The Sultanate joins the countries of the world in celebrating the International Day of Air Pureness for Blue Skies

The Sultanate participates in the celebration of the International Day of Air Purity for a Blue Sky, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly to celebrate it on the date of September 7 of each year, due to the great interest the Sultanate attaches to protecting the environment, preserving human health and wildlife and preserving the environmental vocabulary and its biological and physical components Like air, water, soil and seas.
The allocation of this day to what air pollution represents from a great environmental threat to human health, which is one of the most avoidable causes of death and disease globally, as it is estimated that about six and a half million people will be exposed to premature death around the world due to air pollution inside and outside buildings. .
The Sultanate’s participation by the countries of the world comes to celebrate this day because of the importance of identifying this global problem and finding solutions to it at the local level, and the countries of the world participating in the experiences that the Sultanate is doing to preserve the purity of air.
The Sultanate has started from an early time to take laws and measures to ensure air quality and protect the environment from pollution, as it issued environmental laws and regulations for protecting air from pollution, so that they contribute to protecting, controlling, controlling and monitoring all types of pollution. Royal Decree No. (114/2004) is considered special. Environmental protection and pollution control is the main law in this field. The articles of the decree clarify the general points that must be followed to reduce environmental pollution in the early stages of development and establish projects of all kinds that are accompanied by negative impacts on the environment, including air pollutants.
In addition, the Environment Agency, in continuous coordination with the concerned authorities in the initial planning processes for land use, contributes to protecting society from exposure to the negative effects of future projects and activities on the health of society, so allocating land uses to industrial and agricultural areas and separating them, would avoid and reduce the arrival of air pollutants to the areas. Existing or future residential.
Article No. (9) of the Royal Decree also clarifies the necessity of ensuring the safety of projects from the environmental point of view before their establishment. Some activities and projects are required to submit a study to assess environmental impacts by evaluating projects to ensure their environmental safety, issuing environmental permits and setting conditions that limit and reduce environmental pollution, including Air pollution to the levels in force in the Sultanate, and the environmental inspection and control work carried out by the authority contributes to ensuring that projects adhere to environmental requirements to prevent and avoid pollution in all its forms.
At the level of environmental regulations, the authority has issued a regulation to control air pollutants emitted from fixed sources No. (118/2004), where the regulation includes articles of definitions and terms related to air pollution, procedures and technical obligations for projects such as chimney height and the use of modern scientific methods to control emissions discharged into the air, The regulation also includes the permissible levels of pollutants emitted from stationary sources.
And through the inspection field visits carried out by specialists in the Air and Noise Pollution Control Department, there is continuous monitoring of the extent to which projects adhere to the environmental conditions contained in the environmental permits and licenses, which would regulate the discharge of emissions into the air, and the field visits also include standing on the latest developments in the production processes for projects and research The causes of the engineering and environmental problems and difficulties that the projects face, and then they are directed towards finding appropriate solutions to address the problems and excesses in a way that guarantees the protection of the air from pollution.
In addition, the follow-up work of the periodic reports submitted by the projects on the results of the environmental monitoring readings, which clarifies the levels of emissions scientifically and accurately required by the authority, and the monitoring process is carried out in several ways, including the installation of special devices and sensitive equipment in the chimneys and places of emission disposal, and the monitoring is carried out throughout the day and continuously. Around the clock, or by taking samples of emissions, then periodic reports are prepared that include monitoring data and readings, where they are compared to the applicable levels in the relevant regulations and explain the reasons and proposed solutions about that.
Ambient air monitoring is one of the tasks entrusted to the Environment Agency in the Sultanate, and the authority has taken care of this aspect by issuing the Ambient Air Quality Regulation (41/2017). A number of stations have been installed to monitor air pollution since in some governorates and cities of the Sultanate, and work is currently underway. On installing networks of air quality monitoring stations for the various industrial zones in the Sultanate.
At the level of international cooperation, the Sultanate has organized several international treaties and agreements that will strengthen partnership with the countries of the world about contributing to environmental protection and pollution control, and the Sultanate has participated in international conferences related to regional environmental pollution problems such as the problem of sandstorms in the Middle East region, and the international workshop On the Middle East (regional), these two conferences demonstrated the importance of regional countries joining together in confronting and dealing with the problem of dust and dust storms, especially after their intensification in this region of the world due to unsustainable activities on the environment.
The Sultanate has also been able, during the past years, and since its ratification of the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, to meet the requirements for compliance with the aforementioned protocol and reduce the quantities of use of substances that deplete the ozone layer, in accordance with the gradual reduction schedule approved by the Montreal Protocol and encourage the use of the transition to technologies. And ozone-friendly materials.
It is worth noting that the Sultanate is currently implementing and planning many renewable energy stations with the aim of increasing its contribution to energy saving, which will contribute greatly to reducing levels of air pollution and controlling the rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to plans and efforts aimed at promoting the green economy and expanding the use of Low carbon technologies.