A Clean Air Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)

Air pollution is the greatest environmental threat to human health and well-being, responsible for seven million premature deaths per year. However, in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there is no headline goal or even target focusing on air pollution exclusively. The main argument of this chapter is that the successor to the SDGs should include a clean air goal. The chapter recommends that a clean air SDG needs to have targets that are aligned with the recent World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines. The clean air SDG should also include related targets on policies, institutions, technology, finance, and other means of implementation (MOI). Those related (MOI) targets could support actions needed to achieve the underlying air quality targets as well as strengthen implementation of related goals on decent jobs, better health, food security, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable industrialization.