India 4th best placed to make most of counter-pollution steps

If global efforts were made to counter the health risks from toxic pollution and climate change, where should they concentrate? Low-income countries produce more toxic pollution, but in the process of building things consumed in high-income countries. At the same time, high-income countries are larger sources of climate risk but the impact is felt more in low-income countries.
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame and Princeton University have come up with an answer, identifying India as the fourth best placed to make use of mitigation efforts.
The study, published in the open-access journal ‘Plos One’ on Wednesday, analysed data from 176 countries on three aspects. “We developed the (list) by first assessing which countries are most at risk of the effects of toxic pollution and (of) climate. Then we looked at the institutional capacity or readiness of those countries to work against these risks in various ways,” Marcantonio said. “If a city, region, country, etc doesn’t have the institutional capacity to carry out a program then any money invested would potentially be wasted.”
Based on how these three factors interact, the study found Singapore best positioned in terms of return on effort and Libya, the worst. China came in third, after Rwanda, and Bhutan, sixth.
Data used in the study show India is at the highest risk from toxic pollution in the world (China is 14th) and placed 49th on the climate vulnerability index (China is 112th). It is also behind on “readiness” — at 110th of 176 countries. “Readiness is essentially a measure of the institutional capacity of a country to deal with the environmental risks they face. This doesn’t mean that they are doing it ... but just that the capacity exists to do it,” Marcantonio explained.
In India, the paper said, 23.5% annual deaths are associated with toxic pollution, meaning 2.3 million premature deaths every year. “China is the world’s leading GHG (greenhouse gas) emitter and India is on track to join it at the top in the future,” it added.
How, then, was India ranked fourth?
“Two of the countries in our top 5 … results, China and India, are substantially economically developed and hold prominent geopolitical power. They are the largest countries on the planet, representing over 2.5 billion people,” the paper said. So, the impact of any effort would be immediately amplified. “Despite these high rates, recently developed national policies and their resultant impacts suggest that the benefits of augmenting facilitation of such changes (via targeted policy efforts and incentives) are large and achievable,” the paper added. “There is strong potential for co-benefits from efforts focused on China and India in risk reduction for neighbouring countries and other countries at risk of climate change.”
Marcantonio said, “I think our work highlights the need for international policy schemes to address the unequal distribution of risk and the causes of those risks.”
The study bridges another important gap — on the interdependence of risks from toxic and non-toxic (GHG) pollution. “No prior study has analysed the joint global distribution of these risks nor offered evidence-based arguments for how to address the co-impact of both risks efficiently,” the paper said. In fact, there is no international comprehensive policy — like the Paris Climate Accords for GHGs — for toxic pollution at all. “But why is it that to date the overlap has been underexplored? To be honest I don’t know,” Marcantonio said. This observation was why the study was conducted.
“In my training as an environmental manager, I began to notice the separation of policies domestically here in the US and international environmental policies — some for greenhouse gases (GHGs) and others for toxic pollution, even though many of them came from the same sources,” Marcantonio said. “It didn’t make sense to me.” So, he started developing a method to track and measure this. “It is certainly a very unstudied nexus given that collectively it poses one of the single largest threats to human health globally.”
The top 10 countries
(With highest probability and rate of return on efforts to reduce toxic pollution and climate change risk)

The bottom 10 countries