Accra, July 27, GNA – The EPIC Air Quality Fund, an organisation working to bring actionable information about air quality, has received a grant of $1.5 million from Open Philanthropy to expand access to air quality data to one billion people by 2030.
With the new funding, EPIC Air Quality Fund will support local groups and organisations in installing monitors and providing open data to communities that can benefit the most.
A statement copied to the Ghana News Agency announced a call for applications from groups and organisations living and working in the countries where these monitors would be deployed.
It said all applications must be made by September 10, 2024, and must align. According to the statement, air pollution was the number one health risk to humankind, with EPIC’s Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) showing that the burden of pollution on life expectancy outstripped that of malaria, HIV/AIDS and transportation injuries combined.
It said the history of progress on air pollution in many countries, including Japan, the United States, and China, showed that improvements in air quality came when the public demanded change and made air quality a political priority.
It said Asia, Africa and Latin America made up 96 percent of life years lost due to pollution and that Europe, the United States and Canada contributed just four per cent, but they received 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,” it said.
“Air pollution is the largest current external risk to human life on the planet,” said Mr Michael Greenstone EPIC Director, 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.”
Ms Christa Hasenkopf, EPIC Clean Air Program Director, said, “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.
“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 would 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.
Mr Santosh Harish, a Program Officer, leading grantmaking in environmental health at Open Philanthropy, said, “Open Philanthropy is happy to support the EPIC Air Quality Fund. We believe this Fund leverages an outsized but rarely realised 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.”
GNA