CAI-Asia Partnership

Strategy

2007-2010

 

 

I.                    Introduction

 

1.         The CAI-Asia Partnership Strategy (the Strategy) aims to inspire and guide Partnership members in the design and implementation of policies and measures to improve urban air quality in Asia.

 

2.         The Strategy covers a period of four years to allow Partnership members to adopt elements of the strategy over time. The Strategy will be updated every two years by the CAI-Asia Center in consultation with members of the CAI-Asia Partnership.

 

3.         The relevance of the Strategy will be determined through an interim evaluation which will answer two main questions: (i) Are the policy directions outlined in the Strategy being taken up by Partnership members?; and (ii) Is the format of the Strategy, in terms of level of detail, conducive for Partnership members to adopt the recommendations?

 

 

II.                  The Context

 

A.      Where is Asia in terms of Air Quality and what are the Impacts of Air Pollution?

1)      Ambient Air Quality levels

 

4.         Ambient air quality in Asia is generally improving despite the increase in motorization and energy use (see Figure 1). Although average levels of ambient total suspended particulates (TSP) and particulate matter with diameter of 10 microns or less (PM10) are improving, they are still above the new World Health Organization (WHO) guideline values (2005)[1] and in many cases are above the national standards in some countries in Asia. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) levels in Asian cities have also decreased to approach the 2000 WHO guidelines of 50µg/m3 and national standards, but now fail to comply with the more stringent 2005 WHO guidelines. The increase in coal consumption might compromise the gains made in SO2 reductions in the years to come, especially in China and India.

 

5.         Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) approaches the WHO guidelines quite closely but rapid motorization creates NO2 hotspots. Information on certain pollutants such as Ozone (O3), Carbon monoxide (CO), and other air toxics are insufficient for reliable trend analysis. Due to its nature as a secondary pollutant, ozone concentrations tend to be higher in the sub-urban and rural areas. Ambient lead concentrations have been reduced due to the ban on leaded gasoline but concerns have not disappeared altogether. Concerns also exist on the levels of heavy metals (e.g. mercury and manganese) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the atmosphere.

 

6.         Overall, particulate matter (TSP, PM10 and the smaller particulates PM2.5) remains to be the main pollutant of concern across most of Asian cities. Linked to the specific location and dominant sources of pollution SO2, NOx and O3 are gaining in importance as pollutants of concern in individual cities.

 

Text Box: Concentration in μg/m3

Figure 1.  Status of Air Quality in Asia: Average annual ambient AQ levels of selected Asian Cities, 1993-2005[2]

Source: CAI-Asia, 2006.

TSP = total suspended particulates; PM10 = particulate matter with diameter of not more than 10microns;

SO2 = Sulfur dioxide; NO2 = Nitrogen dioxide; WHO = World Health Organization

 

2)      Health impacts

 

7.         The health impacts of air pollution in Asia are significant. It is estimated by WHO that 530,000 premature deaths per year in Asia can be attributed to ambient air pollution.[3] Studies that estimate the adverse effect of air pollution on public health in the region are increasingly well documented.[4] There are, however, still considerable shortcomings in the documentation of health impacts in several of the Asian countries and little information is available on air pollution levels and associated health impacts in the smaller cities. The legislated ambient air quality standards in many Asian countries are merely copied from US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or WHO and are not yet sufficiently backed by local health-based information.

 

3)      Environmental and agricultural impacts

 

8.         Sulfur deposition and high ozone concentrations adversely impact agricultural production in Asia. Projections suggest that 73 million hectares of ecosystems in Asia will receive levels of sulfur deposition in excess of their critical loads.[5] The Chinese State Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that economic losses due to acid rain damage to forestry and agriculture are $13.25 billion annually.[6] 

 

9.         Studies in East Asia have documented major yield losses for wheat, rice, corn and soybean due to surface ozone and projected increases in O3 concentrations will lead to further substantial crop losses in the near future. Assuming there will be no change in agricultural production practices, grain losses in East Asia due to O3 in 2020 could be 2% to 16% of the production of wheat, rice, and corn, and 28% to 35% for soybeans.[7]

 

10.       In addition, air pollution also affects visibility and results in corrosion of buildings and heritage structures.

 

4)      Climate impacts

 

11.       Air pollution and climate change in many cases have the same cause: increased energy consumption. The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed the causal relationship between air pollution and global warming and stressed the potential for integrating urban air quality management and climate change mitigation.[8] 

 

12.       The contribution of emissions to climate change is measured according to their radiative forcing – a positive radiative forcing contributes to a warming effect and a negative forcing contributes to a cooling effect. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), as well as halocarbons have high positive radiative forcing while sulfates are known to contribute to a cooling effect. Some air pollutants such as surface ozone are known to have a positive climate forcing but the indirect effects of aerosols and black carbon on clouds and albedo are not well understood.

 

13.       As more studies on the linkage of climate and air pollution science are conducted, it is increasingly clear that the interactions are more complex than previously thought. Previous studies focused more on determining the role of air pollution on climate change but increasingly studies now also focus on the impact of climate change on air pollution.

 

14.       In addition to the global effects of local air pollution there are considerable regional climate effects in Asia. These include impacts on rainfall pattern and intensity of sunlight, both of which can seriously affect crop yields.[9]

 

5)      Economic Impacts

 

15.       Different studies have reported economic losses of 2-4% of GDP of cities and countries as a result of ambient air pollution.[10] It is important to realize that methodologies to assess the economic impact of air pollution are still evolving and that in many cases information on which to base the impact assessments is incomplete. Apart from the direct health and environmental impacts of urban air pollution, the quality of life is affected by urban air pollution. In the case of Hong Kong this influences the willingness of expatriate managers to be posted in Hong Kong and in Kathmandu, 17% of tourists interviewed indicated that they would avoid visiting Nepal again because of poor air quality.[11]

 

B.     Where is Asia in terms of AQM?

 

1)      Overall Assessment of AQM Capabilities

 

16.       Air pollution is being addressed in Asia at different levels, at the local, national and to some degree, regional level. Most of the larger cities have some form of air quality management system. At the minimum, most countries in Asia have legislated ambient AQ standards and have put in place basic control measures such as fuel quality standards and vehicle emissions standards. The level of management capabilities at city level does vary widely from basic (limited) to advanced (excellent) as shown in table 1 which records the results of a benchmarking exercise that CAI-Asia conducted together with the Stockholm Environment Institute from 2003 to 2005.

 

Table 1. Air Quality Management (AQM) Capabilities of Asian Cities[12]

 

AQM Capability Category

AQM Capability Score

Cities

Excellent I

91-100

Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo

Excellent II

81-90

Bangkok, Seoul and Shanghai

Good I

71-80

Beijing and Busan

Good II

61-70

New Delhi

Moderate I

51-60

Ho Chi Minh, Jakarta, Kolkata, Manila and Mumbai

Moderate II

41-50

Colombo

Limited I

31-40

Hanoi and Surabaya

Limited II

21-30

Dhaka and Kathmandu

Minimal

0-20

-

 

 

17.       AQM too often focuses on air quality monitoring combined with general control measures such as fuel quality and emission standards without addressing prevailing weaknesses in AQM systems such as emissions inventories, source apportionment, health impact evaluation, air quality modeling and exposure assessments. In addition, enforcement of air quality regulations is frequently weak.

 

 

2)      Institutional Capabilities

 

18.       The priorities for environmental protection and management are still weak in most of the Asian countries. This is perhaps even truer for air quality than for water quality. As a consequence institutional capacity for air quality management is generally also weak. This helps to explain the absence or weak linkages between the environmental regulators which are responsible for the overall management of air quality and the planners and regulators of the transport, power and industrial sectors whose actions or inaction actually shape the actual air quality in Asian cities.

 

19.       Although decision makers are becoming more responsive to the clamor of the public for environmental policies, policies can be hastily drafted and decision makers do not consider or allocate adequate resources to enable assigned agencies to appropriately implement the regulations. In several of the Asian countries, especially the lesser developed and smaller ones, agencies have to rely on external donor assistance to provide them with the required technical training, based on modules that are not locally generated or customized for local conditions. There is a general lack of national or local training centers to provide air quality management training or education on an ongoing basis.

 

3)      Successful Control Strategies

 

20.       The improvements in air quality, described above, have been achieved through successful control strategies. Almost all Asian countries have banned leaded gasoline and tightened vehicle emission standards and put in place cleaner fuel standards. In many places relatively dirty fuels have been replaced by cleaner compressed natural gas both in the transport sector and in the power and industrial sectors. Several cities in South Asia have been successful in banning dirty 2-stroke three-wheelers. China has been able to remove a large number of small but important polluting industries from its cities and relocate them to areas outside the city often with cleaner technology. Nepal also has achieved some success in first relocating dirty brick kilns to areas outside Kathmandu and later adopting cleaner brick kiln technologies.

 

4)      Inter-linkage urban, national, regional and hemispheric scale

 

21.       In the last 5 years, several initiatives have been started to develop a better understanding of the linkages between air pollution at the urban, national, regional and hemispheric scales. At the Asian regional level these include the Male Declaration, East Asia Network for Acid Deposition (EANET), and Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC).[13] At the hemispheric level this includes the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (HTAP).[14] What these initiatives have in common is that they start with establishing the science, following which they develop policy recommendations while at the same time raising the awareness of decision makers to increase the chances for a successful adoption and implementation of the policy recommendations formulated.

 

22.       The better understanding of these linkages is important to improve the formulation and implementation of more effective control strategies at both the regional and urban levels. Studies in the US and Europe suggest that aside from episodic transport of air pollution from one region to another, there is also a general increase in the background level of some pollutants, particularly in the case of ozone in the Northern Hemisphere. The issue of transboundary air pollution is especially important for specific sub-regions in Asia where air pollution episodes, acid rain or haze increasingly undermine local AQM efforts.

 

23.       The increased interaction between different levels of AQM stakeholders, which is an important consequence of the regional and hemispheric studies has helped the knowledge transfer from the developed world (where air pollution has been a major feature for a long time) to Asia (where air pollution is a relatively recent but increasingly becoming an important problem).  

 

5)      Co-benefits Approach

 

24.       Concerns on climate change are rapidly rising across the world. In Asia, governments have now started to formulate strategies to mitigate climate change. It is generally accepted that the objectives of climate change policies in Asia for the years to come will aim at a reduction in the rate of growth of CO2 and other greenhouse gases while at the same time strengthen the adaptive capacities to deal with the impacts of climate change that have started to manifest themselves. Asian stakeholders have started to acknowledge the relevance of a co-benefits approach which combines and integrates energy management, climate change mitigation and air quality management.  While there is a growing acknowledgement of the relevance of the co-benefits approach it is, so far, not yet widely adopted and implemented in Asia.

 

III.                The Direction

 

A.      Asian outlook

 

25.       Asian countries will have take into account the following driving factors which will influence air quality levels and which will have to be taken into consideration while developing air quality management strategies for transport, industry and power generation.

 

1)      Population growth and urbanization

 

26.       The rate of urbanization in Asia has surpassed that of Europe and North America. More people from poverty-stricken rural areas are migrating to towns and cities that are increasingly becoming strategic nodes in terms of financial, economic, transport, and cultural development. Currently, there are over one billion people living in Asia’s urban areas and this number is growing at an average of 4% every year. By 2025, the urban population is expected to grow to three billion people, representing 55% of the total population.[15]

 

2)      Economic growth

 

27.       On average, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates of developing Asia show positive trends over the past few years. The rapid growth in GDP over the last years is expected to continue. Asian economies are expected to grow on average 6.3% annually, which is higher than the 4.5% rate for the world as a whole.[16] Countries like India and China are expected to continue growing at rates of 8-10%, well above the estimated regional average of 5.1%. Although economic growth has increased the buying power of the population, it has not meant an end to poverty in Asia. Asia is still home to 620 million living on less than $1 a day, and 1.9 billion who have less than $2 per day.[17] In most of the Asian countries the contribution of the secondary (manufacturing and industry) and tertiary (services) sector to national GDP will increase (See table 2). Asia is increasingly becoming the workshop of the world. Manufacturing capacity is being created not just to meet the growing local and regional demand in Asia but also the demand from Europe, Japan, Oceania, and the USA.

 

 

Table 2. Average Share of Major Sectors in GDP (percentage) of Asian Countries[18].

Sector/Year

Share in GDP (%)

1990

1995

2005

Agriculture

28.6

24.5

20.5

Industry

27.0

29.8

31.5

Services

43.7

45.5

47.8

GDP = gross domestic product

 

3)      Increased Motorization

 

28.       As incomes rise, the demand for mobility and increase in vehicle ownership is almost inevitable, especially since personal mobility is considered by many as essential. The top ten countries with the highest future private-vehicle demand are in Asia, three of which – China, India and Indonesia, are also the most populous in the world.[19] Motorization in Asia is and will continue to be characterized by a domination of two-wheelers.  Figure 2 gives projections for the growth in the numbers of all vehicle types in four major countries in Asia – PRC, India, Indonesia and Thailand. The projected increases in vehicle numbers are putting a great strain on infrastructure and the environmental carrying capacity of urban areas. There is an imminent risk that the rapid increase in private motorcycle and car ownership will lead to a reduction in the number of trips made by walking or by cycling. Also experiences in some of the Asian countries, e.g. Viet Nam, have shown that a quick increase in private vehicles can have a strong detrimental impact on the availability and quality of public transport.

 

29.       Economic growth does not only result in an increase in passenger transport but will also result in an increase in freight transport.[20] This can potentially result in a rapid increase in heavy-duty diesel vehicles. So far Asia has focused on putting in place emission controls for light duty vehicles; less has been done for heavy-duty vehicles.

 

30.       A large number of cities in Asia were established along major shipping routes or are major port cities. While emissions from road transport, particularly diesel trucks and vehicles, are expected to decline due to increasing regulations and controls, the growing contribution of the shipping industry to air pollution remains unchecked.[21] If no control measures are taken, shipping will negatively affect local air quality to an even larger extent than it already does in coastal communities that are located close to ports and major shipping routes.

 

31.       Little attention has been paid to the aviation industry which is undergoing an explosive growth in Asia.

 


Figure 2. Forecasts for Growth in the Number of Motor Vehicles in Some Asian Countries[22]

Notes: The left hand axis is the number of vehicles in millions of vehicles per year.

HCV = heavy commercial vehicle; LCV = light commercial vehicle; PC = private car;

MC-three = three-wheeled vehicle with a motorcycle engine; MC-two = two-wheeled motorcycle;

 

 

4)      Increased Energy Demand

 

32.       The growth in GDP in Asia is leading to a strong growth in energy demand and consumption. Although efforts to expand the use of renewable energy sources and diversify the fuel mix in Asia, including biofuels, are intensifying, the use of coal is expected to increase significantly in the years to come.  Anecdotal reports suggest that 200 units of coal plants are under design or construction in China annually, or at least one to two new coal fired power plants are being installed in China every week.[23]

 

33.       The future energy consumption of developing countries of Asia is expected to account for 40% of the total projected increase in world energy consumption and 70% of the increase in developing country consumption to 2025.[24]  In contrast with Europe where coal use is declining, coal use in almost all Asian countries is growing. Coal consumption in China and India is projected to account for 67% of the total increases in coal use worldwide for the period 2004-2030. Together, China and India will account for 80% growth in world coal demand from 2004-2030 as compared to the 10% for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and 10% of for the rest of the world (Figure 3). Other countries in Asia such as Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines are expected to see an increase in coal consumption. Approximately one-third of the global growth in oil demand and power generation capacity for the period 2004-2030 can also be attributed to China and India.

 


 

 

Figure 3. Share of China and India in the Global Coal, Oil and Power Capacity Growth, 2004-2030 (Reference Scenario)[25]

 

B.     Overall Goals of AQM policies 2007 - 2010

 

34.       The overall goal for air quality management in Asia (and also for the CAI-Asia Partnership) is the improvement of urban air quality while simultaneously ensuring that continued economic growth results in poverty reduction and social development. To ensure the environmental sustainability of economic growth, improved air quality needs to go hand in hand in with a reduction in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. These two combined and integrated goals create an ambitious agenda for the cities in Asia and will test their capacities to remain the engines of economic growth and social development and centers of culture which they have become in recent years.

 

C.     AQM Priorities for Asia 2007-2010

 

35.       Cities with a current relatively low AQM capability need to focus on establishing or strengthening continuous air quality monitoring system and implementing basic control strategies, including establishing roadmaps for vehicle emissions and fuel standards. Cities with a higher AQM capability should focus on improving emission data. In the development of air pollution control strategies, they should aim to address demand management in transport and integrate local air pollution measures with transboundary air pollution and GHG abatement. All cities will need to ensure that their AQM systems not only manage the traditional criteria pollutants such as CO, NOx, SO2, O3, TSP, and PM10 but also fine PM which is monitored as PM2.5. In addition, all countries should review their air quality standards in view of the new WHO guideline values.[26]

 

1)      Pollutants of Concern

 

36.       It is recommended that Asian countries continue the regulation and control of SO2, NO2, and CO which is in most countries are well established by now. It is important to move from TSP control to PM10 with the aim to develop PM2.5 standards and control strategies. It is important for Asian countries to start or intensify the regulation and control of O3. With the rapid increase in motorization, O3 is expected to become a more important pollutant especially in countries with a hot climate. Finally, Asian countries should make stronger efforts to deal with metals and air toxics. 

 

2)      Ambient Air Quality and Emissions Standards

 

37.       To improve urban air quality in Asia it is important to continuously review both ambient air quality standards and emission standards for different sources of pollution.

 

                                                               i.      The WHO has issued new guidelines values for urban air quality in 2005, which also include guideline values for PM10 (See Table 3). The European Union also has adopted stricter standards for PM10[27] while the US EPA has adopted stricter PM2.5.[28]  Many of the Asian countries have not revised their ambient air quality standards in the last 3-5 years.