A total of 2,985 people died in Liberia of air-borne diseases in 2013 alone and the labor loss cost the Liberian economy 0.76 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), according to a new report by the World Bank and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
Groups such as the Rural and Renewable Energy Agency (RREA) stress the importance of clean air via solar lights and other renewable sources of energy
The report: “The Cost of Air Pollution: Strengthening the Economic Case for Action”, seeks to estimate the costs of premature deaths related to air pollution, to strengthen the case for action and facilitate decision making in the context of scarce resources. An estimated 5.5 million lives were lost in 2013 to diseases associated with outdoor and household air pollution, causing human suffering and reducing economic development.
The report, which was released last week, found that air pollution has emerged as the deadliest form of pollution and the fourth leading risk factor for premature deaths worldwide. Those deaths cost the global economy about US$225 billion in lost labor income in 2013.
While pollution-related deaths strike mainly young children and the elderly, premature deaths also result in lost labor income for working-age men and women. The report finds that annual labor income losses cost the equivalent of almost 1 percent – 0.83 percent — of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in South Asia.
In East Asia and the Pacific, where the population is ageing, labor income losses represent 0.25 percent of GDP, while in Sub-Saharan Africa, where air pollution impairs the earning potential of younger populations, annual labor income losses represent the equivalent of 0.61 percent of GDP.
When looking at fatalities across all age groups through the lens of “welfare losses”, an approach commonly used to evaluate the costs and benefits of environmental regulations in a given country context, the aggregate cost of premature deaths was more than US$5 trillion worldwide in 2013. In East and South Asia, welfare losses related to air pollution were the equivalent of about 7.5 percent of GDP.
Deaths related to ambient air pollution have risen in heavily populated, fast-urbanizing regions, while deaths related to cooking and heating homes with solid fuels have remained constant despite development gains and improvements in health services. Diseases attributed to both types of air pollution caused 1 in 10 deaths in 2013, or more than six times the number of deaths caused by malaria.
The government is working towards curbing air pollution, which the World Health Organization (WHO) says also killed 3,500 people in Liberia in 2014. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA ) has a new department for the global Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), which targets the prevention of short-lived climate pollution such as the carbon that comes from vehicles and generators. And the Ministry of Transport has outlined mechanism aimed at curbing vehicular pollution in its National Transport Master Plan.
CCAC coordinator Jefferson Dahn said the EPA was doing all it could to prevent deaths as the result of air-borne diseases but needed more funding from the government and partners to carry out its duties effectively.
“We have little funding but not sufficient for the work that we do,” Dahn told FrontPage Africa in an interview in August. The highest budget the EPA has had is US$1.5 million, which is negligible for the work that we do. Before 2006, there was a report from UNEP, which stated that in 2006 the EPA should have started with a budget of about US$2 million. Ten years ago, EPA has not had a US$2 million budget.
“We are efficient. We have some of the best scientists Liberia can boast of in the EPA. Without the meager resources, salaries we have to work for our country. We don’t have all the logistics we need but cannot sit and see things go wrong and say because there is no money,” he added.