Climate Change and Health Seminar: “Household contributions to and impacts from air pollution in India”

January 11, 2022

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Dr. Narasimha D. Rao, Associate Professor of Energy Systems, Yale School of the Environment discusses his work on outdoor and indoor air pollution in India.

November 29, 2021

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00:02<v Dr. Rao>Good afternoon, everyone.</v>
00:03Thank you so much for being here.
00:05First of all, before I start,
00:07I wanted to apologize,
00:08especially for those who are physically present at the venue
00:12that I can't be there in person.
00:14I very recently received an invitation to attend a meeting
00:18that was closed on invitation for a discussion
00:21about energy transitions in the U.S.
00:23that I considered important to attend.
00:26And, I couldn't find any flights that would bring me
00:28to the meeting on time.
00:29Other than one,
00:31for which I am on my way to Newark Airport,
00:34literally right now,
00:35as you listen to this.
00:37But I will,
00:37however, join in about 40 minutes to answer your questions.
00:42So, if you could please just make note of your questions
00:44as we go along.
00:45I'd be happy to discuss them live at the end of this talk.
00:50So, I'm gonna talk today,
00:52about a study that I did while I was working
00:54at The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis,
00:56IIASA, a few years ago.
00:59That took a couple of years to complete
01:01and finally resulted in the publication,
01:04just a few months ago in nature sustainability,
01:06which makes me very happy.
01:08And the two main reasons I'm interested to do this talk.
01:12The first is,
01:14the empirical insights.
01:16This is the,
01:17only the second study I know of.
01:18And the first in India
01:20that relates the consumption side or the contribution side
01:24of air pollution in India to the impact side.
01:27And specifically,
01:29which households, of what categories of income
01:32contribute to different sources of pollution?
01:35And, to what extent are they impacted by that pollution
01:38in terms of the risk of mortality?
01:41And in doing that,
01:42I think it's important from a policy perspective,
01:46asking this question,
01:47because it allows us to think about consumption
01:50as one of the options for mitigation of air pollution,
01:53and not just looking at end of pipe controls.
01:56And this is one avenue for us to think about
01:59how sustainable consumption can be brought into the fore
02:02in terms of the solutions to address,
02:04not just climate change,
02:05but air pollution as well.
02:07The second reason,
02:08is that to me,
02:08this is a very interesting exercise
02:10in interdisciplinary research.
02:12And specifically in integrated assessment.
02:15So, there was an air pollution group in IIASA.
02:17There is an air pollution group.
02:20Which many of you I know are familiar with,
02:22that run the GAINS Model that I will talk about.
02:24And there's the energy group
02:25that runs an integrated assessment model.
02:27And does other research on energy system transformations
02:31for climate change.
02:33And what I was looking with this group,
02:35I saw that there was these two different groups
02:37that had a completely different work research agendas.
02:43But they had of course,
02:44collaborated to look at co-benefits
02:46between air pollution and climate change.
02:49But never specifically thinking about the relationship
02:51between the contributions from the energy sector
02:55to air pollution.
02:56And who causes that from the household perspective.
02:59And so, I saw these two different groups
03:00and the opportunity to build some bridges between them.
03:04And pull that off after a few years.
03:06So, I think methodologically,
03:08it's an interesting example
03:09of applied interdisciplinary research
03:11that I think would be nice to replicate
03:13in other contexts as well.
03:15So, I wanna provide some background
03:17to air pollution in India.
03:19I'm gonna discuss mostly the methodology that we applied
03:25in doing this,
03:25which I think is the most interesting part to this audience.
03:28And then discuss some of the results
03:30and the implications for policy.
03:36I think it's pretty clear to everyone in this audience
03:39that particulate matter,
03:40fine particulate matter has serious health effects
03:44and leads to the death of over a million people a year
03:48in South Asia alone.
03:49And that affects mainly women and children.
03:52And this is through various diseases
03:54that you're familiar with;
03:55pulmonary diseases, cardiovascular diseases,
03:59lower respiratory infections that children face,
04:02and many others.
04:03The main point I wanted to make about this,
04:05is as you're all familiar with the dose response functions
04:09in terms of the relative risk
04:10and the relationship to concentrations,
04:13to ambient concentrations is nonlinear.
04:15And what this means,
04:16is that you have to make very, very significant reductions
04:19in the concentration levels,
04:21in order to really see significant impacts on health.
04:25And I bring this up because in India,
04:27in particular,
04:28there has been a focus on residential use of cookstoves
04:31as the primary source of air pollution.
04:33And it is specifically,
04:34for indoor air pollution.
04:36And there've been numerous studies and programs over decades
04:41in South Asia,
04:42to try to create improved cookstoves that burn biomass
04:46in a better way,
04:47and have failed for decades.
04:49And that's because,
04:50although they've had some kinds of improvements
04:52in reductions in pollution
04:53and improvements in efficiency of the stoves.
04:56They don't lead to strong enough reductions
04:58in the concentrations in indoor air pollution.
05:01So, it's important to know that there are several other
05:05aspects of air pollution that are from other sources,
05:08that affect people's health.
05:11Those who are burning solid fuels for cookstoves
05:14by ambient air pollution that they inhale
05:16when they leave the house as well.
05:17And that's what this paper is about.
05:18It's about ambient air pollution for the most part.
05:22There's several different sources in the economy
05:24for air pollution,
05:25besides cookstoves.
05:27Households that don't have electricity access
05:29use kerosene for lighting.
05:30And that is an important source.
05:32A lot of people don't know that in urban areas of India,
05:34where they don't have access to biomass,
05:36that they use kerosene for cooking as well.
05:38So, this is also an urban problem.
05:41Traffic and air pollution of course,
05:43is very well known.
05:44And I think there's a stereotype that in cities in India,
05:47the traffic burning diesel from buses
05:51and single stroke engines are really the main cause
05:54of air pollution.
05:55But as I show you,
05:56it's much more complicated than that.
05:58A lot of industry,
05:59as I show the brick kilns over here,
06:01is one primary suspect are also major contributors.
06:06Of course, power plants as well.
06:08And, very often there are times in the year
06:12when the pollution is particularly bad,
06:13as you can see in these photographs,
06:14in New Delhi.
06:15Because you have burning of agricultural fields
06:18to clear the fields for the next seeding.
06:22That takes place next to winter.
06:24And so they cause very, very high concentrations
06:26of pollution.
06:27And those also,
06:28are a little bit misleading because they are concentrated
06:31in a week or two.
06:32And, you know what?
06:33If you look at average air pollution over the year,
06:34they tend to be many other sources that dominate
06:37the agricultural emissions as well.
06:42So, it's known that globally,
06:44all of these sources contribute to air pollution at PM2.5.
06:48But, in different parts of the world,
06:50different sources dominate.
06:52So in the U.S. for example,
06:53power plants and traffic dominate.
06:57But in Northern Africa,
06:58of course, the dust from the desert as a major contributor.
07:03I didn't mention in the previous slide that natural sources
07:06are a very significant contributor as well.
07:08Including dust that's often picked up
07:10from construction work as well.
07:13We'll see how that plays a role in India as well.
07:16And as you can see on the chart here in South Asia,
07:19cookstoves are known to be the largest single source
07:22and contributor.
07:24But this is perhaps I think to the neglect
07:26of many other contributors.
07:28And that's what I wanna focus on in this talk.
07:32(wind whooshing)
07:33(table creaking)
07:34The air pollution levels in cities,
07:35even average annual mean levels are astounding in cities
07:41across India.
07:42Not just the metropolitans like New Delhi and Mumbai.
07:45You're looking at smaller-medium sized cities
07:48that are in the range of one to 5 million as well.
07:50All of which,
07:52have mean concentration levels that not only exceed
07:55the WHO's guidelines of 10 micrograms per meter cube,
07:59but exceed the National Ambient Air Quality Standards
08:04as well, of 40.
08:06And, so the average over the year being so high,
08:09it tells you that in particular times of the year,
08:11this is even more than that,
08:12up to 300, 400 in certain times of the year as well.
08:16So, this is a serious problem,
08:18and this is only urban.
08:20The focus on rural areas tends to be,
08:22like I said,
08:23indoor air pollution from cookstoves.
08:25But as we'll see in the study,
08:26that there are also serious health risks to rural folks
08:30from air pollution as well.
08:33I wanted to briefly mention the New Delhi study,
08:35'cause I think it was insightful
08:36in terms of revealing the different sources of pollution.
08:39This is a study that was done by the air pollution group
08:41at IIASA using the GAINS Model.
08:44And, it shows that if you look at the different causes
08:47of air pollution in New Delhi;
08:50that it's a mix of sources that really,
08:54all of these sources contribute a fair amount.
08:56So, even dust from kicked up by construction work
09:02and by traffic is a significant component.
09:05Burning of bodies and fireworks are a significant component.
09:09Trash burning is extremely important.
09:12Residential cookstoves,
09:13even within and around New Delhi are a significant.
09:18And I said,
09:19this also includes kerosine and not just solid fuels.
09:22Power plants to a small extent.
09:25And a lot from agriculture,
09:26that is in the neighboring regions around Delhi.
09:29A lot of the pollution is from secondary inorganic PM.
09:32And then, this agricultural waste burning,
09:34as I mentioned,
09:35is just a small component.
09:37So really, if you look at all these sources,
09:39over 60% of air pollution in Delhi
09:42is from sources outside of the city center itself.
09:45And that's why it's really important to look at
09:48flows of air pollution across the country.
09:53Let me just give a brief overview of the literature,
09:55especially with relation to environmental justice.
09:58Because there has been a growing number of studies
10:00recently across the world,
10:02that try to understand this,
10:03the idea of our people facing a disproportionate exposure
10:08to air pollution.
10:09And so, we know that people who have studied
10:11health inequality,
10:12find that air pollution is a cause of health inequality
10:16in developing countries, by and large.
10:20And we find that at a global scale.
10:22And those health inequalities also have been associated
10:25with socioeconomic disparities.
10:28So, people of higher income levels
10:30suffer less health impacts from air pollution,
10:33than lower income levels.
10:35And this seems to hold in a lot of parts of the world,
10:38even in Europe.
10:39So, this is not just a developing country phenomenon.
10:43There are some exceptions such as in France,
10:44certain parts of Paris.
10:46You have rich neighborhoods
10:47that also have very high concentrations.
10:49But by and large,
10:49there seems to be a growing environmental justice concern
10:54about the relationship between air pollution,
10:56health inequality and socioeconomic inequality.
11:00We've seen this also in terms of international trade,
11:02that if you think about the air pollution that's exported,
11:07by importing products from countries
11:11where the air pollution impacts are felt.
11:13That also, is an important consideration.
11:15And China in particular,
11:17falls in that category
11:18because they provide the manufacturing capacity
11:21for large part of international consumption, by and large.
11:27There's only one study that I know of,
11:28that's the precedent for the one that I'm talking about.
11:30Which is a study in the U.S.
11:32that has actually looked at inequity in the consumption
11:35of goods and services.
11:37And found that there is a racial and ethnic dimension
11:39to the disparity in air pollution exposure.
11:43But this study also only goes so far
11:45as to look at consumption
11:47in relation to air pollution exposure
11:49for different household groups across the country.
11:53In our study,
11:54what we do is,
11:54we go further and look at mortality impacts.
11:57That is, we factor in the differential vulnerability
12:00of people to exposure,
12:02due in part to the different income levels.
12:05Which provide them with the ability to adapt
12:08or avoid different levels of air pollution.
12:10So, that's the unique aspect of the study
12:12that I'm gonna show you.
12:15Which is really looking all the way from consumption
12:17and sources,
12:18down to mortality risk.
12:22(table creaking)
12:25So, the question we asked,
12:26is can we attribute pollution sources to households
12:28through their consumption patterns?
12:30So the first challenges that the GAINS Model,
12:33The Air Pollution Model,
12:34know air pollution sources in terms of sectors.
12:38So, different industrial sectors,
12:40the transport sector, the household sector.
12:43But, how can we take that back,
12:45trace it back further to different household groups
12:48and their consumption patterns?
12:50So, now we need to understand and trace
12:52the different products and services from the sectors
12:55back to households.
12:57So that was one big challenge that I wanted to address.
13:01And that was one of the bridges that we wanted to build
13:03between the air pollution group and the energy group.
13:06And the second is that,
13:08Can we incorporate households vulnerability
13:10in translating exposure to mortality?
13:12'Cause we also wanted to account for the effect of income.
13:16Here we didn't have a lot of empirical evidence,
13:18but we did apply one paper that had some quantification
13:22of the role of income,
13:24but this was at a national scale.
13:26But we applied that to households across India as well.
13:31So, putting those books together,
13:33we found that it would be useful to organize households
13:36in terms of the income level;
13:38because the income level defines both consumption patterns,
13:41which we can then relate to industry.
13:43And income levels define also vulnerability.
13:45And so that would fall,
13:46it was a good organizing principle,
13:48in order to look at households
13:49and the both sides of the pollution equation.
13:52And so that's what we did.
13:54We looked at household deciles across the country.
13:57So, here is the complex modeling environment.
14:00And I wanted to spend a little time going through this.
14:05So, if I start on the impact side,
14:06which I think most of you might be better,
14:10more well versed than I am.
14:11So, this is not my primary expertise.
14:15So, we looked at mortality by the decile.
14:17And the main innovation was to apply
14:20this vulnerability by decile.
14:21As I mentioned,
14:23higher income groups have lower vulnerability.
14:26And then we used standard concentration response functions
14:32using spatially explicit PM2.5 concentrations,
14:36the grid level.
14:38And then exposure by age, sex and location;
14:43urban or rural,
14:44and by state.
14:46In order to determine the mortality
14:49associated with a given concentration
14:51at different geographic parts of the country.
14:54Now, what was important here is the caveat;
14:57which is that,
14:59while we know the distribution of income
15:01across states in India,
15:03the surveys don't give us a reliable enough estimate
15:06of the distribution of income within a state,
15:08except urban and rural.
15:10So, how are the different income deciles distributed
15:13within rural India,
15:16in a particular state?
15:17We don't quite know.
15:18So what that meant,
15:18is all rural residents in any given state
15:23had the same exposure.
15:24We can't differentiate exposure based on income level
15:27within urban-rural regions within a state.
15:31However, we do have differential exposures
15:33in different states in urban and rural areas,
15:36based on a number of factors;
15:37including where pollution sources are located.
15:40How income is distributed, et cetera.
15:41As I'll mention a little bit more later.
15:45On the contribution side,
15:46the contribution pathway was where we needed an innovation
15:49to link the household survey and consumption by decile
15:55to the final sectors,
15:58which the GAINS Air Pollution understands.
16:00So, let me just spend a minute on this intermediate section.
16:03The three sources of pollution
16:05from a consumption perspective.
16:06There's the direct use by fuels.
16:09So, that's cookstoves and heating fuels
16:12that are burned directly in the household,
16:14As our scope one.
16:16Emissions from the IPCC's language.
16:18And there's transport and electricity is also use fuels
16:21and household expenditure on fuels.
16:24The fuels being gasoline, diesel and electricity.
16:27But the emissions are elsewhere.
16:29So, that's scope two emissions.
16:31And then the third,
16:32is where the consumed goods and services
16:35and lead our trigger air pollution through the manufacturing
16:40of those products and services.
16:42And so, that's where we use extended input-output analysis.
16:46A multi-regional in-product put analysis
16:48that ultimately counts for trade.
16:50To be able to link household survey products
16:53to industry sectors.
16:56Now, this mechanism I had already developed
16:59in my own research.
17:00That is, to be able to do household footprinting
17:03of energy use for different products.
17:06But what we had to do was to extend this,
17:07to create BM2.5 satellite matrix.
17:11And the satellite matrix that we had to map
17:13are input-output sectors directly to the sectors in GAINS.
17:17And that was one of the bridges that we had to build.
17:20And with that,
17:22we were then were able to create
17:25a population weighted national, PM2.5 concentrations,
17:30based on all of the sectors.
17:32But then attribute that to deciles,
17:35income deciles in the country.
17:38Based on the basket of goods and services
17:41that each decile consumed.
17:44So, as you can imagine,
17:45lower income groups tend to consume less stuff,
17:48but they're using a lot more direct fuel.
17:51Whereas higher income groups
17:52don't use any direct fuel at all.
17:54They use electricity.
17:56And of course, they drive cars,
17:58but they consume a lot of stuff.
17:59And so, that's how we wanna kind of see
18:01how they play out in terms of the net effect
18:03of air pollution from these different sources.
18:08Just a quick deep dive for the GAINS Model.
18:10Again, I think a lot of you are familiar with this.
18:13They have a very detailed representation
18:15of point sources of pollution across the country.
18:18Including a spatial representation
18:20from all the sectors in the economy.
18:23Industry transport households.
18:26And they also model end-of-pipe solutions
18:28for all of these different sources;
18:30pollution control, their different costs.
18:33The greenhouse gas emission applications as well,
18:35and a set of different air pollutants.
18:38And they have the ability to define scenarios,
18:42scenarios of control technologies,
18:44applied to different activities in the economy.
18:46And based on the emissions factors
18:48and links to a dispersion,
18:50atmospheric dispersion model.
18:52You can see the effects of controls
18:54on pollution concentrations in different parts
18:57of the country.
18:59And then, look at the effects on mortality
19:01using standard dose response functions
19:03from the Global Burden of Disease.
19:05And then, you could iterate in order to determine
19:10if we had to limit the number
19:11of the extent of health impacts.
19:14What scenarios of pollution control could bring us there?
19:17So, we will be utilizing some of this scenario technology
19:21in this study as well.
19:27So, the direct sources,
19:28as I mentioned.
19:29It was important to understand what households
19:33use what kind of cooking fuels.
19:35Now, we have this data from household surveys.
19:38So, we have an understanding of the demand curves,
19:41if you will,
19:42for different types of households in urban and rural areas,
19:44and off different income levels.
19:47And understanding at what price point they would switch
19:51from gas back to biomass, for example.
19:53So, we have a detailed understanding of what households use
19:57what kind of fuels.
20:00But we had to do a little bit of work
20:01to understand the travel modes for different households,
20:05at different income levels.
20:06Who travels by bus and by rail?
20:08And who has a car?
20:09In order to determine the indirect impact of air pollution
20:14through the transport means of the vehicles that they use.
20:18And the same with electricity,
20:19depending upon how much electricity households use.
20:22The power plant in GAINS would tell us the extent to which
20:27they cause air pollution in power plants,
20:29through their use of appliances
20:31and electronic gadgets at home.
20:34So, that was the two main direct sources.
20:37The scope one and scope two,
20:39as I mentioned.
20:40And then the scope three,
20:41is this household footprinting technique.
20:44Which is a very large number crunching exercise.
20:47Where you have to link household consumption surveys
20:51and map them into a certain industry standard category
20:54called COICOP used in Europe.
20:57And match them to the sectors in the industry
21:00and put output database,
21:03match prices and other fun stuff,
21:06that allows you to create a total embodied energy
21:08that's induced by every unit of consumption
21:10from different products and services.
21:12So like I said,
21:14this is a methodology we'd already developed before.
21:17And the idea was just to link this
21:20to the air pollution model.
21:23One last thing on methodology,
21:24just to provide some sense of the results.
21:27This is a slightly old,
21:28but illustrative graph of the average air pollution
21:31across the country.
21:33And the point is,
21:34that location doesn't matter.
21:37You're seeing here that the average concentrations in India
21:40tend to increase as you go northward.
21:43And this is because of temperature inversions, by and large.
21:49And also because there is a very high concentration
21:51of polluting power plants.
21:54So, mainly the coal belt is largely in the north
21:56and the Northeast.
21:58And so, the combination of those make it unlikely
22:00for people who live in the north.
22:02And so they,
22:02you can imagine that the distribution of people,
22:04if it's the extent to which people are rural and poor,
22:08and live in the north,
22:09they would face a higher level of pollution,
22:11all as equal.
22:13You also can see that the urban centers,
22:15the little dots spread across the map
22:17are also much higher concentrations of pollution,
22:20because of additional sources of pollution in the cities
22:23and in the urban areas.
22:25And that also tells us that the distribution of population
22:28in different urban areas also,
22:31and their income distribution reflects,
22:34or has an impact on who ultimately faces mortality
22:36from all of these combined sources of air pollution.
22:42We did create this pollution inequity index,
22:45which is mortality risk per unit
22:48of contribution to PM concentrations.
22:52It's a bit of a mouthful.
22:53And perhaps not intuitive.
22:55But the reason why we did that
22:56was we can then compare this index
22:58at different income levels.
22:59In order to look at the relative injustice,
23:02if you will,
23:03for different income groups.
23:04The extent to which they are facing higher mortality
23:07per unit of their contribution
23:08to the source of that mortality.
23:11So, that's what we used as well
23:13to try and illustrate the extent of inequity.
23:17Okay, so now let me move to the results.
23:21Let me start with discussing the contributions,
23:24without looking at impacts yet.
23:26So, let me start with the leftmost average bar.
23:29This itself was insightful.
23:30So, this is the total average PM concentrations
23:34and their broad source categories.
23:36So, the lowest one is household cooking fuels.
23:39So, this is primarily solid fuel burning.
23:45And this is already something that we learned new.
23:48So, we generally have the impression
23:49that 30 to 50% of PM2.5 in India,
23:54it comes from solid fuel burning.
23:57But if you look at this green bar,
23:58this is including scope two and scope three emissions.
24:02And, so this household consumption other than cooking
24:06and heating fuels,
24:08is actually a much higher than cookstoves.
24:13So in fact,
24:14it's about 40 to 60%
24:15just if you look at household consumption.
24:17So overall, the indirect household consumption
24:21actually is causing more overall pollution
24:23than does cookstoves alone.
24:26The other interesting thing,
24:27is to see that these non-household consumption.
24:32So, this is government expenditure
24:35called industrial manufacturing;
24:37things like defense,
24:39as well as capital formation.
24:41That's not included in household consumption,
24:43contributes a fair amount,
24:46of the order for a quarter of total air pollution.
24:48And then a big chunk of air pollution
24:49is from natural sources,
24:51like dust, as well as trans-boundary sources.
24:53So, even from Pakistan, for example.
24:55So, all the solutions that we have got,
24:58that I'm gonna show you in this scenarios
24:59can really only addressed 50 to 60% of air pollution
25:03in the country.
25:04So, there's a limit to which we can reduce mortality
25:07just from this study;
25:08from reducing air pollution from household consumption
25:12in particular.
25:14Now, if you look at the right hand side,
25:15we're showing you by decile
25:16with increasing income moving to the right.
25:19The different sources of air pollution
25:21and their contributions.
25:23So you can,
25:24it's intuitive to know that the lowest income households,
25:28their biggest contributor is cooking and heating.
25:32Whereas if you look at the top decile,
25:34they don't cook with biomass very much.
25:37You still have some biomass use
25:39because there are some rural folks
25:40who still fall into the top decile.
25:45Even though it's dominated by urban residents.
25:47And you see that there's,
25:49electricity usage is significant.
25:51So that's power plant emissions.
25:52And passenger transport,
25:54which is very high because people all own cars over here.
25:57And so their individual per capita emissions have very high.
26:01What was very surprising to us,
26:02is the extent in the contribution of food and food waste.
26:05This is food production.
26:07Things like fertilizer use and nitrous oxide and ammonia.
26:11As well as the fossil use for machinery and transport,
26:13and agriculture,
26:14is all reflected in the light green.
26:16Whereas the dark green is reflecting food waste.
26:20That's the burning of food waste,
26:22and that's thrown out in the open.
26:24As well as the municipal waste burning for incineration.
26:29That's a significant contributor
26:31and we attribute waste to households in proportion
26:34to their consumption of food.
26:36And that's why this is proportionate
26:38to the food related air pollution.
26:40And finally,
26:41the other stuff in terms of products and services;
26:43actually it was surprising to us
26:45to be at a smaller contributor than we thought.
26:50So clearly, there's here a trade-off.
26:51So, low-income households are contributing to air pollution
26:54through their cookstove use.
26:55And high-income households are contributing
26:57through their other indirect use;
26:59food, transport, electricity and other stuff.
27:03Just a quick look at urban and rural differences.
27:06So, if you look per decile.
27:09This is the contribution of urban households
27:11to the deciles in aggregate.
27:14And, clearly you see that the highest deciles
27:16tend to contribute the most from urban areas
27:19because rich people tend to be in urban areas in India.
27:22That's really what we're showing.
27:23Whereas in rural areas,
27:25you tend to have fewer people contributing
27:26to the higher deciles.
27:29The other thing is to,
27:30if you look at it per capita basis;
27:32so not looking at the aggregate contribution to deciles.
27:34You notice that in urban areas,
27:36that by and large,
27:37as you go,
27:38as you increase your income level,
27:40your overall contribution to air pollution
27:42isn't increasing very much.
27:43It's really in the highest decile
27:46where you see the biggest change in consumption levels.
27:49And therefore, the biggest impact on air pollution.
27:52Whereas in rural areas,
27:53there's a steady increase in air pollution.
27:56Despite the fact that there is a reduction
28:00in cookstove use.
28:01And, so that tells you that the consumption is offsetting
28:04the reduction in the air pollution from cookstoves.
28:06Even in rural areas,
28:08where cookstove use dominates.
28:11So, now we move a little bit more to the impact side.
28:14So, now we're looking at contributions versus mortality.
28:16If you just focus on the black lines here.
28:22The highest deciles are to the right.
28:23So, the contribution curve is the one sloping upward.
28:27And you see that higher income groups
28:29contribute significantly more to PM concentrations
28:34than do lower income groups;
28:35by a factor of three or so.
28:38And if you look at the dotted black line,
28:40that is showing you the mortality impacts.
28:43So, the lowest income group based on mortality impact
28:46for about 200 premature deaths per a hundred thousand.
28:50This is ambient air pollution alone.
28:53Compared to less than one.
28:55That's a factor of four difference in terms of the mortality
28:58going in the opposite direction.
29:00So you can see here,
29:01this is a kind of headline figure
29:03in terms of the inequity that households are
29:07in low-income decile are contributing so much less,
29:10but facing so much more.
29:13And this is from all different sources.
29:14This is separate from the indoor air pollution
29:16they face from cookstoves.
29:17This is just looking at ambient.
29:21And the blue and the red lines are showing you
29:22the rural and urban households in particular.
29:26And you'll see that they converge.
29:31So, the rural households are dominating
29:32the low-income households,
29:34and the urban households are dominating
29:35the high-income households,
29:36as I showed you earlier.
29:41(table creaking)
29:46Now, we want you to look and isolate
29:47some of the different sources of pollution.
29:49So, we developed two scenarios.
29:51Which we posed as sort of clean up scenarios.
29:54So, you have the clean cookstoves scenario,
29:57where holding everything else constant.
30:00We switched everybody to clean cookstoves.
30:03Which means either electric cookstoves,
30:06whose power plants were all green.
30:07So, they add literally no emissions from the stoves.
30:12But we kept everything else constant.
30:15And the other scenario,
30:17we implemented end-of-pipe solutions
30:20on all other sectors,
30:21except cookstoves.
30:23To the maximum extent of available technologies globally.
30:27So, actually we used Germany.
30:30And, so technology frontier in Germany.
30:33For example, Euro 6 norms for vehicles,
30:34If I remember correctly.
30:35So, very, very stringent controls,
30:39not really considering costs in this particular study
30:42and applied those.
30:43So, what this allowed us to do,
30:47really was to isolate the air pollution impacts
30:50and their distribution from these two sets of sources.
30:54So, in the clean cook source scenario,
30:56when I show you the results in red;
30:57you will see the impact,
30:59the distributional impact of the scope two
31:02and scope three sources.
31:04Which are dominated by higher income groups.
31:07Whereas in the MCO scenario,
31:08which you gonna see in blue;
31:11you're gonna isolate the distributive impact
31:12of dirty cookstoves through ambient air pollution.
31:18So, first I'm showing you what I think is already a pattern
31:21from the previous slides.
31:22Which is this the contributions.
31:23So, their reduction that you get from the clean cookstoves
31:29are shown in red.
31:30And from the end-of-pipe in the rest of the economy in blue.
31:34And you see that the contributions reduce the most
31:38for lower-income groups,
31:40when you impose clean cookstoves.
31:43Which makes sense because they are the higher users
31:44of dirty cookstoves.
31:46And like I mentioned,
31:47the rural households and the rich rural households
31:50still use biomass to some extent.
31:53So, you still have a little bit of that.
31:54But then if you look at the contributions
31:57from the other sectors,
31:58because lower income households don't consume a lot of stuff
32:00in terms of electrical gadgets or they don't have cars.
32:03And they don't consume a lot of stuff.
32:06Their reduction that they face
32:09in terms of contributions,
32:12not face the reductions in their contributions
32:14is lower than the reductions in contributions
32:16for higher income groups who consume a lot.
32:20Now, if we look at the impact side.
32:20This is the key insight in this study.
32:25The avoided mortality from the clean cookstove scenario
32:28is predictably much higher for lower income households.
32:33They're located in areas where there's more cookstove users.
32:35And so, the ambient air quality is much worse
32:37from the cookstoves.
32:38So, that's predictable.
32:40But what was not expected,
32:41is that the contribution from the ambient,
32:45from the other sources;
32:46industry, transport, electricity,
32:49also falls disproportionately
32:50on these lower income households.
32:53And that's in contrast to the contribution.
32:56So this is the impact side,
32:59and this is the contribution side.
32:59And you clearly see how the,
33:02it's the other consumption that is disproportionately
33:05affecting lower income households
33:07from ambient air pollution.
33:09And that is really the main insight from the study
33:11that we were not expecting.
33:12And as I mentioned,
33:14this has to do with where points offices are located,
33:16in relation to low-income households.
33:18It has something to do with the differences
33:20in urban and rural populations across the country.
33:23As well as this temperature inversion in the north.
33:25All of these contribute to this imbalance.
33:29If you look at this pollution inequity index,
33:33it may seem a little counterintuitive.
33:35But the red dots are showing you the inequity
33:41in the clean cooking scenario.
33:43Which means this is the inequity in just the other sources.
33:47And that's why you see here.
33:49The pollution inequity is much higher
33:52in this scenario where you have clean cookstoves.
33:56Because the ambient sources of their pollution
33:58are causing higher mortality disproportionately
34:00on lower income groups.
34:01Whereas the pollution inequity index is not as steep
34:05in the case where you clean up the rest of the economy
34:07and leave dirty cookstoves.
34:11So, that's really the key,
34:11the point here.
34:12Now, I wanted to make sure that we put it into context,
34:17mortality associated with ambient,
34:19compared to indoor air pollution.
34:21Because it still remains the case,
34:23that indoor air pollution really is the biggest problem
34:25in terms of mortality from air pollution.
34:28(creaking sound)
34:29Is the order of magnitude higher deaths
34:30that are caused by indoor air pollution?
34:32As you all know,
34:33the concentration levels are associated
34:37with cookstoves indoor.
34:38We take a 300 micrograms or more per meter cube.
34:42And so therefore,
34:44if you just look at the overall introduction in mortality
34:48from clean cookstoves,
34:50accounting also for indoor air pollution.
34:52Of course, you see that the lower income groups
34:55benefit the most.
34:57But that's really mostly from the indoor air pollution.
35:00The inequity from the outdoor air pollution in blue,
35:04you're still seeing as falling disproportionately
35:05on lower income households.
35:07You're just seeing that the in absolute terms,
35:11it's still a lot less than indoor air pollution
35:13related deaths.
35:14So, we wanted to make sure that we're not saying that
35:18clean cookstoves aren't as important to clean up,
35:20due to indoor air pollution.
35:21In fact, they still remain the most important
35:24mitigation measure.
35:27So, I just wanted to put that into context.
35:29(button clicking)
35:30So, just to conclude,
35:34the cookstove contributions,
35:37we found some interesting insights.
35:39Namely, that the contribution to ambient air pollution
35:41is 40% of that,
35:43of the other sources;
35:44that is triggered by household consumption.
35:47And that's ignoring transplant resources, natural sources,
35:50as well as government related pollution.
35:54As well as capital formation.
35:59So, that itself is an insight that we need to think about
36:02the household contributions to air pollution
36:03from other sources.
36:05We found that lower income households
36:07tend to face a disproportionate mortality risk burden
36:12from ambient air pollution.
36:14And this has to do with the location of point sources
36:17around the country
36:18and the distribution of populations.
36:20But, despite all of that,
36:23really clean cookstoves are an important mitigation measure
36:26because of the impact on indoor air pollution.
36:30But overall,
36:30I think the importance of this study
36:32is really to think about in the broader context,
36:35indoor air pollution-
36:36um, sorry.
36:38consumption as a means of mitigation of air pollution.
36:42There's a growing interest
36:43in the climate mitigation literature
36:44to focus more on demand side options.
36:46And therefore, it's important to think about the co-benefits
36:49from sustainable consumption as well.
36:51And you don't really think about that very much.
36:53But there's a broader theme here.
36:56That we tend to export pollution
36:57associated with our consumption in so many different ways.
37:00Climate change is an obvious one where we export them
37:02to future generations.
37:03And from richer countries to poorer countries.
37:06That's been shown by the IPCC.
37:08Time and again,
37:10we see that with waste, of course.
37:11We export our waste to different countries as well.
37:13But we're also seeing that in terms of air pollution,
37:16more and more,
37:17now across countries and within countries as well.
37:20And so this the main result from this study.
37:24And so lastly,
37:25I wanna point out on the methodological side.
37:27I think that this study is generalizable
37:28in terms of the approach.
37:30This could be applied to really any economy.
37:33If you have the analytical framework
37:35to calculate your footprints.
37:38And you have an air pollution model
37:40with an atmospheric dispersion.
37:42It's possible to do this kind of analysis
37:44and really have any context,
37:46just by replacing the data.
37:48And I think that would be something
37:49that would be useful to do.
37:50As I mentioned,
37:52just to think about sustainable consumption more broadly.
37:55So, thank you for your attention.
37:57And now, I will be joining you live
37:59in order to answer questions that you may have.
38:01Thanks very much.
38:03<v ->Thanks, Dr. Rao,</v>
38:05for this very wonderful talk.
38:08And actually,
38:10all your questions, Dr. Rao
38:12as we seen them.
38:14And, as you may find out.
38:16During his talk,
38:18some of your questions has been already answered.
38:20Like, the DTR zone,
38:22the pollution inequity effects,
38:23or whether his approach could be applied
38:25to other different countries or settings.
38:29But collectively, I think your questions
38:35are falling within the two things.
38:39We can ask Dr. Rao to answer them live.
38:42And in the meantime,
38:43for our,
38:45the other online audiences,
38:46if you do have any questions,
38:48please feel free to post your questions in the chat box
38:51and we will do the Q & A as well.
38:56So, Dr. Rao,
39:00if you,
39:01I see you here.
39:02So, if you can unmute yourself,
39:06then maybe we can start the Q & A section.
39:11<v ->Sure. Hi.</v>
39:12I hope you can hear me okay?
39:14<v ->Yeah, we hear you very well.</v> <v Dr. Rao>Great.</v>
39:15<v ->Thanks for joining us this way on the (indistinct)</v>
39:19So, I think before the whole audience can ask questions,
39:25we can first start with the students,
39:28the questions they have.
39:30The first type of questions,
39:32is generally about relationship between air pollution
39:35in the country and some of the detailed questions,
39:38for example,
39:39students are wondering,
39:41what's the link between the global versus local actions?
39:45And among the different countries;
39:48Do development rise play in a role in determining
39:52the inequity in the air pollution exposure.
39:56And also, in terms of the content of impact.
40:00Data that also recent COP26,
40:03address those issues indirectly
40:07or maybe completely ignore them.
40:09So, Dr. Rao?
40:13<v ->Yeah, that's a very interesting set of questions</v>
40:16around the link between climate change and air pollution.
40:17And kind of a global,
40:20the global imperatives versus the local imperatives
40:24of feeding up air pollution.
40:25What's interesting about the cookstoves,
40:26is that the biomass cookstoves
40:29have a lot of their own emissions;
40:33short-term forces that cause climate change.
40:36And they're extremely inefficient.
40:38So, when we switch over to even gas-based stoves
40:41or LPG stoves;
40:42even though gas is produced in fossil resources
40:47and causes CO2 emissions.
40:50The net effect on climate is actually almost negligible.
40:52Because the efficiency of gas stoves is so much higher
40:54and you avoid all of the other short-term climate forces.
40:58The net effect is almost negligible.
41:00So in other words,
41:02to switch over to LPG stoves,
41:04which is currently the most popular substitute
41:08is not a climate issue.
41:10Which is good,
41:11because people often saw that as a potential conflict.
41:15If you will, to electric stoves,
41:16which I do think is the long-term solution.
41:18Initially in India,
41:20because we have a coal dominant electric sector.
41:22It would be an increase in emissions,
41:26CO2 emissions in the short-term.
41:29But in the long-term,
41:29as you decarbonize the electric sector,
41:31of course, the idea is that the electric stoves
41:33will be zero carbon.
41:35So, that is the immediate impact of cookstoves and climate.
41:41Broadly, this topic is not really addressed so much
41:43in the sort of co-benefits
41:45that richer people tend to look much more at transport;
41:48because that's a clear co-benefit,
41:51reducing air pollution and reducing emissions
41:53in decarbonizing transport.
41:55So, I do think cookstoves need to be brought
41:58into the equation a little bit.
41:59Because there's a strong development core benefit
42:02of pursuing cookstoves.
42:04And potentially, a climate benefit in the long-term
42:06with electric cookstoves.
42:09And I don't think there has been any focus on this
42:10in the negotiations.
42:12We far removed from it really.
42:14It doesn't really factor in.
42:17But I do think,
42:18a lot of the climate policy in developing countries
42:21needs to be looked at as development first.
42:24That is, looking at development policies entry point,
42:27and doing that in a manner that's climate friendly.
42:29In that kind of a conversation,
42:31looking at cookstoves is really important.
42:35(cricket chirping)
42:35<v Facilitator>Thanks, Dr. Rao.</v>
42:37The second type of question is,
42:40you have shown there is very vast differences
42:44in terms of the deciles
42:49regarding the lowest of income (indistinct) contribute,
42:52the less, but they suffer the most from the air pollution
42:55related mortality.
42:57And so, the students are wondering.
42:59Are there any policies to effectively check the status quo?
43:04So, how can we reduce this inequity?
43:08Particularly, through consumption.
43:11Examples, these students are wondering,
43:13what are the most cost effective and last floating options
43:17that work?
43:18How do we incentivize the behavioral changes
43:22for people to,
43:24for example, you mentioned cookstoves.
43:25How can we incentivize people to use more clean cookstoves
43:32and a whole,
43:33also you showed that for the high-income population;
43:37accurately, the food and food waste
43:41has the kind of the large contribution to the air pollution.
43:45So, how can we reduce this urban food waste?
43:50And then lastly,
43:52What are the key policy challenges
43:54that you could have going on?
43:56Do you know whether these policy
43:58has been achieved on so far?
44:04<v ->Yeah.</v>
44:05So, the policy or the situation,
44:06as with a lot of climate issues.
44:08There's a big disconnect between reality
44:10and what we see in our models and analysis.
44:13So, seeing air pollution as a consumption issue,
44:15is very far removed from policy.
44:18I think air pollution policies are focused a lot on,
44:23like I said,
44:23in end-of-pipe solutions.
44:25And those are really still the main focus of policy.
44:29Cookstoves in particular,
44:31even just simply coming up with a cost-effective
44:35alternatives has been very, very difficult.
44:37As I mentioned in India,
44:40the main substitute has been
44:41LPG, liquid petroleum gas stoves.
44:44And there has been a very successful experiment
44:46in the last few years by the Modi government.
44:49Where 15 million households
44:51actually were given free cookstoves and one cylinder.
44:56And that was seen as a major success,
44:58especially in urban areas.
45:00But, we found from research subsequent to that program,
45:05that people didn't end up using the gas stove so much.
45:08And the reason is that,
45:09even though they got a free stove,
45:11the fuel was too expensive.
45:13And the fuel has not been subsidized enough.
45:16In fact, the prices have been liberalized
45:18over the last decade.
45:19So, that's the problem.
45:22We need to subsidize both the fuel and the stove.
45:25If you really want a sustained shift over to other fuels.
45:29Because people may be familiar that people stack stoves,
45:32they have multiple stoves;
45:35and they use the one that's cheapest.
45:36So, the policy solutions are not successful yet.
45:41Let alone, look at consumption.
45:44In the area of consumption,
45:45I think behavioral change to reduce consumption;
45:47I mean, we can think about that as being extremely difficult
45:50in any context.
45:52What's more important maybe from the study,
45:54is to focus on food and food waste
45:56as an air pollution issue.
45:58Which is not often viewed that way.
46:00So, thinking about cleaning up waste;
46:02not only for recycling,
46:04but to control how it's disposed off
46:06and to prevent its burning,
46:08or doing controlled burning.
46:10Having incineration in an organized manner in cities,
46:13where they have controls for pollution.
46:16That, I think is probably the insight that's most important
46:19from this study with regards to policy more broadly.
46:25<v Facilitator>Thanks Dr. Rao for sharing that insight</v>
46:26and expanding.
46:28We do have a few minutes left at that.
46:31Any of our,
46:32also online audience want to ask a question,
46:34please feel free to post the question on the chat box.
46:37Or if you want to ask directly,
46:41feel free to unmute yourself.
46:44And before we move on,
46:48I even had another question regarding this type of research
46:53that Dr. Rao,
46:54you showed us that the very drastic differences
47:00in the low-income country,
47:04low-income communities versus the high-income communities
47:06in terms of the inequity.
47:09So, this type of Pollution Equity Index.
47:16You mentioned that it can be applied to different countries.
47:20So, I'm particularly wondering,
47:21that do you have any plans for future work,
47:24like, focusing on not just India but in the United States?
47:27Because, one,
47:30the recent researchers found that,
47:32actually the food production consumption also contributes,
47:39is also a major contribution to the ambient air pollution
47:42due to the house impacts in the United States as well.
47:45So, I'm thinking about,
47:47if you can apply this Pollution Equity Index
47:51to the United States,
47:52what could be some of the major messages that you can wave
47:58for policy makers?
48:00<v ->Yeah, actually there is a research group.</v>
48:04I had mentioned it,
48:05I think in part of this talk.
48:06A Tesa metal paper, it's in Phoenix.
48:10I believe Phoenix,
48:11where they have done a very nice study
48:14that does this relationship between consumption
48:17and air pollution.
48:19And so, we do have research groups
48:22and the data are available in the U.S.
48:24to do this analysis.
48:25The missing piece there,
48:26in that study was to take exposures
48:29at a especially granular level
48:31and convert that into mortality risk.
48:34So, that's the part that we'd need to be done.
48:35And then, one can look at pollution equity,
48:38not just in terms of exposure and consumption comparisons;
48:41But mortality consumption.
48:43And I think that would be a useful step to do.
48:47I don't personally, have access to those data.
48:50I'm on energy side.
48:52I am working in fact,
48:54on residential energy in the U.S.
48:57at a detailed spatial granularity,
49:00with spatial granularity.
49:01And it would be an opportunity to team up
49:02with air pollution folks to...
49:06Kyle is an example of it himself.
49:08(chuckles)
49:08To look at that kind of inequity
49:11or looking at mortality risks for specific communities
49:14and comparing it to consumption levels.
49:16And I think that is certainly something that's worth doing,
49:20and possible for us to collaborate and do in the future.
49:23<v Facilitator>Excellent, yeah.</v>
49:24I think that'll be a very emerging field
49:29for a lot of researchers like you.
49:32Working in handy site for researchers
49:34in the air pollution field
49:36and for our students and all our audiences working
49:39maybe in the environment of agricultural food.
49:41So, thank you, Dr. Rao.
49:43I don't see there's,
49:47but there's one question.
49:51<v ->I see one more question in the chat.</v>
49:53<v Facilitator>Yes.</v>
49:54Okay, Richter Autry. <v ->Yeah.</v>
49:57<v Facilitator>So, Richter Autry;</v>
49:58Do you think it would be more efficient to enrol
50:00with the private sector in bringing about a faster
50:04and more efficient change?
50:08<v ->Mm.</v>
50:10Um...
50:12I think the private sector will be undoubtedly necessary
50:14for the implementation of these policies.
50:15They will be the provider of these technologies,
50:18for sure.
50:19I think, it also would require
50:22as much government regulation as well to guide investments.
50:27I think for example,
50:28with norms for automobiles standards.
50:34Those are generally regulated wherever you go.
50:38It's something that has to be regulated
50:40'cause there's not much incentive.
50:43There's no private benefit associated
50:44with the air pollution reduction.
50:46And so, it has to be guided by policy.
50:49But I think,
50:50there could be,
50:51it has to be asked whether there's enough incentive
50:53for the providers of those technologies
50:56to enter the market for them.
50:58So, that definitely is an issue.
50:59I think with cookstoves,
51:02it's not necessarily an issue.
51:04There's plenty of market incentive to provide,
51:06to sell these stoves.
51:08The government has to just subsidize them.
51:10Make them affordable.
51:12And for other end-of-pipe solutions;
51:15cleaning up waste, for example.
51:16that is another externality.
51:18It's hard to see just the private sector leading that.
51:23But I do think they have to be involved
51:24in terms of providing the technologies.
51:26But, I think regulation is really the answer
51:29in terms of making a shift today.
51:34<v Facilitator>Thank you, Dr. Rao.</v>
51:35Yes, I think this speaks to the very core
51:40of what the purpose of the caption the house constitution,
51:46is to train the next generation of leaders
51:50who might be the policy makers
51:51than to have us tackle on this issue.
51:53So, thank you for Vanessa.
51:56And thank you so much for answering the Q & A.
51:59I don't think there'll be other questions.
52:01And so, maybe we can check out.
52:03We can have five minutes earlier.
52:04And thank you all for joining us,
52:07in person and online.
52:09Thank you.
52:09I think we can give a round of applause for Dr. Rao.
52:13<v ->Thank you so much for tolerating this suboptimal</v>
52:16form of communication,
52:17but I appreciate it.
52:20Bye-bye.
52:21(indistinct)