National climate action can ameliorate, perpetuate, or exacerbate international air pollution inequalities

Climate action ameliorates public health by reducing hazardous air pollutants alongside greenhouse gases, yet misguided mitigation efforts could induce imbalances in air pollution exchange across international borders. Despite its potential to endanger equality, the effects from climate action on transboundary air pollution are relatively unstudied. Here we show that stricter mitigation increases the fraction of co-benefits that originate externally in Africa by +8% in shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP) towards sustainability (SSP1) and by +53% for fragmentation (SSP3). The fraction of externally originating co-benefits is greater in developing countries (0.76 in SSP1-26) than developed (0.65), indicating that developing countries are more dependent on external action. Although co-benefits are maximized in the most ambitious scenario, SSP1-19 (1.32 million deaths avoided), their transboundary exchange between countries varies. These results suggest a need for climate policies that consider how inequalities in transboundary air pollution evolve across distinct socioeconomic trends and mitigation strategies in addition to total co-benefit estimates.