Blog

Together for Clean Air: USAID Partners to Improve Air Quality Across Southeast Asia

Cross-posted from USAID Medium In Southeast Asia, air pollution levels are often three to four times higher than World Health Organization guidelines, impacting millions. Poor air quality contributes to 650,000 premature deaths across the region each year. USAID is committed to improving air quality by addressing… Read More

Championing Clean Air: Our Shared Responsibility

A breath of fresh air is hard to find. More than 99 percent of the world’s population now breathes unhealthy air, and poor air quality is linked to 1 in 8 deaths globally. In low- and middle-income countries, the statistics are worse. India had a staggering 99… Read More

Clean Cities, Blue Ocean Indonesia: From Ocean Pollution to Lasting Solutions

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelagic country with over 270 million people, is renowned for its prosperous seas, vital mangroves, and over 17,000 diverse islands. However, like many countries around the world, its waste management infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with rapid urbanization and escalating plastic pollution, threatening the country’s… Read More

Preventing More Than One Million Tons of Plastic from Entering the Environment

How USAID’s Clean Cities, Blue Ocean program has prevented more than 127 billion plastic bottles from entering into the environment  Clean Cities, Blue Ocean, USAID’s flagship global program under the Save Our Seas Initiative, has reached a significant milestone: preventing more than one million metric tons of plastic from entering… Read More

From the Field: How a Coastal Community Revived its Waterways through Improved Waste Management

From 2019-2024, USAID’s Clean Cities, Blue Ocean program piloted solutions in Sri Lanka to strengthen local  waste management systems to reduce ocean plastic pollution. In the district of Jaffna, located on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, USAID worked with local grantee organizations to improve recycling rates–including by engaging the… Read More

Six Takeaways from Indore’s New Air Quality Monitoring Stations

Research around the world shows that pollution levels can vary enormously within the same city and even within the same neighborhood. Local monitoring data can thus prove essential to understanding air pollution sources, how they affect different communities and groups, and where to target policy solutions. That’s why Clean Air Catalyst launched three air quality monitoring stations in Indore in January 2023. These new stations have significantly improved the city’s air quality tracking capabilities in some important ways. Read More

Women are Taking on Indore’s Air Pollution Crisis by Transforming the Transport Sector

By Jessica Kempner, Azra Khan and Derek Schwabe, February 23, 2024 Read More

Charting the Course for Gender-Responsive Clean Air Action in Nairobi

Loise—a pseudonym to protect her privacy—is a single mother of two who works at an eatery next to a major bus station in Nairobi City. Her customers are travelers coming into Nairobi early in the morning and leaving the city late at night. She arrives at the eatery by 5:00… Read More

Pink is the New Green: How Indore’s Growing Electric Bus Fleet Is Driving Progress on Air Quality and Women’s Empowerment

The city of Indore is working to integrate women into its growing clean-energy public transportation workforce. Its new electric buses promise to open new opportunities for women’s representation and empowerment while reducing air pollution. Read More

Reducing Pollution in Vietnam: One Good Design at a Time

In 2020, Social Impact’s USAID Learns provided a full range of design support services to USAID Vietnam, resulting in the Reducing Pollution Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). This was an exciting opportunity to support the Mission in translating the Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) focus on collective action into tangible environmental programming with lasting impact. Read More