Cloudy Skies: Lagos' Air Pollution As A Wicked Problem

The first time it happened, my son was 7 months old. I picked him up from day-care with what seemed to be a congested nose. By 10:37pm that night, he was struggling to breathe and I rushed him to the paediatric emergency ward where he was promptly fitted with a nebulizer mask. In the months that followed, we would repeat this routine. Him, unable to breathe. Me, abandoning everything to take him to the hospital at odd hours. I thought it a mere cold.

In May 2019, he and his brother had a particularly bad episode of "cold". It was shortly before a family trip to Spain and I worried that the cooler weather would worsen their symptoms. To my surprise, the opposite happened. They got better. For the first time, it occurred to me that it wasn't a cold.?

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For Global Opportunities & Threats Oxford (GOTO), my team decided to apply systems-mapping tools to understanding air pollution in Lagos. This is what we found.

Lagos air quality is "Unhealthy". According to some estimates, living in Lagos is tantamount to smoking two cigarettes daily. The major pollutant is PM2.5, fine particulate matter capable of travelling far into the respiratory tract and even entering the bloodstream, triggering bronchitis and asthma especially in the elderly and very young. It’s also linked to low birth weights of children born to women living in polluted areas, and it affects cerebral development. At 18, a child who grows up in polluted Lagos will have lower brain function than his peer in Uyo, all else being equal. The primary source of PM2.5? Combustion of fossil fuels i.e. car engines and electric generators.

The World Bank claims 11,200 people die in Lagos alone every year from air pollution, most of them children under the age of 5. The calculations my team did estimated that 18 children under the age of 5 die every day in Lagos from air pollution. For context, as at today (22/09/21) 2664 people have died in Nigeria from COVID-19 since March 2020.

Speaking about COVID, the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency, discovered a marked decrease in the concentration of PM2.5 in the air during the first lockdown. For the first time, Lagos State met WHO standards for air quality because there were fewer vehicles on the road, and less generators running.?

Unfortunately, this improvement in air quality came at the cost of the economy and so it could never be sustainable.

How then might we improve Lagos' air quality without crippling the economy with a lockdown? We came up with the following interventions.

Intervention Points

Better transport & pedestrian infrastructure

Lagos has 227 vehicles per kilometer of road. For context, the rest of the country has an average of 11 vehicles per km. This is because cars are status symbols (the more, the better), secondhand cars are cheap to own (usually vehicles that don't meet emission standards in Europe) and run (petrol subsidies lower costs),?pedestrian culture is not encouraged and mass transit is inconvenient.

Mass transit can be controlled by the state government, the other factors can’t. High-quality mass transit coupled with the right policies would force more people to park their vehicles at home thus lowering the traffic (a car burns 4 times more fuel in traffic, exacerbating the air pollution). It would also deflate the demand for fossil fuel.

Pedestrian infrastructure can be improved by the government providing infrastructure (zebra crossings with traffic lights) and sidewalks. Citizen-led DIY democracy initiatives like urban greening campaigns and social awareness (more on this later) would close the loop to ensure Lagosians can walk comfortably and securely.?

Improved Power Infrastructure

After transportation, power generation via personal fossil fuel generators contributes the most to particulate matter in Lagos' atmosphere. I won't say a lot about this because we often talk about the power deficit, and there are no new solutions to be proffered that haven't already been discussed. We need to replace our personal generators with renewable energy or grid power.?

Fuel Subsidies: The Elephant In The Room

At a national level, we need to have a conversation about fuel subsidies. At the moment, fuel marketers import petrol into the country that has 20 times the sulphur acceptable in Europe and the rest of West Africa. This is what happens when businesses are forced to sell products at a determined price and there are weak quality controls; it encourages sales of the lowest cost product. Considering the massive infrastructure deficit, subsidy funds can be channelled into improving grid power and transportation.?

Citizen Paradigm Shift

None of the interventions work if citizens aren’t supportive and committed. We feel entitled to subsidies because we produce oil, we own multiple cars because we can, and we believe generators are cheaper than renewables.?We recognize that Lagos is polluted, but we don’t fully understand the health and economic implications. Changing these mindsets is key to the success of any intervention. In cities like London and Delhi, social movements have been successful in raising awareness about air pollution and pressuring governments to take action. #EndAirPollution anyone?

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In a survey of Lagosians, we found out that many upper and middle-class families already mitigated the air pollution. They kept windows in their houses shut, running air conditioners for ventilation (powered by generators) and used air purifiers in their homes. They had access to healthcare including inhalers, and decent hospitals when things got bad. Poorer families could only afford to massage mentholatum on their children’s noses and chests when they fell ill, praying that they recovered.

That said, there are other effects of air pollution that personal effort can’t fix. Air pollution raises the ambient temperature of the city. This evaporates more water from the Atlantic, leading to increased rainfall. ?This rainfall combines with poor drainage infrastructure and neighbourhoods below sea level (Lekki!) to create flooding. ?Every year, Lagos floods wreak havoc on lives and property, to the tune of $200 million per annum.

Air pollution is a wicked economic, environmental and public health problem. Its causes are complex, but there are interventions that can work, if we are committed and bold enough to try. ?