Fifty years ago, when scientific consensus on man-made pollution was just forming, the world came together to set out a bold ambition to preserve the environment and the wellbeing of all people. It became the Stockholm Declaration. But unfortunately, it has failed to deliver.
My 18-year-old twin daughters have grown up with pollution. They are strong, athletic national basketball players, yet by the time they reached their teens they had the lungs of lifetime smokers. They cough, sniffle and have a high susceptibility to respiratory infections just because we live where we do. In Delhi — the most polluted capital in the world.
So as I attend the UN's Stockholm +50 summit, I am angry and disappointed. Inaction has cost my daughters their fundamental right to a healthy life. And their experience is far from unique. In Delhi, every third child has damaged lungs. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nine out of 10 people globally breathe toxic air, and Harvard University research says the burning of fossil fuels causes one in five premature deaths.
What would you do if someone was poisoning your child? I would spring up and kill that person. Yet, our children are absorbing poisonous fumes with every breath, and we're not doing anything about it.
Renewables are the solution, fossil fuels the past
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently set out five critical actions needed to catch the "lifeline" offered by renewable energy sources. They include treating renewables like an essential and global public good, shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to renewables, and tripling investment in renewables to $4.2 trillion (€3.9 trillion) by 2030. That's small compared to the $5.9 trillion spent subsidizing coal, oil and gas in 2020 and the health care costs incurred from their pollution.
The WHO strengthened its air quality guidelines in September 2021, based on the latest science showing how best to protect human health. Meeting those guidelines would save 80% of lives lost from breathing PM2.5 — which are the fumes emitted from burning coal, oil, gas and wood.
The benefits of moving as quickly as possible to end new fossil fuels and follow the WHO's air quality guidelines will lead to cleaner air and greater public health as well as improving our chances of reaching net-zero emissions before 2050.
The far-reaching impacts of extreme heat
We're already suffering from the climate crisis. India's recent torturous heat wave of 49°C (120 degrees Fahrenheit) and above caused laborers to fall sick and lose income, and the government to cut harvest prospects and ban wheat exports.
Yet, absurdly, we are still chopping down the forests and trees that store carbon, clean the air, and provide shade, shelter and food. In India, for example, deforestation started in April in the Hasdeo Aranya Forest for an opencast coal mine.
How will people survive if the recent heat becomes the norm? How will manufacturing plants, farms, power grids and global supply chains run if people are too sick and it's too hot to work?
These are the questions leaders must tackle if they really want to achieve a healthy planet for the prosperity of all.
In some ways, much has changed in 50 years. The science on pollution, climate change and health is now vast and irrefutable, the solutions are readily available, and people around the world are rising up and calling for a healthier, cleaner way of living.
Yet, we are still poisoning our children. It's time for urgent action.
Bhavreen Kandhari is co-founder of Warrior Moms India which is part of the Parents For Future environmental movement.
This year's Stockholm+50 conference refers to the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the first major international meeting on global environmental issues. It started the dialogue between industrialized and developing countries on the link between economic growth and pollution, helped to establish the concept of sustainable development and led to the foundation of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).