Murphy: Air pollution threatens the health of all people

By: US Ambassador to BiH Michael J. Murphy

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As I prepared to return to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), one of the first things I did was install our air quality monitoring app AirNow on my phone. Although I enjoyed my first stay in BiH, I still hoped that the problem of air pollution would not be as pronounced as I remembered. Unfortunately, on the very first morning after returning to Sarajevo, I received a message on my phone warning me that the air pollution level was marked as unhealthy. This was a reminder that I would be living in the most polluted capital city in Europe.

Unfortunately, air pollution is a serious problem throughout BiH, not just in Sarajevo. It is a problem that knows no entity, cantonal, or ethnic borders. It is estimated that the number of deaths due to air pollution-related consequences in BiH is 3,300 annually, which means that over 30,000 citizens of this country will lose their lives in the next ten years if nothing is done to solve this problem. In cooperation with the US Environmental Protection Agency, a device for measuring air quality was installed at our Embassy in 2018, and last September we installed the same device in our office in Banja Luka. The data read from these devices, for Sarajevo and Banja Luka, are free and easily accessible to everyone. It is clear from them that the situation in Banja Luka is not much better than in Sarajevo when it comes to air quality. Furthermore, analysis of wind patterns shows that pollution in both cities comes from all directions. The situation is even worse in other cities in BiH.

Air quality monitoring devices installed across the country indicate that BiH is a country with some of the most polluted cities in Europe. The latest Global Air Quality Report published by the Swiss aerotechnology company IQAir included Foča, Laktaši, Prijedor, Doboj, and other cities among the fifteen most polluted cities in Europe, and each of the listed cities had a higher level of pollution recorded in 2021 than Sarajevo.   

We know that car exhaust fumes and household heating are the biggest causes of air pollution. Likewise, we know that neither entity nor local authorities have adopted the necessary policies and programs to solve this problem. We welcome the fact that BiH has undertaken commitments regarding climate conditions, but the necessary political will and institutional coordination for their implementation are still lacking.

For example, BiH has failed to reduce air pollution caused by coal-fired power plants, despite the commitments it has made in this regard within the Energy Community. On the contrary, the authorities of the Federation of BiH postponed the planned shutdown of coal-fired power plant units this year without a clearly defined plan for transitioning to cleaner energy sources. At the same time, the Ugljevik Thermal Power Plant in Republika Srpska continues to be the single largest source of sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution – the SO2 emissions recorded by this thermal power plant alone are higher than the emissions recorded in the rest of the country and the wider region combined.

When we publicly raise the issue of air pollution, officials in power, and others, often downplay the seriousness of this problem in their responses. Some even claim that the air quality monitoring device at our Embassy is located too close to a ćevapi restaurant, so the problem is the smoke from ćevapi, not air pollution. Others believe that the problem is less related to the air in Sarajevo itself and more to the city's geographical location. The city is located in a valley, so the air quality in Sarajevo will always be poor, while it is good in other places. That is also not true. Data for BiH as a whole clearly show that there is a pervasive, systemic air quality problem in the country, which has a long-term negative impact on the health and well-being of all citizens.

With the arrival of spring and the end of the heating season, we can breathe easier, at least until autumn. Then the price of chronic inertia will become visible again. Multi-year trends indicate a constant and unacceptable level of air pollution every winter. The health of all people is threatened. I hope that political parties will finally carefully consider this complex issue as they develop their election programs, both for the general elections this autumn and for future ones.

The US government will continue its engagement in finding solutions to reduce the impact and gradually phase out the main sources of air pollution, together with stakeholders from all over BiH, and will encourage them to take corrective action to a greater extent. With the pervasive interest of the EU and other international partners in providing assistance to BiH in the area of energy transition and improving energy efficiency, in accordance with European standards, there is no excuse for further endangering the health of citizens. The citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina deserve to breathe better air.