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

January 11, 2022

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)