LocationsHow clean air contributes to health, sustainable development and human rights
The high and hidden cost of air pollution
December 15, 2025
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia has one of the world's worst levels of air pollution, mostly because coal is burned to help the residents survive winters where temperatures fall below minus-20°C.
Photo: UNDP Mongolia/Saruul Dolgorsuren
Nomu's story
I like to say my life began with a fight; not a metaphorical one, but an actual physical struggle just to breathe. My lungs collapsed when I was two months old. Doctors later told my family the damage had likely begun before I was born. My mother had spent her pregnancy taking winter walks in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia looking for fresh air. She didn’t know that what surrounded us was a toxic haze from coal burned to survive the minus-20°C nights. I grew up in 3-4room khoroolol, an apartment district bordering ger areas, which are informal settlements where families burn raw coal for heat. In winter, smoke from thousands of these coal stoves settles in our capital’s bowl-shaped valley, trapped by mountains, suffocating every household.
I survived. But my aunt’s unborn baby did not. Neither did my uncle. I grew up knowing that the very first danger I ever faced was something invisible, something we had not chosen. In Mongolia, families have long whispered the truth researchers now confirm; every winter, stillbirths and miscarriages rise as the smoke thickens. The pollution doesn’t just burn your throat, it crosses the placenta, harming hearts and lungs that haven’t taken their first breath.
After experiencing poisonous air quality first hand in her home city of Ulaanbaatar, Nomu has become a climate activist.
Photo: Nomundari Urantulga
I began sharing this story to help more people understand the importance of clean air. I’ve joined youth campaigns, worked on a documentary called Healthy Planet Now, and spoken with parents and students fighting for their future. I’ve shared statistics, but I also believe personal stories matter. Talking about air pollution at dinner tables, online, in schools and in parliaments is part of what changes the world. And we need more voices. Because polluted air is shaping our future, and it must not be the reason we lose that future.
"I grew up knowing that the very first danger I ever faced was something invisible, something we had not ever chosen."- Nomundari Urantulga, Climate Activist
UNDP works with countries supporting Initiatives to improve air quality, from sustainable energy to climate change mitigation.
Photo: Canva.com/Markus Spiske
Suvi's story
Air pollution is a growing problem in almost all countries, with the most dramatic burdens felt by low- and middle-income countries. Every year, some 7.9 million people die prematurely because of air pollution. Many more get sick. Air pollution drains economies through high health expenses, loss of the workforce, school absences and environmental damage. It is a major barrier for sustainable development, creating inequality and poverty, as demonstrated by UNDP’s 2025 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index.
As a policy specialist on HIV and health, I work with countries, including Mongolia, to reduce air pollution. Initiatives to improve air quality span across the organization’s work, from sustainable energy to climate change mitigation, management of chemicals and waste and nature-based mitigation and adaptation. Within the health team, one of our main approaches is the generation of new economic data related to inaction on air pollution. This is because many countries do not have access to numbers that demonstrate the negative impacts of air pollution, and for that reason might not see the benefits of reducing it. By engaging with those affected by air pollution, including young people, UNDP hopes to make stories such as Nomu’s impossible to ignore, reminding us that clean air is equally about protecting the human right to a clean environment as it is a smart economic and public health policy choice.
In Mongolia, with funding from the European Union, we developed an air pollution investment case that provides more insight into what Nomu describes. The report reveals that around 4,350 Mongolians die prematurely each year due to air pollution related to the fact that most households rely on coal and biomass, and many more get sick. This results in US$1.2 billion in economic losses each year, equivalent in 2021 to 7.6 percent of Mongolia's GDP.
"UNDP hopes to make stories such as Nomu’s impossible to ignore, reminding us that clean air is equally about protecting the human right to a clean environment as it is a smart economic and public health policy choice."- Suvi Huikuri, Policy Specialist, UNDP Health and HIV Group
In 2025, UNDP also worked with countries, including Mongolia, to integrate air pollution into the third iteration of their climate action plans, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). NDCs can and should be linked to other development priorities to boost progress. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 requires promoting development accelerators such as reducing air pollution that comes with relatively rapid health, economic, environmental and social benefits.
The UN General Assembly has declared clean air a human right, because it now kills as many people as tobacco. The global community is pushing for concrete goals to reducing air pollution.
Photo: Canva.com/Shaunl
Mobilizing countries and across generations
The Fourth UN High-level Meeting on the Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health was organized in New York City in September 2025, under the auspices of the 80th United Nations General Assembly. Given that air pollution now kills as many people as tobacco, and that the UNGA has declared clean air a human right, the global community had high hopes for concrete goals on reducing air pollution. Yet both the Political Declaration and the national dialogue fell short, reflecting political realities around increasing fossil fuel use and the continuing difficulty in integrating environmental challenges into public health discourse.
But we, Nomu and Suvi, took this as an opportunity to speak. In a UNDP-organized side event, Scaling up Action on NCDs and Mental Health, we discussed reducing air pollution in Mongolia and beyond. We explained that with better access to sustainable energy alternatives than ever before, and success stories from countries like China and Colombia, cleaner air is within every decision-maker’s reach.
Before the UN Climate Conference COP30 in November 2025, Nomu and more than 240 organizations, experts and activists signed an open letter Put Health at the Heart of Climate Action to world leaders, initiated by the Healthy Planet Now initiative in partnership with the Global Climate and Health Alliance. It echoes the wider health community in demanding governments treat climate change as a direct public health crisis and highlights the double-burden of climate change and air pollution to human health. We cannot accept a reality in which young people have to use their best years to advocate for healthy air to breathe. So let us act together.
