United Nations member-countries are considering strategies to reduce black carbon emissions, one of the air pollutants identified by scientists as an important link to climate change because of its role in contributing to global warming.
With the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution in the lead, the reduction of black carbon is being targeted through a revision in the Convention’s Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone, also known as the Gothenburg Protocol, the first international treaty to take steps to curb such emissions.
Estimates by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis put current anthropogenic emissions of black carbon from the UNECE area at about 800 Gg, which represents about 15 percent of the world’s total.
Nearly half of the emissions originate from the United States and the Russian Federation, while 25 percent is produced by the European countries of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Black carbon, like ozone, is a so-called “short-lived climate forcer” - a warming agent that stays in the atmosphere for several weeks.
Reducing the level of such agents in the atmosphere could not only improve air quality, and thus human health, but also act on slowing down climate change, said UNECE in a statement.
