New Straits Times 23 Jun 13;
BIG CHALLENGE: Govts urged to give priority to air quality and human health
AS the blanket of haze, emanating from Indonesia, covers Singapore and Malaysia, the United Nations has been aroused to call for swift remedy to improve the air quality in Southeast Asia.
Reacting to the record-high levels of smog across many Southeast Asian cities, a senior United Nations official had urged governments in the region to take effective action to tackle the deteriorating air quality that was also having an impact on the people's health.
Noelen Heyzer, executive secretary of the Bangkok-based UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap), said the problem of air-pollution between Indonesia and Singapore was "symptomatic of a much wider challenge for the (region's) countries". She called on the governments in the region to give priority to the issues of air quality and human health.
"Cross-boundary pollution is politically complex, but it must be urgently addressed. We need more effective frameworks to manage ecosystem services, such as air and water, which transcend administrative and political boundaries."
She said such matters were regional issues, which must be tackled at the regional, as well as national and local levels.
According to ESCAP, the toll in terms of lives lost through pollution caused by vehicles, industries and energy-production activities in Asian cities was heavy, with an estimated 500,000 premature deaths occurring each year.
With more than 1.7 billion people in the Asia Pacific region depending on dung, wood, crop waste and coal to meet their basic energy needs, indoor air pollution from solid fuel use was considered to be one of the causes for more than 1.6 million deaths, with fatalities, particularly among women and children, being high.
Heyzer emphasised that health was the "single most important enabler of development", and it was important to build a more sustainable region by prioritising the prevention of "pollution of our air, water, food and other common regional goods".
She cautioned the futility of making investment in healthcare systems and, yet, destroying the most basic environmental resources on which human health depended. Bernama
