CEJIL 30 Years: Super pollutants in Latin America

Image: original art by Sebastián Bravo Guerrero (IG @sebastianbravoguerrero)

We are facing a climate emergency with crucial implications for human rights. While climate change will affect humanity as a whole, poor and marginalized communities are and will be among the first and hardest hit. From floods in Argentina to droughts and hurricanes in Central America and the Caribbean, to wildfires in Brazil and Bolivia, we are already seeing an increase in suffering, poisonous air quality, food insecurity, and climate refugees.

In reviewing the multi-sector, multi-pronged strategies to tackle the emergency, there is a notable gap in some of the work to accelerate change: the lack of focus on national and regional policies to address short lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), or “super pollutants,” especially in Latin America. Reducing SLCPs has the astonishing potential to avoid 0.6 degrees of global warming by 2050, including “as much as 90% of predicted prevented warming within a decade”. Moreover, SLCPs have a tangible impact in real time in the communities because they affect air quality.

Read the rest of the article by Executive Director Viviana Krsticevic here.

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