Ozone: a threat to food security in South Asia

Current day concentrations of ground level ozone (O3) are commonly reducing crop yields by between 5 and 35 % at agriculturally important locations across South Asia.

Worryingly for the South Asian region, projections of future global O3 trends show that O3 concentrations will increase rapidly over the next 20 to 30 years with South Asia projected to experience the highest increase in surface O3 (average annual increases 7.2 ppb occurring by 2030) of any global region (Dentener and others, 2006; Figure 5).

These projections are based on current legislation emission scenarios; this means that to avoid these increases in O3, additional policy interventions are likely to be required.

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