One of Nairobi’s top pollutants is visible five days a week. While approaching the city from Mombasa Road, Thika Road and Waiyaki Way, most of the city is covered by smog for several hours daily. The smog only clears during the weekend and on public holidays.
An estimated 18,700 people die every year in Kenya as a result of acute lower respiratory infections and other health complications arising from air pollution, data from BreathLife shows. Out of these deaths, about 5,535 are children below the age of five.
Alternative data estimates show that 521 lives will be lost in Kenya’s capital this year from air pollution. The estimates from IQAir further indicate that Nairobi will lose about Sh8.9 billion this year as a result of air pollution.
These estimates are based on an algorithm that combines data inputs to calculate costs throughout a calendar year. The model estimates the cost by factoring in real-time data from ground-level air quality sensors, scientific risk models and population and health information.
Cost of air pollution
The cost estimator was developed by IQAir — a Swiss-based air quality technology company founded in 1963 — and Greenspace Southeast Asia, to calculate the health and economic costs of air pollution in some of the world’s biggest cities using the IQAir global air quality database.
At 17 micrograms per cubic metre of air, the level of pollutants in the city’s outdoor air is 70 per cent above the World Health Organisation recommended maximum level.
How does Nairobi rank among other global cities in terms of air pollution? Kenya’s capital may be choking under air pollution, but it falls short of the catastrophic levels of pollution experienced elsewhere in the world.
Indian cities appear to the worst affected. Out of the world’s 30 most air-polluted cities, 21 are in India, including New Delhi, Kanpur, Meerut and Lucknow.
Sometimes in April and May last year, a joke emerged on Twitter where users tweeted about being able to see various landmarks around the world. In Kenya, some said they could see the snow-capped Mt Kenya from Westlands, Nairobi. It was at the height of the first national lockdown following the outbreak of Covid-19.
Clean air
Industries had stopped operations, aircraft had been grounded and movement was minimal as most Kenyans worked from home. Coupled with the long rains at the time, the air in Nairobi was the cleanest it had been in a few decades.
Like Nairobi, most cities globally reported a significant reduction in greenhouse emissions during this period. There were even suggestions that the Covid-19 crisis had slowed the rate of climate change.
Experts felt it was too early to celebrate. For two reasons. Foremost, the reduction of emissions has been almost negligible, data from various sources shows.
“In both the short and long term, the pandemic will have less effect on efforts to tackle climate change,” argues Piers Forster, a professor of physical climate change at Leeds University.
Prof Forster says that by 2030, global temperatures will be a paltry 0.01 per cent lower owing to (reduced human activity due to) Covid-19.
“The temporary halt to normal life (lockdowns) is not only not enough to stop climate change, it is also not sustainable.’’ Secondly, carbon emissions started rising again in the second half of 2020 as most economies opened and people resumed work.
One of the main propositions to reduce air pollution in Nairobi has been getting more people to use public transport as opposed to private means. BY DAILY NATION