Air Quality and Climate

Our work focuses on implementing solutions that reduce air pollution and its detrimental health impacts, and that mitigate the climate crisis. We do this by providing policy guidance, building capacity, and making a compelling case for action among stakeholders at city, national, and regional levels.
 

Our national offices and our Policy, Research and Outreach teams spearhead our work with a focus on:
 

  • Addressing city and national-level air quality and climate change challenges in relevant sectors, including energy and transport, with Clean Air and Climate Action Plans playing a critical role in achieving our goals.
     
  • Highlighting, emphasizing, and pointing to solutions by building capacity, conducting policy research, advocating for effective and appropriate policies and practices, and empowering stakeholders to mitigate air pollution and climate change impacts. 
     
  • Producing high-quality, evidence-based knowledge products that support the scaling up of the implementation of best practice solutions and innovative policies/practices. Publications
     
  • Building consensus among stakeholders on solutions through our events, including our Better Air Quality (BAQ) conferences. Consensus-building underpins all of our work, including facilitating coordination among stakeholders towards action, strengthening governance through recommendations for practical reforms, capacity building, resource mobilization, and bringing communities together for change. 
Clean Air Action Plans

Cities are on the forefront of the fight to improve urban air quality. Critical to improving urban air quality is the development and implementation of Clean Air Action Plans (CAAPs). We support cities in developing, implementing and financing CAAPs, including helping them identify the sources of air pollution in their city, enabling them to mobilize resources in the most effective and efficient manner, and ultimately to protect public health. Central to our efforts in this area are our Guidance Framework for Better Air Quality in Asian Cities, our City Solutions Toolkit and our capacity building programs, as well as our extensive reach to cities throughout Asia, including our country programs in China and India.

Clean Energy

We are building on the significant momentum we have created over the years in reducing emissions from coal-based power generation by supporting science-based policy and decision-making. We work with local governments to establish evidence of the local health impacts of air pollution, including include implementing targeted measures for monitoring and regulating emissions from coal-fired power plants (CFPs) into science-based Clean Air Action Plans. We also build the capacity of governments to strengthen the enforcement of existing policies and regulations governing CFPs through policy guidance, training, and experts’ assistance.

Transport

Our work on sustainable transport is based on a holistic and comprehensive approach to the mitigation of emissions from the transport sector. Our focus is on helping cities and countries adopt solutions based around walkability, cycling, the integration of transport into land-use planning, vehicle fuel economy and emissions standards, improvements in fuel quality, electromobility, in-use vehicles emissions management, and the adoption of green freight programs and practices. We’re also working to mainstream these solutions in policies and investments, and are strengthening governments’ capacity to collect and analyze transport data - a key component of policy planning and development.