Jakarta – The climate crisis and air pollution are often considered two different issues, however the two are very much correlated. The release of greenhouse gas emissions into the air is always accompanied by local pollutant emissions.
The CEO of Landscape Indonesia, Agus P Sari explained in a webinar entitled ‘Climate Change and Air Quality’, Wednesday (28/4). Inhalable air pollutants or particulate matters come not only in diameters of 10 microns (PM10), but also smaller. “So, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is actually the same as reducing local pollutant emissions. The more serious we are in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the cleaner our air will be,” he said.
Sari said, for example when carbon dioxide (CO2) gas is released from motor vehicle exhaust, carbon monoxide (CO) gas will always follow. Likewise with NOx which consists of nitric gas (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), surface ozone and dust always follow.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports raised the alarm, but many argue that humans will adapt to these changes. However, the IPCC found that the speed with which the world’s ecosystems are changing due to global warming is faster than humans can adapt. “In the three IPCC reports there is good news, that we actually already have a way to mitigate it, but the opportunity is narrow so we have to do it now,” he said.
Sari, who is part of the IPCC review team, reminded that the impacts of climate disasters are increasingly being felt. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, part of the Sixth Review Report (AR6) by IPCC Working Group III entitled “Climate Change Mitigation” was just launched in April 2022. This report shows that the earth is on a fast track to climate catastrophe.
The report includes mitigation efforts that must be done to reduce the rate of global temperature rise that will bring the world to a warming of 2.7ºC. This is considered to be highly threatening especially in disaster-prone areas such as Indonesia. (Hartatik)
