Presented by: Abid Omar, Pakistan Air Quality Initiative

Summary: Pakistan has an air quality data problem with little to no monitoring across the country. Community-driven air quality monitoring has been instrumental in filling the air quality data gap in Pakistan, and in creating a grassroots citizen’s movement advocating for clean air. Real-time data from this community network has put a magnifying glass on air pollution, where citizens can react to their local air pollution, evaluate impact of emission-reduction policies, and ultimately providing the impetus for a cleaner environment.

This paper presents Pakistan as a case study of a typical low-income country, similar to other developing countries across South Asia and Africa, lacking reference-standard monitoring equipment, or the technical capacity to manage them. Pakistan’s community-based nationwide network of low-cost real-time air quality monitors has helped fill the data gap in Pakistan and has been instrumental in many ways, by engaging the community and corporate citizens in participatory monitoring, by creating a network of ambassadors for air quality awareness, and finally by providing the baseline data for the government to initiate reference-standard monitoring. The impact from this community monitoring network has been tremendous in kick-starting awareness and furthering monitoring in one of the most air-polluted regions of the world. 

Learnings from this initiative are shared to enable other communities, cities and countries to harness a similar network of low-cost monitors to kick-start positive environmental change in their region, and how to engage and develop a community of citizen scientists to deploy, maintain and manage air quality sensors in a decentralized network.

Click here for presentation video!