By Bunmi Yekini
Poor air quality not only imposes high economic costs but can also harm children’s academic performance, a senior World Bank official warned on Wednesday at the opening of the Better Air Quality (BAQ) conference.
The conference, a major regional gathering on air pollution, heard calls for governments to increase financing for clean air initiatives and treat pollution control as a key component of economic infrastructure.
Bindu Lohani, chair of Clean Air Asia and the main organiser of the BAQ conference, said investing in cleaner air would lead to healthier populations and stronger economies.
“The option to invest in cleaner air results in healthier people and stronger economies,” Lohani said, warning that failing to address pollution would leave countries paying the costs through rising hospital bills, reduced productivity and weakened economic performance.
A World Bank report estimates that implementing the most effective air pollution control measures would cost about 0.1% of regional gross domestic product annually. However, the benefits could far outweigh the costs, with benefit-to-cost ratios exceeding 9:1 in countries such as Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
Lohani urged governments to prioritise clean air policies and align them with long-term climate goals, including achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
Under proposals discussed at the conference, countries should significantly reduce urban particulate pollution by 2030 through measures such as electrifying transport systems, expanding air quality monitoring and eliminating highly polluting fuels and practices, including agricultural burning and open waste burning.
By 2040, air quality policies should be fully integrated with climate strategies to ensure progress toward the 2050 net-zero target, Lohani said.
Ann Jeannette Glauber, a World Bank official, said key tools such as emissions inventories and enforcement mechanisms were critical for tackling pollution, even though they often receive limited political attention.
“These are essential public goods, but they aren’t sexy,” Glauber said. “There’s no ribbon cutting. Often they don’t make money, necessarily.”
She said the most effective investment opportunities could lie in cleaning up industrial pollution, particularly in South and Southeast Asia where factories are major sources of emissions.
Industries in the region require cleaner technologies such as advanced boilers, furnaces, kilns and pollution-control equipment, she said, but financing to deploy these solutions remains limited.
Reena Gupta, chairperson of the Punjab Pollution Control Board in India, said developing countries face severe funding shortages to tackle air pollution.
Speaking about clean technology projects presented at the conference, Gupta said many initiatives remain small pilot programmes rather than large-scale solutions.
In Punjab, a region known for metal recycling, many furnaces are still powered by coal despite the availability of cleaner technologies.
“We know the clean technology exists, but it is not viable for the recycling businesses,” Gupta said.
She proposed that international financial institutions develop risk-sharing mechanisms to support businesses transitioning to cleaner technologies during the early years of adoption.
Glauber, however, suggested governments should first use policy tools such as fiscal incentives to stimulate investment.
She cited Nepal as an example, where government policies have made importing electric vehicles far cheaper than fossil fuel vehicles.
As a result, Nepal has become one of the fastest-growing electric vehicle markets in the world and ranks among the highest globally in electric vehicle adoption relative to its market size.
“When you play with those policy levers, investment flows,” Glauber said, adding that stronger risk-sharing mechanisms could help attract private finance into industrial pollution control technologies.
The conference also heard concerns that wealthier nations are exporting obsolete and polluting technologies to developing countries.
Gupta said authorities in Punjab had shut down several tyre pyrolysis plants that failed to install proper pollution control equipment.
Recent reports show that waste tyres are being shipped to India from countries including the United Kingdom and parts of the Middle East, she said, contributing to black carbon emissions, a powerful climate pollutant.
A study by the philanthropic organisation Clean Air Fund found that global funding for air pollution control remains extremely limited.
Despite the enormous health and economic costs of air pollution, including an estimated 8.1 million premature deaths in 2021, air quality programmes receive only about 1% of international development funding.
Funding for such initiatives also fell by around 20% between 2022 and 2023, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the conference highlighted examples of cities making progress in tackling pollution.
Bangkok, which last hosted the BAQ conference 18 years ago, has introduced a range of policies aimed at reducing particulate pollution.
Pornphrom Vikitsreth Techapaiboon, chief sustainability officer of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, said the city has seen measurable improvements in recent years.
He said the number of days with poor air quality has almost halved since 2015, while average PM2.5 concentrations have fallen by about 22%, from nearly 50 micrograms per cubic metre to 37.6. On the worst pollution days, parents keep children indoors and hospitals see an increase in patients with respiratory illnesses, he said.
“But residents also begin to lose trust that the government is doing anything at all,” he added.
Authorities attribute Bangkok’s pollution largely to diesel vehicle emissions, biomass burning and geographical factors, as the city sits in a basin where polluted air can become trapped.
To address the problem, Bangkok has declared itself a pollution control zone and introduced measures including restrictions on heavy trucks, expanded industrial monitoring and cooperation with nearby provinces to reduce agricultural burning.
The city is also investing in green spaces as a public health strategy. Studies show PM2.5 levels inside parks are between 33% and 43% lower than in surrounding areas, officials said. Bangkok has also begun issuing seven-day pollution forecasts and installing “clean air rooms” in schools to protect students during periods of severe pollution.
Thailand is now emerging as a test case for integrated air quality and climate investments.
The Asian Development Bank presented a proposal for a 10-year Thailand Integrated Air Quality Investment Program, which would align with the country’s PM2.5 Action Plan and a planned Clean Air Act. The initiative aims to coordinate investments across sectors including transport electrification, renewable energy expansion, crop residue management and industrial emissions control.
Conference participants also cited China’s Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region as an example of how coordinated action across sectors can significantly reduce pollution. Policies including fuel switching, clean heating programmes and industrial upgrades helped cut PM2.5 levels in the region by about 40% compared with 2015.
Officials said the fight against air pollution requires long-term commitment and collaboration.
“Air pollution is a complex challenge that no single city can solve alone,” said Pornthep, a Bangkok city official. “Sustainable air quality improvement requires long-term investment and strong international collaboration.”