World Bank reveals Nigeria among countries with highest poverty, pollution

Nigeria, India, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo top the list of nations with the highest levels of poverty and pollution exposure, according to a recent research from the World Bank.

Trillions of dollars being thrown away on subsidies for agriculture, fishing, and fossil fuels when they could be utilised to combat climate change, according to the report “Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies.”

According to the report, there are about 716 million poor people in areas with unsafe levels of air pollution.

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The report read in part, “Low- and middle-income countries account for 80 per cent of people exposed to unsafe levels of PM. Moreover, 716 million poor people (living on under US$1.90 per day) live in areas with unsafe levels of air pollution.”

It added that about half of this population is in India, Nigeria and Congo.

The report added, “The distribution of poor people exposed to unsafe or hazardous levels of pollution is highly skewed: almost half (48.6 per cent) are located in just three countries. India, with a population of more than 202 million, has the highest absolute number of extreme poor exposed to unsafe levels of particulate matter, corresponding to 14.7 per cent of India’s overall population.

“Nigeria is a distant second, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo. Overall, the top 10 countries account for 67.8 per cent of the total incidence of all of the extreme poor who are exposed to unsafe concentrations of PM globally.”