Cleaning up after centuries of 'progress' is one of mankind's greatest challenges
By Andrej Klemenc
Modern problems of air quality
The Second Industrial Revolution, dating from approximately 1850, brought a new set of problems related to air quality. Smoke from coal-fired industrial and residential furnaces and boilers dominated the skylines of rapidly growing towns and cities. This type of rapid development, mostly in Europe and the United States, was widely perceived as a sign of progress, despite its being the cause or exacerbator of many respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Although the scientific and medical communities suspected air pollution as being a major source of health problems and cause of premature deaths, and as evidence for these claims mounted from the late 19th century onwards, it was only in the 1950s that industrialised Western nations began to address urban air pollution as a political issue. Thousands are believed to have died, for example, from the Great Smog that poisoned the London air for five days in December 1952.
Western democracies, ahead of the eastern Communist bloc, made it a top political priority to clear urban skies in the early 1960s. Policies and measures that have followed since then have been a mix of switches to less pollutive fuels, improved combustion processes and end-of-pipe technologies, high chimneys for coal-fired thermal power, and industrial plants that lower local concentrations of air pollutants by spreading emissions over a wider radius. This latter "solution" made air quality a transboundary issue, which in turn led to international negotiations and arrangements in the early 1980s to limit cross-border air pollution.
Most European and American cities succeeded in clearing the air of most industrial and residential smoke by the end of the 20th century, though this was due in large part to exporting polluting industries to poorer parts of the world. However, the rapid expansion of internal combustion engine-based transport networks have meanwhile contributed to a new rise of emissions and air pollutants that requires serious attention today. While global warming and climate change are issues that have captured many more headlines in recent years, urban air pollution once again needs to be placed atop environmental and sustainable develpoment agendas. A growing body of scientific evidence shows that there is no "safe" threshold of fine particles and black soot concentrations in the air that we breath.
Transport growth along the lines of the private car paradigm is not only endangering residents of urban areas, but is an economic threat as well. As cities becomed more polluted, people with the means to afford an automobile add themselves to the growning number motorists stuck each day in traffic jams, while those drawn to the cleaner suburban air make longer and longer commutes to and from work (i.e. urban sprawl). Cities with affordable, efficient, comfortable and multi-modal public transportation systems, on the other hand, are able to provide urban residents and city workers with mobility alternatives, which reduces traffic volume and improves air quailty. Cities mostly or entirely reliant on automobile infrastructure (most cities in the US, for example) are highly vulnerable to price rises in oil and petrol-and in the event of severe resource shortages, could literally grind to a halt.
Pollution and political transition
Air pollution and its impact on human health became a point of popular protest in many CEE cities during the 1980s. Thick blankets of industrial smoke came to symbolise an unpopular Soviet regime whose days were fast drawing to a close. The subsequent transition of the former Soviet states to democratic government and a market economy resulted in the shutdown of many of the region's mostly highly pollutive and obsolete energy-producing facilities. As several of these states later acceded to the European Union and adopted EU air protection standards, pollution from industrial and thermal power plants was further diminished, although it remains a challenge for many industrial facilities in new member states to fully comply with the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive.
In general, CEE cities are nowadays rapidly following the pattern of western European urban regions where traffic-borne emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and fine particles are the major source of exceeded concentrations of air pollutants. What is most striking, however, is that people living in this region appear to be less concerned about the potentially lethal impacts of air pollution than those who live in the more economically prosperous parts of the EU. While part of this apparent lack of concern has to do with a lack of good public information, it is also true than many people are struggling in the post-transition economy to meet their everyday needs. Also, it is an unusual conundrum that many of air pollution's victims are also contributing to the problem via their transportation and consumtion habits-one that contributes to feelings of inevitability and helplessness. Finally, there is often a lack of economic capacity or civic intiative to develop long-term solutions (such as improved public transport and intermodality), while there is also strong political reluctance to introduce measures that curb individual freedoms (e.g. private car ownership) after decades of authoritarian communist rule. Indeed, this is a complex set of conditions and challenges.
While air pollution from energy production and industry remain serious problems to address at the political level, citizens can play a huge role in reducing urban air pollution by working together to bring about radical changes in urban mobility and transport infrastructure. Changes in individual behaviour are important in themselves, but insufficient for addressing large-scale, systemic problems. It makes far less sense, for example, to focus anger on individual car owners than it does to mobilise support for city-wide transport alternatives to motorised traffic.
Unified action can result in fewer cars on the roads, better transport services, modern bicycle and car-sharing systems. When such changes take place, people will be healthier, happier and more productive. People can rediscover the joy of meeting people out of doors in the clean air without encountering the noise and danger of high-volume traffic. And one of the ways to attract public interest is to provide easily accessible, up-to-date air quality and mobility information. But this requires primary interaction between city government officials, local businesses and active citizens.
A new environmental crisis in the western Balkans?
While air quality has improved in many respects for EU new member states, the story is quite different in many countries of South Eastern Europe. In fact, air quality in many cities of former Yugoslavia is much worse than it was during communism. The end of armed conflict in 1996 brought a slow but permanent recovery of industrial activity in the region, but without large-scale investments in modern facilities or environmental refurbishment of existing ones. A switch to cleaner fuels for heating and replacement of obsolete furnaces and boilers in households took place only at minimal scale. Even where new vehicle standards for emissions of air pollutants have been introduced, they have not been implemented in practice. Along with a persisting fleet of Soviet-era cars is an increased number of vehicles imported from from Western Europe that no longer meet the stricter emissions standards of their country of origin.
Delays in the EU accession processes and the current economic and political crisis engulfing the Eurozone do not bode particularly well for air quality in the cities of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo (as defined by UNHCR 1244), the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. For one, there are new strategic players in the region: companies and banks from Russia and China are willing and prepared to invest in thermal power plants, oil referies and chemical industrial plants across the Balkans. On the other hand, existing favourable trade regimes enable the sale of electricity to EU markets without regard for EU air pollution standards. Favourable trading regimes could continue to offset the growing political and economic influence of Russia and China in the region, though neither scenario points the way towards sustainable development or brings the region perceptibly closer to EU integration.
For the time being, it appears that new environmental investments in the region will be limited to improved design of industrial processes. However, with no determined limits on production outputs, major investments in energy and industrial activities in the region could lead to significant increases in industrial air pollution. Without a mandate for compliance with something like the EU's enviornmental "acquis", political and economic elites in the region will likely seize the opportunity to position themselves between the EU and new global players in the region at the cost of environment and human health. The EU needs to ask itself is if it is prepared to allow Chinese levels of pollution in its southeastern backyard, even as China considers measures to clean up air pollution in its own cities.
