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Mapped: Which Countries Have the Worst Air Pollution?

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Mapped: Which Countries Have the Worst Air Pollution?

View the high-resolution of the infographic by clicking here.

In many parts of the world, blue skies are a rarity. Instead, accumulated levels of air pollution from industrial processes and motor vehicle traffic cloak cities in smog year-round.

But to what extent does air pollution impact the human population around the world?

To answer this question, data scientist Matt Dzugan has created a cartogram that shades each country based on levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution experienced by the population living there.

Carto-What?

First off, let’s talk about the visualization style itself.

Not your everyday map, this unconventional cartogram resizes the borders of countries based on their total populations. In this style, a single square represents 500,000 people. According to Matt Dzugan, the cartogram view is meant to provide a bird’s eye perspective of the impact of air pollution and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) on human lives.

A clear correlation emerges: some of the most inhabited places in the world also experience the most pollution. Highly populated China and India show up the most prominently, while other countries like Australia and Canada seem to disappear off the map entirely.

To put this into perspective, 800 dark brown squares on this cartogram (a PM2.5 concentration of 50 μg/m³) represent 400 million people in India that are exposed to polluted air at levels five times past thresholds set by the World Health Organization.

Top 20 Countries with Cleanest Air

So how do countries on each end of the PM2.5 spectrum shake out? Pulling supplemental data from the WHO, here’s how the top 20 countries with the cleanest air rank.

Countries with the Cleanest Air Supplemental

New Zealand tops the above list. And as you can see, air quality tends to be highest in advanced coastal economies with low population densities—and being an island or bordering less habitable Arctic tundra also helps as well.

That said, there are temporary bouts when air quality can dip in even the best of countries. For example, recent wildfires on the West Coast of the United States and Australia resulted in reddish-orange skies and hazardous levels of air quality for weeks at a time.

The 20 Countries with the Most Air Pollution

On the other hand, it may be surprising that Nepal lands all the way at the bottom of the air quality list. Why is this landlocked country—home to less than 30 million—suffering from hazardous air pollution reaching 100μg/m³?

In short, the emissions from fossil-fuel driven traffic and manufacturing operations are trapped within the Kathmandu valley, which causes air quality issues for people living in the region.

Countries with the Most Air Pollution

The regions with lower air quality tend to be more landlocked with developing economies, such as some countries in central Africa and Asia, as well as in the Middle East.

Finally, while China is lower on this overall list, it’s worth noting that it is one of the most prominent on the cartogram due to its sheer population size.

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The Carbon Emissions of Gold Mining

Gold has a long history as a precious metal, but just how many carbon emissions does mining it contribute to?

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The following content is sponsored by Nature's Vault

The Carbon Emissions of Gold Mining

As companies progress towards net-zero goals, decarbonizing all sectors, including mining, has become a vital need.

Gold has a long history as a valuable metal due to its rarity, durability, and universal acceptance as a store of value. However, traditional gold mining is a process that is taxing on the environment and a major contributor to the increasing carbon emissions in our atmosphere. 

The above infographic from our sponsor Nature’s Vault provides an overview of the global carbon footprint of gold mining.

The Price of Gold

To understand more about the carbon emissions that gold mining contributes to, we need to understand the different scopes that all emissions fall under.

In the mining industry, these are divided into three scopes.

  • Scope 1: These include direct emissions from operations.
  • Scope 2: These are indirect emissions from power generation.
  • Scope 3: These cover all other indirect emissions.

With this in mind, let’s break down annual emissions in CO2e tonnes using data from the World Gold Council as of 2019. Note that total emissions are rounded to the nearest 1,000.

ScopeTypeCO2e tonnes
1Mining, milling, concentrating and smelting45,490,000
2Electricity54,914,000
3Suppliers, goods, and services25,118,000
1,2,3Recycled Gold4,200
3Jewelry828,000
3Investment4,500
3Electronics168
TOTAL 126,359,000

Total annual emissions reach around 126,359,000 CO2e tonnes. To put this in perspective, that means that one year’s worth of gold mining is equivalent to burning nearly 300 million barrels of oil.

Gold in Nature’s Vault

A significant portion of gold’s downstream use is either for private investment or placed in banks. In other words, a large amount of gold is mined, milled, smelted, and transported only to be locked away again in a vault.

Nature’s Vault is decarbonizing the gold mining sector for both gold and impact investors by eliminating the most emission-intensive part of the mining process—mining itself.

By creating digital assets like the NaturesGold Token and the Pistol Lake NFT that monetize the preservation of gold in the ground, emissions and the environmental damage associated with gold mining are avoided.

How Does it Work?

Through the same forms of validation used in traditional mining by Canada’s National Instrument NI 43-101 and Australia’s Joint Ore Reserve Committee (JORC), Nature’s Vault first determines that there is gold in an ore body.

Then, using blockchain and asset fractionalization, the mineral rights and quantified in-ground gold associated with these mineral rights are tokenized.

This way, gold for investment can still be used without the emission-intensive process that goes into mining it. Therefore, these digital assets are an environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional gold investments.

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Click here to learn more about gold in Nature’s Vault.

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