Our impact

We accelerated the introduction of clean air policies in cities

We have supported work to drive policy change at national and regional levels. In Poland, our work with partners has contributed to the government’s adoption of anti-smog resolutions, improved Low Emission Zone (LEZ) legislation, and the roll out of the National Clean Air Programme. 12 mayors pledged to implement LEZs, with Krakow and Warsaw becoming some of central and eastern Europe’s first LEZs. These measures have resulted in better air quality in Poland since 2019: the average concentration of particulate matter (PM 2.5) has dropped significantly (by 3 ug/m3, from 19 ug/m3 in 2019 to 16 ug/m3 in 2022), according to the European Clean Air Centre’s calculations.

Our partners advocated for the EU to set one of most progressive air quality regulatory frameworks in the world. The revised European Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD), which aligns with the EU’s air quality standards to WHO guidelines, is expected to reduce premature death by 55%.

In the UK, we supported partners to drive the creation or expansion of eight Clean Air Zones (CAZ) in Bath, Brighton, Portsmouth and the London Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) – with the potential to save millions of lives. The 2023 London ULEZ expansion means an additional 5m people will breathe cleaner air. In Sofia, Bulgaria, the city introduced a LEZ for transport and heating, following civil society’s demands for stronger clean air measures and expert modelling spearheaded by our partners.
Through our partner C40 Cities’ Clean Air Accelerator programme, we galvanised 50 city mayors to sign the global clean air cities declaration, committing to working towards the WHO air quality guidelines. Over the last five years, cities have taken over 400 actions to improve their air quality.

We made the case for clean air worldwide

We continue to elevate health and air quality at an international level, particularly around the annual UN Conference of the Parties (COP).

In the lead-up to COP28, we produced an open letter calling on the COP President to focus on air pollution and health co-benefits, signed by over 90 NGOs, civil society organisations and health professionals. Working alongside partners and grantees, we put health at the heart of climate negotiations by collaborating with the UAE COP Presidency to shape the first Health Day. We ensured that voices from affected communities were heard: enabling a youth advocate on air pollution from Nepal and their ‘Air Bear’ to attend and the eye-catching ‘Pollution Pods’ installation we supported attracted high profile visits and notable media coverage.

For COP27, we supported organisations like Campaign Collective and Our Kids Climate to enable youth and parent advocates to make the case for clean air by putting the health impacts of air pollution on children in the spotlight. We also backed activists in Accra, Lagos and Cape Town to map air pollution through wearable sensors, to develop campaigns and bring these to the conference.

At COP26 in Glasgow, we joined Our Children’s Air to support mothers fighting for their children’s future and demanded an end to government support for fossil fuels. Over the course of the conference, we reached over 1 million people with our calls for joined-up action on air pollution and climate change.

We placed the economic argument for clean air front and centre in the post-COVID recovery. Our work with Dalberg found that dirty air costs the Indian economy $95 billion per year. It’s a similar story in the UK: our work with CBI found that the UK would benefit from $1.6 billion every single year if it achieved clean air, and that excludes the savings to the NHS and social care. In the run up to COP27, our research on Africa’s fastest growing cities revealed that clean air could unlock $20billion for Lagos, Cairo, Johannesburg and Accra.

We exposed the stark gap in financing for the air pollution crisis. Our sixth The State of Air Quality Funding report revealed that just 1% of international development funding and less than 3% of international public climate finance went to clean air initiatives between 2018 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, less than 0.1% of philanthropic funding was targeted to clean air.

We supported the establishment of Our Common Air, an independent global commission bringing together powerful voices and high-level expertise to accelerate collective action on air pollution. Its findings and recommendations were published in 2024.

We strengthened the movement for clean air

We are the largest global philanthropic donor dedicated to tackling air pollution, having raised $157m of direct funding. On top of the funding we raised ourselves, we leveraged and influenced funding with partners to scale up pilot projects. Overall we’ve catalysed over $100 million to tackle air pollution across the globe. We’ve funded over 300 projects since our inception, from community-led organisations to big strategic partners.

We drove private sector action on clean air

We rallied 17 multinational businesses to take action on air pollution through the Alliance for Clean Air. Trailblazing businesses like Google, IKEA, Mahindra and Siemens are measuring, and starting to reduce, their air pollution emissions. Several members have now published inventories of their air pollution emissions and will develop emission reduction strategies, a major step forward for private sector action.

Alliance members made tangible progress on mitigating their climate impact. For example, A.P Moller-Maersk, launched the first of 19 planned green methanol ships, reducing Maersk’s annual greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 450,000 tons CO2e per year on a fuel lifecycle basis. The alliance launched a ground-breaking guide on how to measure air pollution across businesses’ value chains. It also produced a business case toolkit to encourage other companies to follow suit. We also supported national level activities with businesses. In India, our work with the Confederation of Indian Industry built support among over 100 CEOs and developed an interactive website with case studies showcasing best practice.

We enabled data monitoring and targeted clean air measures

A new knowledge platform for air quality managers was created by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, based on the recommendations of a Clean Air Fund-sponsored study. The Air Quality Management Exchange Platform (AQMx) is designed to be a ‘one stop shop’ for technical tools and models, data, and knowledge to build capacity among air quality managers worldwide.

We enabled community-led use of air quality data in cities. We supported more than 29 local clean air campaigns and 1,000s of citizen scientists through our grants.

We’ve invested in air quality sensor networks to help fill data gaps and support targeted action in some of the most pollution-affected communities. With our support, the OpenAQ platform has facilitated open access to air quality data from more than 43,000 reference, research and low-cost monitors. That’s double the number of countries with air quality data available to the public than before. 

We supported action on clean air in Ghana through a new data initiative in the capital, convening the 13 municipalities and developing relationships with the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation and Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency. The project is deploying 65 low-cost sensors and 7 reference grade monitors across the city and providing training to support municipal staff to use and interpret the data. This will significantly bolster local understanding of air quality, helping to support the implementation of effective policy. 

We supported the World Health Organization to update its air quality database for the first time since 2018. Launched on World Health Day, this provided member-state ratified annual average data for 6,000 cities in 117 countries for PM10, PM2.5 and, for the first time, NO2.