Short Summary
High-quality and transparent air-quality monitoring is a key enabler of reducing air pollution.
While growing interest exists in expanding locally led air-quality monitoring and advocacy efforts, many local teams are undertrained and undersupported, limiting their effectiveness and chance of success.
This charity will work to strengthen the global infrastructure of air quality monitoring & advocacy by providing services such as technical training, research support, monitoring & evaluation, community building, or facilitation of knowledge exchange.
The Problem
What’s the problem?
The capacity to monitor air pollution is extremely limited in dozens of countries worldwide, many of which also have the highest air pollution levels.
Why does it matter?
Air pollution is one of the most significant global risk factors for disease and disability, being responsible for nearly five million premature deaths per year.
The lack of high-quality, transparent, local data makes air pollution less “visible” to researchers, businesses, civil society organizations, and (crucially) policymakers, thus contributing to the topic’s neglectedness.
Neglectedness:
While there is a growing interest among local actors in monitoring and addressing air pollution, the global infrastructure to support these local actors has been limited, and their progress has slowed down.
The Solution
What’s the proposed solution?
This new charity will work to strengthen the global infrastructure of air quality monitoring & advocacy by providing services such as technical training, research support, monitoring & evaluation, community building, or facilitation of knowledge exchange.
Why do we trust this solution?
There is rigorous observational evidence suggesting that the installation of air-quality monitors, paired with making their data publicly available, improves local air quality. There is also a growing number of case studies from various countries where local teams successfully used air-quality data to advocate for better regulations.
How robust is the evidence?
The evidence that transparent air quality monitoring improves air quality is relatively weak, relying on one randomized controlled trial and one large-scale quasi-experimental study. However, it is supplemented by a range of case-study evidence. The evidence for the need for a new meta-charity relies primarily on expert opinions.
The Impact
What impact could this have?
We estimate that, at scale, this charity could help avert around 12,000 DALYs and 24,000 tCO2 per year. However, given the nature of this charity idea, these estimates are highly uncertain.
Estimated cost-effectiveness:
With very high uncertainty, we estimate that USD 35 per DALY and USD 18 per ton of CO2 will be avoided.
Ideal Founder Profile
Who is best suited to do this? *
This idea is suitable for strong generalists interested in tackling air pollution. At least one founder should have strong interpersonal skills and an interest in teaching/upskilling others. Experience with monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and/or with designing and evaluating interventions may be beneficial. Lastly, experience with air quality monitoring – especially source apportionment studies – would be extremely valuable, though we recognize this skill set is scarce. Alternatively, a strong technical background (in science or engineering) would be a good prerequisite for developing this expertise.
*We think candidates with the following skills will have a comparative advantage/be especially promising for founding this idea, but we would like to still encourage applicants from people who do not match this criteria who are enthusiastic about this idea and believe they may be well-suited for reasons not captured here
