At two to 10 times above Mongolian and international air quality standards, Ulaanbaatar’s PM rates are among the worst in the world, according to a December 2009 World Bank report. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that health costs related to this air pollution account for as much as 4 percent of Mongolia’s GDP.
International Development
Green tech, clean fuels for the rich and wood, charcoal, and animal dung for the poor.
Industrialized and emerging nations are poised to leap into the clean fuel and green technology future, leaving behind nearly a third of the world’s population who is destined to continue burning wood, charcoal, and animal dung using noxious technologies that have remained unevolved for the last 3000 years. What’s up with that?
In 2007, Indoor Air Pollution from inefficient biomass combustion cost Peru U$321,123,160
Peru could have bought every rural poor two energy efficient stoves in 2007 for the equivalent of what Indoor Air Pollution cost the country. That would be U$321,123,160 in 2007, in case you were wondering.
As we discussed last week, The Charcoal Project is leading a research on a global analysis that would put a price tag on the inefficient domestic combustion of biomass as practiced today in the vast majority of the developing world.
The figure mentioned above comes from the World Bank’s Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) reports published on their website.
We randomly selected the 2007 assessment for Peru.
World’s Pall of Black Carbon Can Be Eased With New Stoves
by Jon R. Luoma for Yale360
Two billion people worldwide do their cooking on open fires, producing sooty pollution that shortens millions of lives and exacerbates global warming. If widely adopted, a new generation of inexpensive, durable cook stoves could go a long way toward alleviating this problem.
With a single, concerted initiative, says Lakshman Guruswami, the world could save millions of people in poor nations from respiratory ailments and early death, while dealing a big blow to global warming — and all at a surprisingly small cost.
World needs a Nick Stern report on energy poverty
OPINION
How much does energy poverty cost?
How much is lost in productivity by societies dependent on traditional biomass fuel?
What is the monetary value of global deforestation for biomass fuel use?
What is the cost (in CO2-equivalent) of the volumes of black carbon being pumped into the atmosphere?
What percentage of national budgets go to treat illnesses attributable to indoor air pollution from inefficient biomass combustion?
How much potential income is lost from the estimated 1,500,000 people who die annually as a consequence of exposure to indoor air pollution?