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S. African cabinet approves draft strategy to address air pollution

Xinhua, July 6, 2016 Adjust font size:

The South African cabinet has approved the draft strategy for addressing air pollution in dense low-income communities.

The strategy seeks to provide a dedicated, focused approach to deal with high levels of pollution in some of the densely populated low-income communities, the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) said Wednesday.

This will support the suite of existing instruments to reduce air pollution in the country, which include emissions standards set in terms of the Air Quality Act to control industrial emissions, alternative energy strategies implemented by Department of Energy, air quality offsets implemented by industries etc, said the DEA.

Past and present air quality monitoring data has shown that air quality in various South African communities is not in compliance with National Ambient Air Quality Standards. For most of these areas, air quality standards are usually exceeded during winter months as more people start burning fossil fuels to warm their homes.

"This means that people living in those communities are not enjoying their constitutional right to air that is not harmful to health and well-being," said DEA spokesperson Albi Modise.

The draft strategy is a comprehensive, coordinated and coherent plan worked out by the DEA to tackle this problem, said Modise.

"This is to ensure that ambient air quality in dense low-income communities is in compliance with National Ambient Air Quality Standards," she added.

The strategy seeks to ensure that efforts to address air pollution in dense low-income settlements are undertaken in a coordinated and coherent manner by the soon-to-be-established National Coordinating Committee (NCC) on Residential Air Pollution, according to Modise.

It is also designed to facilitate the implementation of interventions aimed at reducing emissions from dense low-income settlements through the provision of affordable or subsidized clean energy alternatives, and ensure continued monitoring, evaluation and reporting on the successes and failures of the proposed interventions on air quality improvements, she said. Enditem