New $1.5 Million Fund Aims To Expand Access To Air Quality Data To 1 Billion People By 2030

Air pollution is increasing in Kampala/Courtesy photo

The EPIC Air Quality Fund, through a gift from Open Philanthropy, will bring air quality monitors and open pollution data to some of the world’s most polluted communities.

Air pollution is the number one health risk to humankind, with EPIC’s Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) showing that the burden of pollution on life expectancy outstrips that of malaria, HIV/AIDS and transportation injuries combined. While research shows that installing air quality monitors and sharing real-time data with the public in places with very little or no data leads to cleaner air, nearly 40 percent of countries—many of which satellite data shows are highly polluted—aren’t producing open air quality data for their citizens.

Through a $1.5 million gift from Open Philanthropy, the EPIC Air Quality Fund will support local groups and organizations in installing monitors and providing open data to communities that could benefit the most.

“Air pollution is the largest current external risk to human life on the planet,” says EPIC Director Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. “Yet, in many of the most polluted places, the issue flies under the radar because the basic building blocks of data that drive citizens’ engagement and spur policy don’t yet exist. Opacity and lack of transparency on pollution levels and its sources advantages polluters over people who must breathe the air. The EPIC Air Quality Fund is changing that, closing data gaps around the world to spur action in confronting pollution.”

The history of progress on air pollution in many countries, including Japan, the United States, and China, show that improvements in air quality came when the public demanded change and made air quality a political priority. The foundation for these demands was data that allowed local communities to understand the depth of the problem, and then later, data to provide a guidepost for setting air quality standards and evaluating their progress.

Yet, the countries that are most impacted by air pollution today are caught in a vicious cycle of inequality. Asia, Africa and Latin America make up 96 percent of life years lost due to pollution. Europe, the United States and Canada contribute just 4 percent, but they receive 60 percent of philanthropic funds to combat pollution. China and India receive a little over half of that and the rest of Asia, Africa and Latin America receive just 4 percent of those resources. Africa, in fact, receives philanthropic funding for air pollution equivalent to the average price of a single-family home in the United States.

With little funding to address the issue, such as by installing air quality monitors, just 7, 4 and 19 percent of governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, respectively, provide their citizens with fully open air quality data. With little data, it is hard to generate a call for change or set policies. It is also hard to attract funding toward the issue, so the cycle continues. The EPIC Air Quality Fund breaks this cycle.

“The EPIC Air Quality Fund supports local actors in countries with little or no air pollution data to generate information, share it with the public, and drive national-level impact” says EPIC Clean Air Program Director Christa Hasenkopf. “Our goal is to expand access to air quality data to 1 billion people by 2030. We believe achieving this goal will allow communities across the world to breathe cleaner air and live longer, healthier lives.”

The Fund intends to provide this support over multiple years because a long-term commitment to local actors is necessary to achieve change. The Fund will require awardees to share the air quality data they produce in a fully open manner (compatible with a CC-BY-4.0 license) and on a freely accessible platform where the information will be findable alongside other global datasets, such as on the non-profit OpenAQ platform. In this manner, the progress of the Fund’s supported efforts can be measured by anyone in the world, and the data produced can be ingested into a wide variety of international and national air quality efforts.

“Open Philanthropy is happy to support the EPIC Air Quality Fund,” says Santosh Harish, a Program Officer leading grantmaking in environmental health at Open Philanthropy. “We believe this Fund leverages an outsized but rarely realized philanthropic opportunity to make air quality publicly accessible in countries with negligible monitoring data. Improved measurement increases the chance of government and public engagement with the problem, and could lead to improved air quality levels over the long term.”

The concept behind the Fund was piloted earlier this year when EPIC received about $140,000 in funding from Open Philanthropy and AWS (Amazon Web Services) to make four initial investments in local groups closing air pollution data gaps in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, and Argentina. The Fund’s focus responds to a broader call from the air quality community for increasing global air quality monitoring capacity such as the global commission Our Common Air’s recent Call To Action and the UNEA resolution on air quality adopted earlier this year.

The Fund becomes part of the EPIC Clean Air Program, which works to bring actionable information about the quality of the air we breathe and its impact on our health to every corner of the globe in order to motivate action and lay guideposts for efficient air pollution policies. Along with the Fund, this work includes the AQLI, which translates air pollution into its impact on life expectancy, and several particulate pollution trading markets being piloted in Indian cities in coordination with state governments.

The Fund is now accepting applications from groups and organizations living and working in the countries where these monitors would be deployed. Applications are due September 10, 2024, though outstanding applications that demonstrate large impact potential and alignment with the goals of the Fund may be evaluated before this date on a rolling basis.