Asia

Fact Sheet: Air Pollution and Health

Understanding how air pollution affects the health of Indore residents and the benefits of taking action to reduce it. Read More

Driving Indore Toward Cleaner Air

Exploring six solutions that Indore’s leaders can implement now to start curbing air pollution in the transportation sector. 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

Developing Integrated Solid Waste Management Plans to Advance Circular Economies

In providing the essential service of waste management to their communities, local governments confront considerable challenges: competing priority issues (i.e., education and health); limited financial resources; growing populations and waste that are outpacing existing infrastructure; and a lack of long-term, data-driven, and goal-oriented approaches to strategically guide their waste management systems. 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

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

United States and Indonesia Celebrate “Clean Cities, Blue Ocean” Collaboration to Reduce Plastic Pollution

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) successfully completed its Clean Cities, Blue Ocean (USAID CCBO) program in Indonesia, implemented in close partnership with national and local governments.  Read More