Air Monitoring 43
Philanthropy is a growing route to fi nancing solutions to social issues like air pollution. There are over 260,000 philanthropic foundations globally, with assets exceeding $1.5 trillion.6
Over
the past century, philanthropy has played a crucial role in supporting a number of large-scale social transformations, including the near eradication of polio, the widespread adoption of car seats for children, and tobacco control.7
of social change were propelled by philanthropy – which was able to act as a fl exible source of capital, fi lling gaps left by others.5
However, philanthropy has been slow to come to the air quality issue. In 2015, Clean Air Fund tracked just $15m of global philanthropic funding supporting grants to tackle ambient air pollution. This grew to $64m by 2021 – a more than quadrupling – yet this still represents less than 0.1% of total philanthropic fi nance. What funding has gone to the issue has also been inequitably spent: Africa – home to 17% of the world’s population and 16%8
of all premature deaths from air pollution – received just 0.2% of foundation funding to air quality projects.9
Yet, while total funds committed are small, philanthropy can play an important role in tackling air pollution and fi lling data gaps. Philanthropy can play a role that other funding sources cannot – it can typically take more risk, be more agile, and provide a route for innovation to be piloted out of the lab and fi nd a way to scale.
One example is the Breathe London pilot project: an initiative to demonstrate how lower-cost monitors and mobile monitoring can generate useful data and insights about air pollution, and to package what was learned into an accessible blueprint10 cities achieve their clean air goals.
Reference These examples
1. WHO (2022) ‘Billions of people still breathe unhealthy air: new WHO data’ 2. WHO (2021) Global Air Quality Guidelines 3. AQLI (2022) Air Quality Life Index. Annual Update 4. OpenAQ (2022) Open Air Quality Data: The Global Landscape 2022 5. UNICEF (2019) Silent Suffocation in Africa: Air Pollution is a Growing Menace, Affecting the Poorest Children the Most. 6. Johnson (2018) Global Philanthropy Report: Perspectives on the global foundation sector 7. Wolf Ditkoff and Grindle (2017) Lessons from 15 world changing initiatives 8. Health Policy Watch (2022) Africa Faces 1.1 Million Deaths Annually from Air Pollution – Second Largest Risk After Malnutrition 9. Clean Air Fund (2022) The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2022 10.
https://globalcleanair.org/fi les/2021/02/EDF-Europe-BreatheLondon_Blueprint-guide.pdf 11. For example:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.2c08096
to help
London was an ideal place to test emerging monitoring technologies. The city already has an extensive regulatory network, comprised of reference-grade air-quality monitors, as well as support from the Mayor of London and existing policies aimed at reducing air pollution. One of these policies is the world- leading Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which charges the most polluting vehicles to enter the city centre.
The Breathe London pilot used London as a testbed to advance the science around lower-cost air quality monitoring and help make invisible pollution visible. With 100 lower-cost sensor “pods” and two specially equipped Google Street View cars, the Breathe London pilot project complemented London’s existing regulatory network and was used to help measure the impact of the fi rst phase of rolling out ULEZ. The approach has continued to generate useful scientifi c research and has helped to inform multiple sensor deployment projects in other cities globally11
.
Philanthropic capital can also help to empower affected communities. For example, in 2022, the UrbanBetter initiative delivered a campaign called Cityzens4CleanAir (C4CA). This youth-led citizen science initiative equipped passionate advocates in South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana with low-cost wearable sensors to gather data and raise awareness of air pollution. Informed by the data stories they generated, these citizen scientists were trained in advocacy and developed policy calls for decision makers. They also ran advocacy campaigns in the build up to and during COP27, reaching almost two million people. Whilst a relatively small pilot campaign, C4CA was successful in directly engaging local policymakers on the issue - highlighting the potential of coupling lower-cost, decentralised air quality measurements with community advocates in raising awareness and promoting more ambitious action on air pollution.
With such stark data gaps for locally generated air quality, particularly in the global south, we need to urgently demonstrate how more cost effective, lower barrier technologies can be scaled to support air quality management. While philanthropy cannot be the sole route to solving the problem, it can provide an important route to increasing awareness and demonstrating potential approaches.
Matt Whitney is Interim Project Director at Clean Air Fund
WWW.ENVIROTECH-ONLINE.COM
Figure 3. Annual foundation funding be region, 2015-2021. Source: Clean Air Fund (2022) The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2022.
Figure 4. Cityzens 4 Clean Air runners in Lagos, Nigeria.
photo credit: Onome Ofoman
Author Contact Details Matt Whitney • Clean Air Fund • Address: 20 St Thomas Street, London, SE1 9RS, United Kingdom • Tel: +44(0)208 0756 200 • Email:
info@cleanairfund.org • Web:
www.cleanairfund.org
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