Clean Air and Cool Planet - Cost-Effective Air Quality Management in Kazakhstan and its Impact on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Kazakhstan has committed to decarbonization over the next few decades and is also stepping up efforts to reduce air pollution that imposes high health costs on its citizens. Every year, 6,000–9,360 people in Kazakhstan are dying prematurely due to poor air quality. Kazakhstan’s Concept for Transition to Green Economy estimates that air pollution causes up to 6,000 premature deaths per year. Moreover, a 2020 study prepared by the World Bank estimates that annually, particulate matter (PM) pollution alone causes 9,360 premature deaths and costs the economy more than $7.1 billion.

International experience shows that the least-cost decarbonization and air pollution reduction strategies often differ in prioritizing pollutants, emission sources, and interventions. Pursued in isolation, climate policies may actually lead to a temporary increase in air pollution while air pollution policies alone can lock in carbon-intensive assets. Therefore, an integrated approach is needed to achieve the two objectives and to better understand interlinks—both synergies and trade-offs—between priority actions to rapidly improve air quality and to facilitate long-term decarbonization, particularly for the most polluted cities.
 

This report provides the first national-level approximation of priority sources and actions to address air pollution while maximizing synergies with climate mitigation and managing trade-off challenges. The study uses mean population exposure as the best approximation of air quality impact currently available. It is a scoping exercise to determine the least-cost priority measures to improve air quality and identify potential key synergies or trade-offs with climate change mitigation that can be managed through coherent application of air and climate protection policies.