No money to achieve clean air goal: Experts
As governments ordered temporary confinement measures to battle multiple virus waves, several studies have charted a marked increase in air quality in the US, China, and Europe.
What you need to know:
- The county assembly was supposed to develop a policy framework from the plan to ensure that the existing laws are adhered to.
- A national budget should be allocated to specifically cater for air quality research countrywide, says an expert.
- The experts also urged the national and county governments to implement rules and regulations.
Increased funding for air quality monitoring and research can save children aged five and below from respiratory diseases due to pollution, experts have said.
A national budget should be allocated to specifically cater for air quality research countrywide, acquisition of equipment and expert training, they said.
The experts also urged the national and county governments to implement rules and regulations that will treat air pollution as a potential health crisis for the current and future generations.
Sean Khan, the UN Environment Programme’s manager for Global Environment Monitoring System in Air Quality, warned that globally, 98 per cent of children under five in low and middle income countries, including Kenya, were exposed to air with fine particulate matter above the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidelines.
“This speaks of the injustice and inequality of clean air, which must be addressed urgently before we lose several generations to air pollution,” he said.
Aware of the problem of air pollution in Nairobi, the Nairobi County government developed the 2019-2023 Air Quality Action Plan.
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The county assembly was supposed to develop a policy framework from the plan to ensure that the existing laws are adhered to, and new ones implemented to curb air pollution within town, industries and residential estates.
However, lack of leadership hampered the progress of the action plan beyond paperwork since 2018 when the document was prepared. In an effort to push forward the action plan, Esther Chege, MCA for Nairobi South Ward, has written a motion to the county executive and the Nairobi Metropolitan Services “to urgently develop an air quality policy and legislation to provide mechanisms for improving air quality in the city and present the same to the National Assembly for approval”.
According to Dr Andriannah Mbandi, an air quality researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute – Africa Center, Kenya is one of the countries that does not have data on how much polluted air children would be breathing due to lack of measurement capacity.
“We know from global satellite data estimates that outdoor pollution in Kenya is increasing. Further, the most recent Kenya Economic Survey indicates that respiratory illnesses account for 39 per cent of disease incidence in Kenya’s health facilities,” Dr Mbandi explains.
