The report provides a review of why control efforts in many parts of the world have failed to reduce ozone and its impacts, and, using state of the art scenario and modelling analysis, evaluates how important ozone is likely to be for human health, climate and the environment by the end of the 21st century.
The analysis concludes that existing emission controls will not be sufficient to reduce ozone concentrations to levels acceptable for human health and environmental protection and calls for renewed global action to address ozone and its precursors. It highlights the importance of ozone as a global air pollutant and as a greenhouse gas, and finds that in some parts of the world ozone may have as important an impact on food security as climate change.
The report calls for a new framework for action to:
- Facilitate concerted global action to implement current emission controls;
- Address background and peak ozone concentrations at global, regional, and national scales;
- Include emissions from poorly regulated sources including international shipping, aviation, and biomass burning; and
- Support the integration of climate change and ozone reduction policies at the international, regional, and national scale.
After the study was published, Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society wrote to the Convention on Biological Diversity proposing that the impact ground-level ozone on biological diversity be considered at their disucssions.