How Polluted Are the Cities’ Skies?

Once the sources of air pollution are identified through the increased deployment of suitable studies, more-targeted policies can be implemented to tackle polluted air on a more sector-specific basis. The concluding section of this chapter discusses several such policies deemed suitable in the Middle East and North Africa context, separated along the lines of the sectors whose emissions are most likely to contribute to dirty skies: vehicles, industrial processes (including energy production), and uncontrolled burning of waste. Policy makers in the region should give these possibilities the very serious consideration they deserve, support research, and act to mitigate the AAP obstacle to a GRID path. To get blue skies and healthy, prosperous cities in the region tomorrow, the time to act on the threats posed by air pollution is today.

HOW POLLUTED ARE THE CITIES’ SKIES?

Visible or not, dissatisfaction with bad air is real. Air quality is key to human well-being, but most Middle East and North Africa residents, especially in densely populated urban areas, live with elevated levels of air pollution that damage productivity, health, and quality of life. And they are increasingly unhappy with the situation: The 2018 Gallup World Poll showed that people in some of the region’s economies (among those from which Gallup collected data) are particularly unhappy with air quality.2 They include 6 in 10 Kuwaitis and Lebanese; 5 in 10 Algerians and West Bank and Gaza residents; 4 in 10 Jordanians and Saudi Arabians; and 3 in 10 Iranians, Moroccans, and Tunisians.

Air pollution is typically higher in urban agglomerations because of the greater concentration of economic and human activities. Generally, the adverse health implications of AAP are especially critical in population centers because they are hot spots for emissions, particularly from traffic and industry (see, for example, von Schneidemesser et al. 2019). Urbanization is quickly moving forward in the Middle East and North Africa, and hence the population’s exposure to higher pollution levels exacerbates the need for effective abatement policies.

However, air pollution is also substantial in the region’s rural areas and is reinforced by human sources and natural causes like sandstorms. The human sources include burning of agricultural waste (mostly in the region’s low- and middle-income economies). Notably, however, these rural sources often influence air pollution in cities like those in the Nile Delta, where crop residue burnings substantially deteriorate the air quality in Cairo (box 3.14).

Ambient (outdoor) air pollution is the main concern for most Middle East and North Africa economies, with household air pollution being of

major concern in only a few. Most of them have quasi-universal access to nonsolid fuels for domestic energy needs (UNEP 2017). In Djibouti, the Republic of Yemen, and some parts of rural Morocco, however, burning of solid fuels for cooking, heating, or both is still common, leading to indoor air pollution that constitutes a health threat in these countries in addition to outdoor air pollution. The focus of this report will be on AAP, highlighting the importance of identifying its sources and summarizing policy options for combating it in the Middle East and North Africa.

Global Comparisons

The Middle East and North Africa exhibits the world’s second highest levels of air pollution. Only South Asia has higher concentrations of fine particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM2.5), which is considered to have the largest health effects globally. Nearly the entire population of the Middle East and North Africa is exposed to levels of air pollution deemed unsafe (World Bank data based on GBD 2018).

The region’s air quality is affected by naturally caused dust storms linked to windblown geological dust and salt from the arid and semiarid landscapes (World Bank 2019b). Yet human activities that affect air quality range from industries to road-transport emissions and operation of power plants, among other sources, especially in urbanized areas (Saab and Habib 2020). The newly revised guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) stipulate that the mean annual exposure to PM2.5 should not exceed 5 micrograms per cubic meter of air (µg/m3), a measurement further discussed in box 3.1.3 Yet the average resident of the Middle East and North Africa is exposed to air with concentrations more than 10 times this threshold (figure 3.1). In fact, no region meets these guidelines; even North America and Western Europe exceed them slightly.

Comparing the Region’s Major Cities

Generally, air pollution concentrations are high throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but there is also substantial variance between the region’s economies. Comparing the capital cities (or other major cities when data for capitals were not available), reveals that Cairo exhibits the region’s highest concentrations of PM2.5, with Baghdad and Riyadh following close behind (figure 3.2). At the other end of the spectrum, the air in Tehran, Amman, and Marrakech is substantially less polluted. However, PM concentrations in the sample’s cleaner cities are still about six times the WHO recommended limit, carrying severe health risks for inhabitants and affecting tourism in areas with those conditions (Sajjad, Noreen, and Zaman 2014).