UN News Today 05 September 2024 |

We must do more to keep the air we breathe clean: UN weather agency

Unchecked climate change, wildfires and air pollution continue to have “a spiralling” and “negative impact on health, ecosystems and agriculture”, with millions of deaths attributable to dirty air, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.

“Almost everybody on Earth, basically nine out of 10 people breathe air that is essentially unfit for purpose,” said Lorenzo Labrador, Scientific Officer at WMO.

He said that air contains a high level of pollutants, with low and middle-income countries the most affected.

That stark finding is just one of many unsettling discoveries from the UN agency’s latest Air Quality and Climate Bulletin.

It highlights, for instance, that the first eight months of 2024 have seen no let-up in periods of intense heat and persistent droughts around the world – fuelling wildfires and air pollution.

Mr. Labrador also warned that global food security is under threat from polluted air containing microparticles of sulphates, nitrates, ammonia and soot, among other contaminants:

“Many of this particulate matter pollution that affect crop yields are due to man-made practices, which include land use practices such as tillage and harvesting, also, application of fertilizers and stubble-burning at the end the season, of the growing seasons.”

Ambient air pollution alone caused mainly by vehicles and industry, is leading to more than 4.5 million premature deaths a year.

“This is more than those deaths by malaria and HIV AIDS combined”, making air pollution “the biggest environmental risk of our time” while also accelerating climate change, the WMO said, in a call for governments to acknowledge the problem and take more action.

Violence and insecurity closes 14,300 schools in West and Central Africa

More than 14,000 schools have had to close across West and Central Africa because of violence and insecurity, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA has reported.

OCHA said that by June this year, 2.8 million children – including many who are displaced – had been left without access to education, from Mali in the west to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the east.

Latest aid assessments indicate a volatile humanitarian situation in the region with security incidents affecting education rising a startling 103 per cent from March to June, compared with the start of the year.

The UN aid office also reported a slight increase in the number of schools closing from March to June, compared with the previous three-month period, and a small additional number of internally displaced people and refugees adding pressure to services.

OCHA highlighted that a “huge” lack of funding continues to hamper the humanitarian response. It said that only around a quarter of children in affected areas had access to education in the latest period under review, compared with one in two earlier in the year.

Gaza: UNRWA reports positive start to mass polio vaccination campaign in south

To Gaza, where the polio vaccination campaign got off to a successful start in the south of the devastated enclave on Thursday.

The main UN humanitarian agency there, UNRWA – along with partners – provided the first dose of polio vaccine to children under 10 years old at the Japanese Health Centre in the devastated city of Khan Younis.

From there, the UN agency reported large numbers of children arriving for their shots, which will continue for another two days, before the campaign moves to the north of the Gaza Strip.

Parents welcomed the intervention, saying that the dire sanitary conditions and lack of cleaning products for their shelters has left everyone vulnerable to disease, their children in particular.

Nearly 190,000 youngsters received their vaccination in the Middle Area this week during the first phase of the campaign which aims to target 640,000 children in all.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.

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