Global efforts to reduce air pollution

Key note address by Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Patali Champika Ranawaka for 10th Session of intergovernmental meeting and 5th regional stakeholders cum regional coordination meeting of Male Declaration held yesterday in Colombo.

I believe that the protection of our pristine environment with natural resources such as water resources, air resources and land resources is not a sufficient condition but a necessary condition for the sustainable development of the country.

Our Government will never compromise the protection of these resource bases with any other development. Our priority concern on the environmental protection is reflected with proposed several new initiatives including the introduction of new environmental taxes and the establishment of Sri Lanka Carbon Fund.

These new programmes will help us achieve our mission of providing healthy and clean environment while undergoing the accelerated development process of the country.

Basic need

Clean air is an essential basic need for all living beings and breathing is the most basic human function required to sustain existence. Purity of air we breathe is an important factor for human health. With the industrialisation and urbanisation air pollution was identified as an important and emerging environmental problem in the Asia region as well as all over the world.

While some air pollutants are transported only relatively short distance from their emission source, others travel at regional, hemispheric and global scales and in some cases can undergo chemical transformation before deposition.

Their impact on health and the environment has been recognised some time ago but more recently it has also become clear that there can be an extensive impact on economic sustainability and the prospects for development.

In Asia and the Western pacific region urban outdoor air pollution is now estimated to be responsible for about half a million premature deaths in every year. We must pay more attention to manage air quality because poor air quality deteriorates human health which in turn adversely affects the productivity of employees and national economic growth.

Unless timely action is taken to prevent or minimise air pollution, future generations will be deprived of a clean atmospheric environment for them to live.

As custodians of the environment, we all have responsibility to take action to reduce air pollution and bequeath it in perfect condition to posterity of the present as well as future generations.

I am of the opinion that dealing with the impact of air pollution requires international cooperation within appropriate regional groupings, drawing on advanced scientific understanding and involving the development of cost effective burden sharing strategies.

Prevention

The Male Declaration is one of such regional agreement for Prevention of Air Pollution and its likely Transboundary effects in South Asia. We all know, activities of phase I and II have successfully completed and come to the end of phase III activities.

Now we planned to enter phase IV towards the final objective to formulate and implement national and regional action plans and protocols based on understanding of transboundary air pollution issues as well as local air pollution issues based on outcomes of activities of phase I, phase II and phase III.

It is pertinent to add few words about global warming here. In fact, global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions is a part of air pollution since it causes heat pollution. Countries in our part of the world are now suffering from disastrous consequences of global warming although we are not responsible for the causes of the same.

Floods, droughts, storms and earthquakes and landslides have now become frequent news makers in our countries due to global warming. While we are suffering with these so called natural but, in fact, man made disasters, so called developed countries still continue to emit greenhouse gases at rates several folds higher than maximum tolerable rate.

These high carbon emission countries have not yet felt guilty about the harm caused by them to the environment.

At least, they should come forward to assist us in relief operations associated with these disasters. Unfortunately, their contribution towards such relief activities is very insignificant.

Environment Ministers of SAARC countries, drew our attention to this issue when we met at Dhaka in last July. That is why we declared in Dhaka Declaration that the developed countries should assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation measures emphasising the need of collective approach in international negotiations.

Awareness

As Minister of environment and Natural Resources, it is a great pleasure to be among this distinguished gathering today in these intergovernmental meeting and regional stakeholders cum regional coordination meeting to be held in today, tomorrow and day after tomorrow.

I hope these meetings will focus on awareness on the transboundary air pollution, share and receive the regional stakeholders’ views and ideas to enter phase IV implementation of Male Declaration, improve the information exchanged between information generators and users.

I also hope this meeting will help to bring all stakeholders of the region together in a same platform to control and prevent transboundary air pollution in a well coordinated manner and we express our fullest support and commitment in making this programme successful in every way on behalf of government of Sri Lanka.

I believe that these meetings would deliberate not only upon transboundary air pollution but also upon pollution of other components of the overall environment and come out with concrete, comprehensive and successful proposals in the form of recommendations.

Let our unified and concerted efforts and initiatives make the environment of the region free of all sorts of local as well as transboundary pollution and help realise the goal and objectives of the Male Declaration.