Statsguru: Six charts show human cost of pollution and climate change

Last week, a report released by the Health Effects Institute (HEI) in Washington, US, said that 93 per cent of Indians live in areas where air pollution levels exceed the World Health Organisation (WHO) prescribed standards. It also noted that air pollution had shortened the life expectancy in the country by 1.5 years. Emission levels in India have been declining, but data indicates that they are still growing faster than the rest of the world (chart 1).

The HEI report highlighted that rising emission levels claimed over 979,700 lives in India in 2019. Although deaths due to air pollution have reduced, a Lancet study shows that deaths due to ambient particulate matter pollution and ozone pollution have risen over the last three decades. The deaths per 100,000 had increased from 32.7 in 1990 to 70.4 in 2019 (chart 2).

Data also indicates that even if pollution doesn’t kill, it does cost the country in terms of loss of healthy life years. In 2019, India lost 53.5 million daily-adjusted life years to pollution (chart 3). However, pollution is not the only factor affecting the quality of life.

The second report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted that several Indian cities, including Mumbai and Ahmedabad, risk facing extreme weather events. The report said that Mumbai faces the risk of severe flooding as the sea level rises.

The first part of the IPCC report, launched last year, had pointed out that the South Asian region is expected to witness a temperature increase of 1.3 degrees Celsius between 2021 and 2040, compared to the 1850-1900 period. It also highlighted that the temperatures may rise by 4.9 degrees Celsius by 2100 in the worst-case scenario (chart 4). 

With temperatures already high, abnormal weather events (extreme cold and hot temperatures) already cause nearly 5 million deaths worldwide every year, a 2019 Monash University study said. Analysis of data from 2010 to 2019 shows that annually, India recorded an average of 739,100 deaths due to climate change, while China witnessed 1.04 million deaths (chart 5). As more such events occur, the likelihood of fatalities will increase.

The IPCC report pointed out that if the temperatures were to increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius, the probability of hot temperature events would increase by 4.1 times in a decade; heavy precipitation events would rise by 1.5 times; and the likelihood of agricultural and ecological droughts will double (chart 6).

StatsGuru is a weekly feature. Every Monday, Business Standard guides you through the numbers you need to know to make sense of the headlines