Air pollution is the 4th leading risk factor for early deaths worldwide in 2019 according to the State of Global Air (SOGA) report of 2020. Air pollution caused 6.67 million deaths worldwide in 2019. Atleast 68% of these deaths were in Asia. Of the top 15 countries with the highest number of deaths caused by air pollution in 2019, 13 were in Asia. Of the top 10 countries with the highest population-weighted annual average PM2.5 exposure globally in 2019, 4 are in Asia (India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan).

Since 2015 ADB has invested about $2.5 billion in projects with air quality improvement as the main objective. This investment has mainly been focused in the East Asia Regional Department (EARD). A regional technical assistance (RETA) on promoting low carbon development in the CAREC region is under implementation in Centra West Regional Department (CWRD). Another RETA covering 7 cities in 5 countries (Bangladesh, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines and Viet Nam) is under implementation in the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department (SDCC). In addition all investment projects in all Regional Departments (RD) and the Private Sector Operations Department (PSOD) that are categorized as A or B for environment safeguards are required to assess and manage project level air quality impacts to comply with the ADB Safeguard Policy Statement (SPS).

In this 2-day workshop, ADB staff initiated the process of developing a corporate level air quality program called “Asia Clean Blue Sky Program”. The first day of the workshop was an information sharing session where key global and regional actors such as UNEP, CCAC and WHO and other MDBs presented their strategy and experiences on address air pollution in Asia. The second day comprised an internal brainstorming exercise amongst ADB staff to discuss ways on scaling up ADB’s support for air quality management in Asia.