Bamiji Michael Adeleye, Ayobami Abayomi Popoola, Taiwo Oladapo Babalola, Funke Jiyah, Nunyi Vachaku Blamah & Ojoma Gloria Popoola2025-05-012024-05-0146. Bamiji Michael Adeleye, Ayobami Abayomi Popoola, Taiwo Oladapo Babalola, Funke Jiyah, Nunyi Vachaku Blamah & Ojoma Gloria Popoola (2024). Assessing Environmental Pollution in Township Communities: a case study of Bida—the Heritage City of Nupe People in Mehebub, S (Eds) Remote Sensing and GIS in Peri-Urban Research: Perspective on Global Change, Sustainability and Resilience. Published by Elsevier, 429 – 449.978-0-443-15832-2http://repository.futminna.edu.ng:4000/handle/123456789/1579Book Chapter19.1 Introduction The increasing urban population of many Sub-Saharan African states has continued in recent years, leading to irrational and crowded urban developments with little regard for people’s health and well-being. However, one of the features of this worrying development is environmental pollution, and the need to arrest this phenomenon has received considerable global attention (Addo & Olajide, 2021). The intergovernmental policy response against rising environmental air pollution is traceable to the New Urban Agenda, which emphasises the need to accelerate urban actions for a carbon-free world, and the Paris Agreement, which calls for long-term strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2015). Moreover, environmental air pollution is one of the major indicators used to measure environmental sustainability. The threat of environmental air pollution is not only prominent in megacities where most of the policy and research attention are focused. However, the phenomenon is also becoming evident in medium sized and small-scale cities (Zhang, 2021; Barba-Vasseur et al., 2017) owing to industrial activities in peri-urban zones. Environmental air pollution is a deadly phenomenon that kills an estimated 3 million people every year. It is such a risk multiplier that it is estimated to cause one out of three deaths from lung cancer, stroke, and chronic respiratory diseases and one in four deaths from heart attacks (World Bank, 2022a; WHO, 2018). An estimated $8.1 trillion (6.1% of the global GDP) has been attributed to the economic loss caused by environmental air pollution in 2019 (World Bank 2022b). It has also been established that 80% of the world’s cities exceed the World Health Organisation (WHO) outdoor air quality limit (any value less than 2.5 microns in diameter [PM2.5]). Furthermore, half of the cities that properly monitor their air pollution reported air quality levels that were three times higher than the WHO limits (WHO, 2018). One of the primary causes of this air pollution in many African residential town such as Bida is household reliance on cooking related energy sources such as charcoal, firewood, petrol, and kerosene (Cross et al., 2019). Unfortunately, the pattern of urban development in many Nigerian cities is not growing in a direction that could reduce household GHG emissions, but instead exacerbating them. For instance, due to the lack of pedestrain infrastructure to support walking to central business districts, Aigbe et al. (2012) estimate that about 90 per cent of the population in Lagos rely mainly on road transportation for their daily activities. This, in turn, contributes to the prevailing traffic congestion in our cities, which generates greenhouse gases (Atubi, 2015). The study of Imam et al. (2008) revealed the lack of of sanitary landfills for waste management thus avoiding possible emissions from alternative options (i.e. open burning), while Ayotamuno and Gobo (2004) reported a similar situation of a weak waste management system in another Nigerian city. Dangulla et al. (2020) reported the low priority given to urban trees growing in Nigerian cities, which could reduce emitted greenhouse gas emissions. Given the emphasis on the importance of reducing environmental air pollution towards achieving environmental sustainability, the subject has gained sufficient empirical research attention globally, and Nigeria in particular. For instance, Aunan et al. (2019) suggest that both rural and peri-urban residents have the likelihood of suffering from air pollution risks as urban residents. The health, hazard, and economic impacts of air pollution within residential communities have been well documented (see Naddafi et al., 2012; Bhanarkar et al., 2002; Allen et al., 2013; Thomas et al., 2015; Yip et al., 2017; Chartier et al., 2017). However, in the Nigerian context, studies such as Oluwole et al. (2013), Roberman et al. (2021), Babayemi et al. (2016), and Dutta et al. (2018) have demonstrated the tendency of household environmental air pollution to elevate lung condition, maternal hypertension, stillbirth, and reduce general health outcome among urban residents. However, the commonality of these studies is obviously the focus on capital cities and the overemphasis on the potential impacts. Therefore, this current study builds on the earlier studies in the context of medium- sized cities that have been neglected in the extant literature. The study intends to investigate environmental air pollution in the city of Bida an emerging city in the Niger state, Nigeria. The possible levels of emitted air pollution were estimated from data on the use of charcoal, firewood, petrol, and kerosene. The data was used to project the possible level of air pollution emissions over the next decade. It is expected that the study will be relevant and helpful for the Niger state government in adequately monitoring the reality of the environmental sustainability agenda in its medium-sized cities. Furthermore, the results can be extended to understand the likely situations of the subject in other medium-sized cities globally that are comparable in scale and pattern to Bida in Nigeria. To achieve this, two objectives were highlighted. The first is to understand energy consumption in the study area and the second is to examine air pollution from greenhouse gas emissions and its impact on environmental sustainability.enBook chapter