Yerevan’s Air Crisis: Inside the Pollution Emergency

2026-01-25 - 21:06

Listen to the AI generated audio article. Your browser does not support the audio element. Yerevan’s air pollution problem has firmly become part of the mainstream discourse in Armenia. From outrage on social media to city council debates, the capital’s air quality often prompts widespread alarm and concern. A myriad of factors contribute to the situation. Yerevan’s current general/master plan, approved by the city council in September 2024, lists three main causes of air pollution: massive development (construction), open-pit quarrying, and transportation. Other contributors are land degradation, the Nubarashen landfill, industry, energy production, residential heating, and fires. Most concerning is the particularly high level of fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5. According to the World Health Organization, these microscopic particles represent the most dangerous form of air pollution. Unlike larger particles that the body can filter out, PM2.5 penetrates deep into the lungs and enters the bloodstream, where it can trigger respiratory diseases, cardiovascular problems, and other serious health conditions. The Geographic Factor With the recent flareup, Mayor Tigran Avinyan was quick to point to geographic and climatic factors as the main culprit. Specialists like Gayane Shahnazaryan from the Hydrometeorological and Monitoring Center explained how Yerevan’s location creates a natural trap for pollutants, particularly during winter when an anticyclone system causes air turbulence to cease and atmospheric currents to stagnate. While the natural factors are real, they are being used partly to deflect from human-caused sources as geography does not create pollution, but traps what is emitted by humans. Never-ending Construction Since the turn of the century, Yerevan has gone through several construction booms, including major development and gentrification of its downtown core. Largely driven by the government program allowing citizens to receive a refund of their income tax on their mortgage interest for new apartments, construction in the capital underwent its most recent boom starting in 2018. But out of the nearly 680 high-rise building permits issued in Yerevan since then, only 30% have received final operation permits, resulting in delayed projects, unfinished or abandoned construction sites. These are also major sources of air pollution, especially dust. Beyond these, there are widespread daily regulatory violations, such as the absence of protective nets and disregard for the requirement to suppress dust. To address dust emissions from construction, Yerevan city council required developers to cover buildings with protective netting and install air quality monitoring devices on-site starting from September 2023. A year later, in June 2024, the Yerevan Municipality made air pollution data from the city’s construction sites available online through an interactive map. The Quarry Problem While it may come as a surprise to many, Yerevan has 16 actively operating quarries (and mines) extracting mostly basalt or gypsum (gypsum-bearing clays). They are situated in various parts of the city, namely in Nor Nork, the western edges of Ajapnyak, Erebuni, and Avan. Permits require operators to protect the subsoil, atmosphere, and other environmental features from harmful impacts caused by mining activities. According to Ecolur, an environmentalist outlet, however, this requirement is not effectively enforced, resulting in significant environmental damage to the city. These quarries fail to implement environmental protection measures, dust emission controls, or green buffer zone creation. A lengthy investigation by Hetq from mid-2021 found that while Yerevan had become surrounded by large, unreclaimed quarrying pits that contribute to severe air pollution, there is no data to quantify their contribution to the crisis. The industry operates with virtually no oversight despite being located in the capital with the majority of companies operating without required land use agreements, avoiding paying fees to the municipality, ignoring dust mitigation measures outlined in their permits, and facing no meaningful consequences for systematic violations. Many were found to be owned by former government officials and their associates. A total of 36 quarrying sites are situated within Yerevan’s administrative borders according to Armenia’s Republican Geological Fund. Yerevan’s 2024 general/master plan states that the capital has 15 abandoned quarrying sites, mainly in the Nor Nork and Ajapnyak districts. Waste dumps at these sites contain large volumes of accumulated residues that have become sources of long-term environmental pollution. After studying these sites, the municipality has identified the Jrvezh gypsum clay and basalt quarry as the priority for rehabilitation. The site is too close to residential and forested areas to allow new operations, so officials are considering converting 50 hectares into a buffer zone between neighborhoods and active quarries. Victoria Burnazyan, editor of Ecolur, argues that the master plan does not go far enough as it does not address the dust pollution from active quarries and their stone processing facilities. Nubarashen Fires The capital’s infamous Nubarashen landfill is another culprit of the crisis. In operation since the 1950s, the dump covers more than 50 hectares and does not comply with modern standards, serving what has been described as “a waste accumulation site.” Fires at the landfill have become a regular occurrence, polluting Yerevan’s air with toxic substances. Authorities have long promised to deal with the issue to no avail. A biogas-to-energy plant was supposed to be built by a Japanese company in the mid-2000s, of which only a small gas-collection and flaring system was installed. A decade later Armenia’s government sought to reclaim the site and construct a modern facility through a loan, which was cancelled in 2024. In a press briefing in September, Mayor Avinyan told reporters that shutting down the Nubarashen landfill is a top priority. He said local authorities are pursuing a dual strategy to address waste processing. Officials are in discussions with international partners on an institutional framework, while simultaneously planning a two-phase tender process involving private sector companies to identify the best waste processing solution. Cars The ever growing number of cars in the streets of Yerevan is another significant factor, from small sedans to large buses and trucks, all contributing to the crisis. More than a third of Armenia’s 954,000 vehicles—around 343,000—are registered in Yerevan. How close this is to the actual number of cars in the capital is unknown, but it is likely higher since many cars are presumably registered elsewhere but driven in Yerevan. One factor exacerbating the situation is the widespread absence of catalytic converters on vehicles that reduce emissions. They are removed (or stolen) and sold as they contain precious metals. Regarding city buses, authorities have made a switch from diesel to natural gas (LPG or CNG) with plans to fully complete the switch. City authorities have also banned large trucks from entering the city core during the day. Perhaps more promising is the growing number of electric vehicles (EV). More than 22,500 have been imported to Armenia, mostly since 2023. In the first eight months of 2025 alone, 27% of newly registered vehicles were electric. The growth is driven by two government incentives. The first exempts customs duties for a limited number of EVs annually, while the second exempts EVs from value-added tax (VAT). Additionally, Yerevan exempts electric vehicles from paid parking fees. The government plans to extend VAT exemptions through 2027 and enact stricter requirements favoring newer models. Solutions and Government Response Lilit Sahakyan, who heads the Armenian Academy of Sciences’ Center for Ecological Research, noted in an interview earlier this year that Yerevan’s air pollution is a long-standing and well-documented problem requiring systematic solutions, but institutional dysfunction and failure to utilize scientific expertise prevent meaningful progress. This June, environmentalists, civil society, and local authorities identified key recommendations to address air pollution in Yerevan: improve the transportation system, ban the burning of waste and landfills, expand green spaces and strengthen oversight of industrial sites, enforce stricter controls, ensure access to accurate and reliable air quality data, and carry out regular monitoring of the impacts on public health. City authorities have signaled plans to enact stricter environmental control of construction sites and require quarry operators to remediate the sites. Data, much like air quality, remains poor. The city has only five fixed monitoring stations dating back to the 1980s with weekly summaries provided by the state-owned Hydrometeorology and Monitoring Center. In September 2025, the Japanese government provided around $1.7 million to the center to modernize air quality monitoring stations and acquire new equipment. In October 2025, Mayor Avinyan said the city plans to adopt a new decision to significantly increase penalties for non-compliance of installing protective netting at construction sites. Currently, failure incurs a fine of only 70,000 drams ($185), while the netting itself costs 2 to 4 million drams ($5-10 thousand), making it far cheaper for developers to simply pay the fine. He urged developers to reconsider their approach as new rules will result in fines amounting to hundreds of thousands or millions of drams, creating serious financial consequences. 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