described the steps taken in the two cities over the past two and a half decades that have led to drastic improvements in air quality. “Much progress has been made in tackling air pollution problems through comprehensive air quality management programmes based on scientific, technical, social and political considerations,” she said.
In both cities, it took dozens of individual measures focusing on specific sectors and fuels that together resulted in air quality improvements. The measures were chosen based on the best available scientific evidence, and their effectiveness was carefully evaluated with extensive ambient air quality monitoring networks. Molina also described the systems in place for an environmental state of emergency in both cities, whereby pollution levels crossing certain thresholds trigger restrictions on polluting activities. As air pollution levels have dropped, the threshold values triggering emergencies have also been lowered. Over the course of 25 years, Mexico City went from ozone exceedances on 90 percent of the days of the year to just 1 percent.
Photo by ICIMOD
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