ICAT and CCAC announce the launch of Integrating Air Pollution and Short-Lived Climate Pollutants into Climate Change Transparency Frameworks: A Practical Guide. 

Poor air quality is one of the most pressing environmental and health issues, particularly in many developing countries. It is closely linked with climate change but those linkages are often not recognized.

Air pollutants have local effects, including serious health effects in cities. Therefore dealing with air pollution would have a local impact in the form of direct health benefits for urban residents. Additionally – with many air pollutants also being responsible for climate change and often coming from the same sources as greenhouse gases – acting on air pollution would have a global effect on mitigating climate change.

Greenhouse gases and other air pollutants are often emitted from the same sources. This means that policies and mitigation measures targeting greenhouse gas can also reduce emissions of other air pollutants and represent a significant opportunity to tackle the impact of these pollutants on the environment and human health. 

At the same time however, some climate change measures could increase air pollutants; and some air pollution reduction actions could increase greenhouse gases. The new guide helps decision makers to assess the benefits and trade-offs of their activities in these areas, thereby integrating their assessments and making wider use of emissions inventories, which most countries already have in hand. Additionally, if the processes are fully integrated, climate and air pollution assessments can use the same data.

What does the guide do?

The guide sets out a practical method that planners and decision makers can use to integrate inventories of air pollutants and greenhouse gases, and then to track the impacts of climate change mitigation action on air pollutants, and vice versa. For countries that lack capacity and formal air pollution and/or climate change planning processes, the guide can provide a basis for establishing integrated systems to increase national capacity on both of these two key environmental issues.

The guide aims to provide decision makers with a clear and thorough understanding of how and why air pollutants can be integrated into their climate change measurement, reporting and verification framework. 

Who is the guide for?

The guide is aimed at climate change and planners and decision makers working on emission reduction and policy development. The guide is relevant globally, including in countries where decision makers have already linked air pollution and climate change mitigation within their national planning processes. 

The guide is part of ICAT’s Toolbox, a set of state-of-the-art tools and methodologies to help countries assess the climate impacts of policies and actions.