Kyiv enters ranking of capitals with cleanest air
Kyiv's position in the ranking of capitals with the cleanest air (photo: Freepik)
Kyiv is among the 30 world capitals with the best air quality indicators in the annual world ranking 2023 IQAir World Air Quality, according to the Kyiv City State Administration.
What place did Kyiv take in the ranking?
Kyiv took 22nd place in this year's ranking and was between Madrid and Luxembourg. This zone of the ranking is characterized as "green".
According to experts, there are several reasons why Kyiv, despite the war, still entered the ranking of capitals with the cleanest air. One of them is the reduction in the number of enterprises that emit air emissions, and the smaller number of cars on the streets of the capital.
This has also been influenced by the city's monitoring system, which has been added to the list of sources taken into account in the calculation of the world ranking of cities by air quality since 2022.
According to the 2023 IQAir World Air Quality Report, the concentration of PM 2.5 dust in Kyiv decreased from 9.5 to 8.9 mg/cubic meter last year. This ensured that the Ukrainian capital was placed in the "green" zone, alongside Vienna (Austria), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Copenhagen (Denmark), and others.
Kyiv is in the 22nd place in the ranking (photo: Freepik)
"The report of the international company IQAir confirmed our analytical data for 2023. Most recently, we reported that over the past year, almost 90% of the time, the overall level of air pollution in Kyiv was low or very low. This means that the vast majority of the time, Kyiv residents breathed clean air," says Oleksandr Voznyi, Director of the Department of Environmental Protection and Climate Change Adaptation at the Kyiv City State Administration.
He adds that there are periods of deteriorating air quality in Kyiv from time to time. The reasons may vary from meteorological conditions to cross-border impacts when the effects of dust storms hundreds of kilometers away from Kyiv can be observed in our city.
Kyiv has the largest automated air quality monitoring system in Ukraine. It is operated by 53 European-style observation points.
In total, 114 capitals were included in this year's IQAir World Air Quality Report. The cities with the most polluted air are:
- New Delhi (India)
- Dhaka (Bangladesh)
- Baghdad (Iraq)
The list of cities with the cleanest air includes San Juan (Puerto Rico), Wellington (New Zealand), and Canberra (Australia).
