# Anil Markandya Back to [[Authors/@BjornLomborg/People/People|Lomborg People]] · [[Authors/@BjornLomborg/BjornLomborg-x-profile|@BjornLomborg]] · Topic: [[Topics/Climate Change Science and Policy Debate/Climate Change Science and Policy Debate|Climate Change Science and Policy Debate]] **Role:** Environmental economist; Ikerbasque professor at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Bilbao; lead author of the 2018 Lancet Planetary Health study of air-quality co-benefits of the Paris targets - Lead and corresponding author of Markandya, Sampedro, Smith, Van Dingenen, Pizarro-Irizar, Arto and González-Eguino (2018), [Health co-benefits from air pollution and mitigation costs of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study](https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(18)30029-9), *Lancet Planetary Health* 2(3). Affiliation on the paper: BC3 (email domain bc3research.org). - Findings (abstract): "The health co-benefits substantially outweighed the policy cost of achieving the target for all of the scenarios that we analysed... The ratio of health co-benefit to mitigation cost ranged from 1·4 to 2·45, depending on the scenario." Co-benefits alone would cover the costs for China and India; for the EU they cover 7–84% and for the US 10–41%. - Method: GCAM integrated assessment model with regional carbon taxes, with deaths valued using a value of a statistical life (VSL); with the lower-bound VSL, co-benefits still cover 70–91% of costs (paper's sensitivity analysis). - Cited by IPCC AR6 WGIII (Ch. 3, §3.6.3) among the studies behind its finding that air-quality health benefits "can be of the same order of magnitude as mitigation costs, and potentially even larger." - Relevant to Lomborg's Nov 13, 2026 "cleaner air" myth card; see the [[Authors/@BjornLomborg/Post Analyses/Post Analysis - BjornLomborg on Cleaner Air Not Making Net Zero Pay for Itself (2026-11-13)|Nov 13, 2026 cleaner-air analysis]]. ⚠️ Current title (Ikerbasque professor at BC3) is from memory and was not re-checked this run. - See also [[Topics/Climate Change Science and Policy Debate/People/Bjørn Lomborg|Bjørn Lomborg]].