European and Central Asian Actions on Air Quality

Air pollution is the single greatest environmental risk factor for premature death globally. In response to the global threat from air pollution, the United Nations Environment Programme have since 2014 increased its engagement in air quality issues. One of the UNEP engagements on air quality is to make a re-occurring global summary of the air quality problem, its trends, and policies and instruments implemented to reduce it. The first global summary was published in 2016 and the second global summary is published in Autumn 2021. In support of the global summary, there are six regional reports (Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, North America, and West Asia). 

The purpose with the current European and Central Asian report is to provide detailed information on emission trends and European actions on air quality during 2016-2020, thereby providing detailed information in support to the second UNEP global summary of policies and programmes to reduce air pollution. The pollutants in focus for the report are sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, nonmethane volatile organic compounds, ammonia, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5). To a minor extent the report also presents an update on trends and policies for emissions of arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. 

Even though air pollution problems are more severe in other regions they still cause problems in the pan-European region, despite much progress since the peak pollution years of the 1970-ies and 1980-ies. In 2018, some 417,000 premature fatalities per year occurred in Europe due to fine particulate matter in ambient air (European Environmental Agency 2020). Over the last winters, some cities in South Eastern Europe even experienced the worst air quality in the world.