TRANSrisk partner Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) has developed an interesting paper entitled "Health co-benefits from air pollution and mitigation costs of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study".
The study explores the links among the mitigation costs of measures towards the achievement of Paris Agreement and the health co-benefits that the aforementioned measures lead to. More particularly, the study is divided into 3 stages. Firstly, the integrated assessment model (IAM) Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) was used in order to identify the costs of mitigation policies which achieve either the 2ºC or the 1.5ºC global temperature targets. Secondly, the air quality model (TM5-FASST) was used to estimate the premature deaths and morbidity for the same mitigation policies. Finally, the value of statistical life was applied in order to compare in monetary terms the health co-benefits and implementation costs of the mitigation policies required to achieve the Paris Agreement targets.
The study concluded that health co-benefits considerably outweighed the mitigation costs of achieving the target of the analysed scenarios.
The paper is available online here.
Markandya, A., Sampedro, J., Smith, S. J., Van Dingenen, R., Pizarro-Irizar, C., Arto, I., & González-Eguino, M. (2018). Health co-benefits from air pollution and mitigation costs of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study. The Lancet Planetary Health, 2(3), e126–e133. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(18)30029-9
