Monitoring the implementation of national climate action plans (NDCs) using the WHO CaRBonH tool

Abstract

Abstract One crucial area of work of the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health has been the assessment of the health effects associated with the use of fossil fuels, both directly through the generation of local air pollution and indirectly by contributing to global environmental and climate change. The WHO European Centre for Environmental Health in Bonn has developed various decision support tools to calculate both the health burdens of local pollutants and the benefits of selected interventions. A key outcome has been the recent development of a simplified calculation tool, Carbon Reduction Benefits on Health (CaRBonH), capable of estimating the health, carbon and economic benefits of selected mitigation interventions. CaRBonH allows quantification of the physical and economic consequences on human health achieved through improvements in country-level air quality from domestic carbon reductions, specifically the policy mitigation actions and measures as reported in the NDCs submitted by the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in support of the objectives as set out in Article 2 of the Convention. The work of improving and updating the CaRBonH tool, based on feedback from users, and the process of extending the geographical scope of the tool to account for countries outside the WHO EURO region, will be discussed in this session.