[The World Health
Organization report, released in Geneva, coincided on
Tuesday with the publication of a World Bank study in Beijing
concerning China’s drive to urbanize. The study, issued with the Development
Research Center of China’s State Council, argued that many of the country’s
cities had been allowed to sprawl wastefully and called for better-planned,
denser cities instead.]
By Andrew Jacobs and Ian Johnson
 |
A tourist boat navigated
through a haze in the Guangdong Province
of China this month.
The country’s rapid urbanization was cited as contributing
to pollution. Credit Alex Lee/Reuters
|
Around the world,
one out of every eight deaths was tied to dirty air, the agency determined —
twice as many as previously estimated. Its report identified air pollution as
the world’s single biggest environmental health risk.
“The big news is
that we have a better understanding of how large a role air pollution plays in
strokes and coronary heart attacks,” said Dr. Carlos Dora, coordinator of
public health and the environment at the organization. “Given the astronomical
costs, countries need to find a way to prevent these noncommunicable diseases.”
The report found
that those who are most vulnerable live in a wide arc of Asia stretching from
Japan and China in the northeast to India in the south.
Exposure to smoke
from cooking fires means that poor women are especially at risk, the agency
said
Indoor air
pollutants loomed as the largest threat, involved in 4.3 million deaths in
2012, while toxic air outdoors figured in 3.7 million deaths, the agency said.
Many deaths were attributed to both.
Breakneck
urbanization in the developing nations of Asia, especially China, is a major
force contributing to the air pollution problem.
The World Health
Organization report, released in Geneva, coincided on
Tuesday with the publication of a World Bank study in Beijing
concerning China’s drive to urbanize. The study, issued with the Development
Research Center of China’s State Council, argued that many of the country’s
cities had been allowed to sprawl wastefully and called for better-planned,
denser cities instead.
The bank estimated
that China will spend $5.3 trillion on urban infrastructure over the next 15
years, as it plans to move 100 million farmers to cities and to better integrate
another 100 million who already live in urban areas but lack full access to
schools and hospitals.
The study said the
Chinese government could save $1.4 trillion of that cost — or about 15 percent
of the country’s total economic output last year — by planning its cities more
rationally.
One way would be to
halt the current practice of expropriating farmers’ land and selling it to
private developers, a method that helps raise money but leads to wasteful
sprawl.
The bank said that
building more densely in city centers would be more efficient; for example,
Guangzhou, with 8.5 million residents, could accommodate 4.2 million more in
the same space if it were as densely developed as Seoul, South Korea.
Based on current
trends, the study said, Chinese cities in the next decade will gobble up land
equal in area to the Netherlands, leading to longer commutes, higher energy
consumption and continued high levels of air pollution.
Sprawl will cost
China $300 billion a year in premature deaths, birth defects and other
health-related problems, the study said.
The study also
emphasized the unfairness of the current system, with farmers receiving only 20
percent of their land’s value.
That has led to
chronic unrest and, the bank said, has increased the disparities in income
between rich and poor. Some of the bank’s recommendations were found in a plan released this month, which included proposals to better integrate existing
residents.
China has said it
wants one billion of its people, about 60 percent of the population, to be
living in cities by 2020 — up from 54 percent now. But the bank said
urbanization is moving much faster than that, and so are the problems it
creates.
Sri Mulyani Indrawati, managing director of the World Bank, said
in an interview that to follow the bank’s recommendations, China would need
major changes in how cities finance new infrastructure.
Currently, local
governments cannot levy taxes, so they rely on land expropriation instead. The
Chinese leadership has good intentions to overhaul the system, but no specific
plan yet, Ms. Indrawati said: “I don’t think that, at the moment in this case,
there is clarity of when you are going to achieve what.”
The reports by the
World Bank and World Health Organization each said the burning of noxious fuels
— coal, wood and animal waste — was among the greatest threats to human health.
In India, the health
agency estimated, 700 million people rely on biomass fuels like agricultural
waste for indoor cooking.
Kirk R. Smith of the
University of California, Berkeley, measured pollutants from smoky indoor
ovens, and said they were comparable to burning 400 cigarettes an hour.
“Unfortunately, we
have not made a lot of progress in the past decades, and household air
pollution is still the largest single health risk factor for Indian women and
girls,” the health agency quoted Dr. Smith as saying.
In China, the bigger
culprit is coal, which supplies two-thirds of the country’s energy.
A study published
last year in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciencesestimated that people in northern China, where the air pollution
is worst, lived an average of five fewer years than those in the south.
Alarmed by the
worsening smog and the rising discontent among urban residents, Chinese leaders have taken note, promising to reduce
reliance on coal and introduce cleaner-burning motor fuels and more energy-efficient
construction methods. Prime Minister Li Keqiang declared a “war against pollution” in his annual report to the nation this
month.
Though the winter
heating season has ended, Beijing was still suffused with a familiar acrid haze
on Tuesday. The United States Embassy’s air monitor rated the air as “very
unhealthy,” a level at which outdoor activity should be avoided.
Dr. Dora of the
health agency said he hoped the stark mortality figures released on Tuesday
would prompt people and governments alike to confront the scourge of filthy air
with greater urgency.
“What’s needed is
collective action,” he said. “The air you are polluting is the same air you
breathe.”
Amy
Qin contributed reporting.
