A study published this Thursday, November 28 in the scientific journal The Lancet quantifies the damage to health from forest fires and burning of land in agriculture, particularly in developing countries.
The numbers are catastrophic, and are expected to rise further. Air pollution caused by fires is responsible for more than 1.5 million deaths per year worldwide, according to a study published this Thursday, November 28 in the journal The Lancet. The international team of researchers examined existing data between 2000 and 2019, both on wildfires raging in nature and on land burning carried out in agriculture to clear fields.
Among the victims, approximately 450,000 deaths are due each year to heart diseases linked to this pollution and 220,000 others, from respiratory diseases, can be attributed to the smoke and particles released into the air by these fires.
More than 90% of these deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries, including 40% in sub-Saharan Africa alone. China, Nigeria, Indonesia and India are also among the countries most affected. These countries are particularly affected because of the lack of means to avoid smoke from fires, the researchers stressed. Moving away from the most polluted area, using air purifiers and masks, staying indoors, is not accessible to people in the poorest countries.
A record number of illegal burning of agricultural fields in northern India is partly responsible for the apocalyptic-looking pollution cloud, with concentrations of harmful microparticles well above international health standards, which covers New Delhi, the Indian capital .
Request for financial and technological support
Faced with this observation, the authors of the study call for a “urgent action” to deal with the considerable number of deaths caused by these fires, placing emphasis on “climate injustice” experienced by poor countries. The latter therefore call for more financial and technological support for the populations of the hardest hit countries.
The study comes a week after UN climate talks, where delegates agreed to an increase in climate finance deemed insufficient by developing countries, and after a state of national emergency declared by Ecuador, following forest fires which razed more than 10,000 hectares in the south of the country.
