Your Excellency Carolina Darias,
Excellencies, distinguished panellists, dear colleagues and friends,
I am honoured to open the Third EU Clean Air Forum.
I would like to thank the European Commission and Spain for hosting this important and timely event.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a vivid reminder of just how important the simple act of breathing is to life.
Nobody should die from breathing.
And yet every year, an estimated seven million people worldwide die because they inhale polluted air.
Several hundred thousand of these deaths occur in WHO’s European Region.
And in fact, almost everyone around the world lives in areas where the air contains high levels of harmful and dangerous pollutants.
Both indoor and outdoor air pollution are leading risk factors for respiratory diseases such as pneumonia, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and can also contribute to heart disease, stroke, and cancers.
Air pollution is also likely to increase the risk of severe COVID-19.
Everyone is affected by air pollution, but small children, older people, and other vulnerable and marginalized groups in low- and middle-income countries are hit the hardest.
We all saw the headlines from Delhi just yesterday, where schools, colleges and construction sites have been closed because of air pollution.
Around the world, poor air quality particularly affects urban areas with rapid economic development, and in homes where families still use polluting fuels and technologies for cooking, heating and lighting.
Air pollution not only affects human health, it affects the health of the planet.
Many of the same issues that cause air to be unhealthy for humans are also drivers of climate change.
That is why improving air quality, through reducing the inefficient use of fossil fuels and the release of greenhouse gasses, protects both our health and our climate at the same time.
While it doesn’t go far enough, the agreement reached at last week’s COP26 Summit in Glasgow is a step in the right direction.
WHO will continue to support countries to improve air quality by providing evidence-based advice to address the drivers of air pollution and climate change.
Recently we published an update to our Global Air Quality Guidelines, which provide clear evidence of the damage air pollution inflicts on human health.
Since the last global update in 2005, there has been a marked increase in the quality and quantity of evidence that shows how air pollution can damage health at even lower concentrations than we thought.
Bad air can have life-long impacts, affecting the brain of a child at play, the lungs of a baby in a mother’s womb, or the heart of an older person preparing food for their family.
We have also learned much more about the sources of emissions and the contribution of air pollutants to the global burden of disease.
After a systematic review of the accumulated evidence, several of our updated Air Quality Guideline levels are now lower than 15 years ago.
When properly implemented, the new guidelines could have a major public health impact, with an estimated reduction of 80% of deaths due to polluted air.
Let me leave you with three priorities:
First, we must harness the health benefits of climate action by prioritising climate interventions with the largest health-, social- and economic gains.
Second, we must reimagine urban environments, with sustainable, healthy urban design and transport systems, access to public space, and priority for walking, cycling and public transport.
And third, we must develop tailored policy and financing schemes to unlock the potential of clean and sustainable energy solutions.
These are some of the key recommendations from our recent COP26 special report on climate change and health and from our guidelines.
I urge you to review them and put them into practice in your own countries.
This Forum is a unique opportunity to identify cross-cutting solutions to some of the most pressing issues of our time.
I wish you a productive meeting, and I look forward to hearing about possibilities for collaboration to protect the planet and the public health.
Muchas gracias. I thank you.