Africa: Climate, Clean-Air Action Could Return $15 for Every $1 Invested – UN

Nairobi — Every US$1 invested in tackling climate change and air pollution together could generate about US$15 in economic benefits, a new United Nations assessment has found, strengthening the case for governments and investors to treat environmental action as an economic investment rather than a cost.

The report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) warns that failure to act is already carrying a huge economic price, with each year of delayed action estimated to forgo more than US$1.5 trillion in benefits, equivalent to about 0.5 per cent of global GDP.

The findings are contained in Hidden Assets: The Economic and Health Case for Climate and Clean Air Action, released on Monday to coincide with the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. It is described as the first comprehensive global economic assessment of integrated climate and clean-air action.

The report found that combining climate and air-pollution policies generates significantly greater returns than addressing the two challenges separately, because many of the same sources and sectors drive both problems.

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“For too long, we have treated climate action as a cost to be managed and air pollution as the unfortunate outcome of development. This report shows the opposite: clean air is a key driver of development, health, food and energy security, and climate stability – an asset we must invest in,” UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said.

“Proven solutions already exist. What we lack is the decisive leadership from governments, financial institutions, and businesses to deliver them with the speed and coordination this crisis demands,” she added.

Potential economic gains

The report estimates that implementing a package of 25 measures could generate annual economic benefits equivalent to 2.8 per cent of global GDP by 2035, 4.5 per cent by 2050 and 11.4 per cent by 2100.

Even when non-market welfare benefits are excluded, the measures would still generate about US$4 for every US$1 invested.

The economic gains would come through lower healthcare costs, improved worker productivity, reduced physical damage from climate impacts and the monetary value of fewer premature deaths and healthier lives.

The report also warns that the costs of inaction accumulate rapidly.

“A benefit-cost ratio of 15 to 1 would attract capital instantly in almost any other sector,” said Elliott Harris, an independent co-chair of the assessment.

“The only reason it hasn’t on integrated climate and clean air action yet is that the returns are split across health systems, productivity and avoided climate damage rather than landing on a single balance sheet,” he said.

Harris said governments and investors that continue to treat climate and air-quality policies separately risk leaving trillions of dollars in potential benefits unrealised.

Lives at stake

The economic argument comes against a backdrop of a major public-health burden from air pollution.

The assessment estimates that exposure to human-caused outdoor air pollution, including fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, was associated with 6.4 million premature deaths globally in 2025.

Household air pollution was linked to another 2 million premature deaths, including about 300,000 children.

Outdoor air pollution also contributed to an estimated 5.5 million new cases of childhood asthma and 2 million new cases of dementia in 2025, alongside millions of cases of heart attacks, pulmonary disease, diabetes, stroke and lung cancer.

The report argues that these health impacts translate directly into economic losses through higher healthcare spending, reduced productivity and diminished quality of life.

By fully implementing the 25 measures, the world could cumulatively prevent 144 million air-pollution-related premature deaths by 2050, including 96 million linked to outdoor air pollution.

Measures to cut emissions

The proposed measures span six major sectors: energy and fossil fuels, industry, transport, agriculture and food systems, residential cooking and heating, and waste management.

They include expanding renewable energy and energy efficiency, increasing access to clean cooking technologies, tightening vehicle emissions standards, promoting electric vehicles, using low-sulfur shipping fuels and reducing methane leaks from oil and gas operations.

The package also targets agriculture through improved livestock and manure management, more efficient fertiliser use, better rice cultivation and alternatives to crop-residue burning.

Improved solid-waste and wastewater management and the phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are also included.

If implemented immediately, the measures could halve global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, cut methane emissions by 60 per cent and reduce major air pollutants by about 70 per cent compared with the report’s baseline scenario.

They could also avoid approximately 0.34°C of global warming by 2050 and 1.4°C by 2100.

Despite the potential gains, the report identifies fragmented decision-making, weak enforcement and poor coordination among government agencies as major obstacles.

These institutional barriers could delay full implementation of the proposed measures by almost eight years globally, according to the assessment.

Removing those barriers through fiscal incentives, stronger regulation and policies that encourage private investment could unlock up to US$10 trillion in additional health benefits by 2040, the report says.

Simon Dietz, co-chair of the assessment and Professor of Environmental Policy at the London School of Economics, said treating climate change and air pollution as separate challenges obscures the scale of the potential gains.

“This report provides the most rigorous evidence yet that treating climate change and air pollution as separate problems causes us to underestimate the benefits of tackling either,” Dietz said.

“When we modelled them together, the returns were larger than each could show alone, because the same sources, sectors and policies so often drive both,” he added.

The report calls for governments to integrate climate, air-quality, health and economic planning, while strengthening enforcement and aligning public and private finance behind measures that can deliver both environmental and economic returns.

It also notes that many of the economic and health benefits of cleaner air can materialise quickly enough to outweigh implementation costs within a decade.