The previous chapter considered the impact that mineral extraction, waste mobilities and arms transfers are having on environmental quality as well as human health. These impacts are transmitted through the air and via water courses. The present chapter considers this pollution, and its consequences for human health, in much greater detail. However, although there is a truly vast literature on air pollution, water quality and their health impacts across the globe, attention here is focused primarily on how these impacts are felt unequally in different places, concentrating – as elsewhere in the book – on places in the Global South. Much of the literature on air and water pollution and health is epidemiological; although some of that research is touched on here, the emphasis is more on the political economy/ecology of air and water quality. Even though this is a generalization, it is invariably the case that those bearing the greatest burden of air pollution are also those in the poorest of households: a clear example of environmental injustice or inequity.

To give a brief indication of the scale of the problem, Fuller et al. (2022) suggest that pollution (of both air and water) is responsible for about 9 million deaths every year, an increase of 7 per cent since 2015 and more than 66 per cent since 2000. They write that “little real progress against pollution can be identified overall, particularly in the low-income and middle-income countries, where pollution is most severe” (Fuller et al. 2022: e535, emphasis added), and note that there are synergistic effects with climate change and loss of biodiversity. Air and water pollution are demonstrably planetary threats, with causes and impacts on human health cutting across national boundaries and therefore requiring international attention.

The political economy of pollution

The hypothesis of a pollution “haven” was introduced in the previous chapter with reference to waste, but is equally relevant in a discussion of air and water pollution. To recap, a haven effect means that firms in high-income countries seek to locate production offshore in low-and middle-income countries, where environmental standards may be weaker; any risk of pollution gets transferred abroad.