The Brussels Clean Air Partnership aims to implement a wide range of projects to support policy to reduce air pollution, including the use of low-cost monitoring devices to provide critical data.
Brussels is embarking on an initiative to improve air quality in the city through innovation, research and monitoring, citizen engagement and education programmes with Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The city will deploy more than 3,000 measuring devices to map air pollution exposure and identify air pollution hotspots. Additionally, 220 school children from different socio-economic backgrounds will be monitored for exposure to air pollutants in school and at home.
The Brussels Clean Air Partnership study, launched alongside Bloomberg Philanthropies’ ongoing work across Europe, is intended to support the European Union’s goals set out in the European Green Deal to cut pollution levels in cities.
The partnership will bring together government, universities as well as local and international research centres and NGOs in a science-based, coordinated initiative to curb air pollution throughout the Brussels-Capital Region.
“By bringing together this large coalition of stakeholders around the same objective, Brussels now has a crucial advantage to successfully undertake the transition to a low-carbon society”
Air pollution poses a critical public health risk, claiming more than 400,000 premature deaths in Europe every year, according to research from the European Environmental Agency and an estimated 9,000 lives every year in Belgium alone. Other studies also show a strong correlation between exposure to particulate matter and increased cases of Covid-19.
“Today, people living in Brussels are exposed to unacceptable levels of air pollution. Protecting the health of our citizens and taking transformative actions to make our city greener must be our priority,” said Alain Maron, Brussels’ minister for climate change, environment and energy.
“To do this, we will need everyone. By bringing together this large coalition of stakeholders around the same objective, Brussels now has a crucial advantage to successfully undertake the transition to a low-carbon society.”
The projects were designed and will be implemented by local organisations including Hasselt University, the University of Antwerp, the International Council on Clean Transportation and NGOs such as the BRAL, Hypothèse and Les Chercheurs d’Air.
The partnership will support Brussels’ efforts to reduce air pollution across these key initiatives:
The data collected by the Brussels Clean Air partnership projects will be made available to the public and will be used to inform the policies implemented by the Brussels Government to combat air pollution in the region. These actions include drastically scaling-up sustainable mobility practices and committing to the gradual phase out of diesel vehicles by 2030 and of petrol and LPG by 2035.
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