Alliance of countries and cities from all around the world to breath healthy air by 2030

"When you take health into account, halting climate change is an opportunity, not an expense, and it provides immediate and tangible benefits", remarked Teresa Ribera at the High-Level Event on Climate and Clean Air Initiative in which she took part.

Ministerio para la Transición EcológicaSpain has been working to garner support since July, when the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, commissioned Spain and Peru, and other United Nations agencies and bodies with heading up the so-called Coalition on Social and Political Drivers, which provides for three different initiatives: Climate and Clean Air, the Just Transition and Gender, three questions that are key for achieving climate justice.

The Climate and Air Quality Initiative proposed to achieve healthy air quality and the harmonisation of policies in the fight against climate change and atmospheric pollution by 2030. With this aim in mind, it provides, among other aspects, that signatory countries and entities implement air quality and climate action policies that allow the values of the guidelines on environmental air quality to be met, set by the World Health Organization (WHO), which are more ambitious than the regulations that presently govern the Member States of the European Union (see table at the end of this note).

It also invites countries to activate policies that foster electric and sustainable mobility, and actions that aim to cause decisive changes in reducing road transport emissions.

The countries and cities committed to this initiative should evaluate the number of lives they save, the benefits to the health of children and other vulnerable groups, and the financial savings made by avoiding the need to resort to health systems as a result of the application of policies to improve air quality and climate action. And lastly, it will be necessary to monitor progress and share experiences and best practices to improve air quality through an international network coordinated by the United Nations.

Teresa Ribera specified that the members of the Coalition consider that a great opportunity exists to simultaneously make progress on the climate, health and sustainable development goals. "Spain is committed to increasing the number of people who breathe clean air", stated the Acting Minister for Ecological Transition.

National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan

Ministerio para la Transición EcológicaTeresa Ribera recalled that the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan 2021-2030 (Spanish acronym: PNIEC) lays the foundations for consolidating the path towards carbon neutrality of the economy by 2050. The Plan is also accompanied by the Just Transition Strategy, designed to anticipate and manage, with sound criteria, the consequences in those regions and for those people directly tied into technologies who will be gradually displaced as a result of the transition promoted by the Plan

"Public awareness of air pollution and its impact on health is rising and our citizens are asking the authorities to take measures. This action must not be delayed. The government is committed to taking urgent measures for an ecological transition that allows these goals to be met with the urgency required", insisted Teresa Ribera.

In this regard, it should be remembered that the main driver of climate change - the combustion of fossil fuels - causes more than 7 million deaths a year around the world. Air pollution also causes long-term harm to health, from asthma to the alteration of brain development in children. The global cost for human welfare is approximately 5.11 trillion US dollars per annum

It is expected that compliance with the Paris Agreement will save more than 1 million lives by 2050 through the reduction in atmospheric pollution alone, and the value of the benefits for health will be approximately double the investment necessary to address the mitigation of global warming.

Coalition on Social and Political Drivers

Ministerio para la Transición EcológicaIn order to prepare the Climate Action Summit, the United Nations identified new areas of action relating to particularly important sectors in the fight against climate change and commissioned certain countries, international organisations and other stakeholders to coordinate each of these.

Spain, together with Peru, was commissioned with facilitating the commitment to and action on three of these: the just transition and green jobs, health and air quality, and gender, three key questions for achieving climate justice

Over recent months of work, Peru and Spain, with the collaboration of such bodies and the WHO and the International Labour Organization (ILO) have gathered commitments from countries, cities, organisations, companies and other stakeholders to activate policies in these three areas.

Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica

Non official translation