The founding director of a U.S. university-based energy fund said of the closure of the U.S. Global Air Quality program: “There is a massive opportunity to rebuild this data infrastructure better with more in-country monitoring and data ownership that will make the global air quality system less brittle to policy swings from a single country.”
Date: 6/26
Region: Global
Country: Global
Topic: Climate & Environment
Policy Lens: Climate & Resource Pressure
Entry Type: Field Observation
Additional Context: This information was collected as part of The Aid Report’s original reporting, “‘Why did the US State Department stop sharing air quality data?” This feature story examines how the U.S. has stopped publicly sharing air quality data collected at embassies around the world, leaving many countries without trusted pollution measurements.
This quote is attributed to Christa Hasenkopf, founding director of EPIC’s Clean Air Program, which supports government and community projects to install air quality monitors, with the goal of reaching 1 billion people with air quality data by 2030. “In our interviews with applicants, the loss of the State Department program came up frequently as a barrier for their work,” Hasenkopf said.
When the U.S. Global Air Quality program ended, more than 70 diplomatic posts in over 50 countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, stopped providing the trusted, independent pollution data that many relied on. Globally, only 64% of countries monitor air pollution at all, and just 27% make that information publicly available and transparent.
Source: Devex