Significant human health co-benefits of mitigating African emissions

Abstract

Future African aerosol emissions, and therefore air pollution levels and health outcomes, are uncertain and understudied. Understanding the future health impacts of pollutant emissions from this region is crucial. Here, this research gap is addressed by studying the range in the future health impacts of aerosol emissions from Africa in the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios, using the UK Earth System Model version 1 (UKESM1), along with human health concentration–response functions. The effects of Africa following a high-pollution aerosol pathway are studied relative to a low-pollution control, with experiments varying aerosol emissions from industry and biomass burning. Using present-day demographics, annual deaths within Africa attributable to ambient particulate matter are estimated to be lower by 150 000 (5th–95th confidence interval of 67 000–234 000) under stronger African aerosol mitigation by 2090, while those attributable to O3 are lower by 15 000 (5th–95th confidence interval of 9000–21 000). The particulate matter health benefits are realised predominantly within Africa, with the O3-driven benefits being more widespread – though still concentrated in Africa – due to the longer atmospheric lifetime of O3. These results demonstrate the important health co-benefits from future emission mitigation in Africa.