Low- and middle-income countries experience the largest burden on poor air quality with disproportionately high impacts on human health and environment. The path to improving air quality is fraught with challenges, yet learning from experiences elsewhere and building collaborative opportunities can offer a smorgasbord of bold opportunities for clean air action.
While North-South collaborations have been actively pursued to tackle air pollution for some time, the evolving landscape presents the vast potential for South-South collaborations, opening new avenues for shared solutions and mutual progress towards cleaner air and better health. Mutual support through pooling of human, financial and institutional resources can help low- and middle-income countries to progress rapidly on their national clean air plans.
On January 21, EPIC’s Clean Air Program and the Health Effects Institute’s Global Initiatives hosted a conversation to develop a collective understanding, share best practices, and contribute to the development of a more resilient global, collaborative approach to ensuring clean and healthy air for all. Several countries in the Global South have made significant strides in addressing air quality challenges through innovative approaches and robust collaborations in the last decade. By sharing insights and best practices, other countries in the Global South can adopt similar strategies to enhance their air quality and protect public health.
With this understanding at its core, the webinar, ‘When South Meets South: Enhancing Air Quality with Data Access And Capacity Strengthening’ brought together an expert panel to highlight the kind of collaborative efforts that would be required and the urgency with which we need to center needs, experiences and expertise in the Global South for improving air quality.
