LONDON – “Cleaner air is possible when there’s political will,” said Cecilia Vaca Jones, executive director of Breathe Cities, told a panel during London Climate Action Week.

Britain’s capital is the poster child for that statement. In 2019, less than a decade after more stringent national air quality targets were first introduced, some experts estimated it could take the city 193 years to meet the target to reduce some pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which both harms lung development and is a risk factor in asthma. 

But five years later, that goal had already been achieved. 

London’s success inspired and connected cities around the globe. It also inspired a whole-day Clean Air Hub on 24 June convened by the Clean Air Fund, where speakers from governments, civil society, business and philanthropy explored practical action on clean air and climate. 

Climate Week involved more than 1,000 events, attracting over 75,000 people to the city from around the world. 

‘London is cooking’

The week coincided with a record-breaking heat wave in Europe and the UK, with United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres remarking in a special address: “London isn’t just calling – it’s cooking.” 

Attendees felt it on their skin. Amid red alerts of life-endangering high temperatures, the ceiling fans weren’t enough to mitigate the heat inside the un-airconditioned room of the National Theatre.  

The organisers were fully aware: ahead of the event, a mass email redirected the audience to a link with tips for staying safe in the heat and reassured them there would be chilled water, ice and handheld fans available. Still, the morning started with a room packed with people whose bravery in the face of the heat was commended by most panelists. 

Throughout Climate Action Week, the city embodied the climate agenda defined by Guterres in his address as “the best of times and the worst of times”, a phrase from the Charles Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities.

And if the heatwave depicted the worst of times, the event at the Clean Air Hub signaled the best of times, with speakers sharing experiences that reinforced Jones’ point that improving air quality is possible if there is political will. 

London’s success story

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the first national Clean Air Act, introduced after the Great London Smog of 1952, when five days of extreme smoke from uncontrolled stove and industrial emissions during a cold, windless period led to thousands of air pollution-related deaths. 

Many decades later, human-made air pollution still claims roughly 30,000 lives every year in the UK, and costs the country more than £500 million ($662 million) a week in medical expenses. 

But London is proof that things can be different. Between 2019 and 2024, the city saw a 40% drop in deaths linked to air pollution. 

Mayor Sadiq Khan attributed the results to the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez), an area where vehicles that fail to meet minimum emissions standards must pay a daily fee or a fine. Created in 2019, the zone was expanded to include the entire City of London and all of its boroughs in  2023, making it the world’s largest clean air zone. 

Had the Ulez not been introduced, experts estimate air pollution would be 27% higher than current levels. 

“This is real information that shows that the air pollution has improved as a result of that one policy,” Phoebe Stockton, senior policy and officer at the Greater London Authority, told the Clean Air Hub. 

Through the Air Quality Fund, the city has already distributed £27 million ($36 million) to over 100 projects that helped boroughs cut pollution. In honor of the Clean Air Act’s 70th anniversary, another £6 million ($8 million) was awarded.

But for Stockton, that’s still not enough: “We need to go further. We’ve met legal limits, now we need to strive towards the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.”

Multi-city ripple effect 

In 2018, Mayor Khan launched Breathe London, in collaboration with the joint WHO-UN Environment Programme’s BreatheLife initiative, which linked nearly 80 cities and regions around the world in ambitious clean air and climate commitments.  ‘Breathe London’ aimed to improve measurement of air quality across the city and engage with communities to act. 

Then in 2021, at COP26, the UN climate conference in Glasgow, Khan called for the creation of an initiative to invest in cities around the world to clean their air and enhance public health. That helped to spark the Breathe Cities initiative supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Clean Air Fund and C40 Cities. 

Breathe Cities now includes a network of 16 cities that aim to replicate the success of Breathe London. The cities have received financing commitments totaling $75 million from its sponsors, including $45 million announced at London Climate Week. 

The initiative provides equipment and technical support for cities to expand air quality monitoring; develop their own Clean Air and Reduced Emissions zones; restrict highly polluting vehicles; support cleaner household heating solutions; and build public awareness. 

Bogota, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City share experiences 

Representatives from cities such as Bogota, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro told Climate Week about the progress made and challenges they still face in reducing air pollution to levels now common in London. 

Around a third of London’s bus fleet is now based on zero-emission electric vehicles. Mexico City is redesigning an existing taxi repatriation programme to accelerate the transition to electric cars. 

Meanwhile, much like in London’s Ulez, Bogota is working on measuring and reporting the impact of its own clean air zones, the Zumas, and Rio de Janeiro has recently created Brazil’s first Low Emission District. 

“We have learned a lot from other cities,” said Teresa Borges, head of international relations for Rio de Janeiro. “Now we will have to expand the use of the hyperlocal data to inform policies and reiterate public awareness – which is vital for the program’s growth.”

Multifaceted approaches to change 

The problem is multifaceted, and so is Breath Cities’ approach. As a blueprint for all localities, the initiative combines data and research, technical policy assistance, community engagement and, most importantly, lesson sharing. 

“Air quality isn’t an isolated issue,” said Alejandra Ucrós, director of programs at the Colombian organization, Movilizatorio. “It lands in neighborhoods where people are also navigating insecurity, unemployment and inadequate health care.” 

She said Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, has much to learn from London, particularly in terms of institutional continuity and the creation of sustained participation mechanisms that go beyond the government in turn. 

But the learning process goes both ways. “We do see the importance of community participation and ensuring that the work that we do truly translates,” said Veronica Awuzudike, principal consultant in the research, evaluation and learning team at The Social Innovation Partnership in the UK. And that’s something she wants to learn more about from colleagues in Bogota.

Making the link between air pollution and health

As Ucrós mentioned, the same gaps can be seen across many of the urban centers in the Breathe Cities network: knowledge and technical expertise are available. But tools and approaches for meaningful engagement remain elusive. 

“How do you involve citizens in highly technical processes that are difficult to understand and communicate?” Ucrós asked. 

For Dr Ian Mudway, senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at Imperial College, air pollution “is not concretely linked to health in the public’s mind.” A link that, he and other panelists agreed, must be made visible. 

“But scientific knowledge is not so well translated,” said Alice de Morais Amorim, program director for the COP 30 Presidency. “And we won’t win the fight against super pollutants if we don’t communicate in different and much more creative ways.”

That’s exactly what Polish Smog Alert did through its “See What You Breathe” campaign. For four months, giant “breathing” lung installations toured the country. As days went by, the white semi-permeable fabric the lungs were made of got darker and darker, as air pollutants deposited on the material. 

“It shows people what they breathe and it’s really, really impactful,” said Polish Smog Alert’s co-founder Andrzej Guła. “It is a very visible campaign.”

In Bogotá, what Ucrós found to be most impactful was making people feel heard: “Local leaders know which streets flood, which intersections choke with fumes at school, run times whose health is already compromised, and that knowledge makes solutions better,” she said. 

“People participate when they understand how something affects their everyday lives and when they believe their voice can actually change something,” Ucrós added. 

Air pollution’s economic costs are ‘not invisible’ 

“There are lots of things in the world that have hidden economic costs. Air pollution isn’t one of them,” said Valerie Hickey, the World Bank Group’s director of environment. 

According to the World Bank, air pollution causes global economic damage of $6 trillion a year, roughly 5% of the world’s GDP. 

But many governments are grappling with a constant stream of short-term, urgent economic problems and struggle to make mid- or long-term investments in clean energy and clean air solutions. 

“There’s a set amount of money, and they’re dealing with crisis after crisis,” Hickey said. 

In this context, panelists agreed the private sector has an important role to play, and the $45 million Bloomberg Philanthropies announced to Breathe Cities the day before the event can go a long way in helping cities in low- and middle-income countries to develop solutions. 

Grassroots organizations are well-placed to make the most of funding opportunities. One example is Bicitekas, a nonprofit that promotes cycling in Mexico City through riding events, workshops, seminars and political action. 

Areli Carreón, one of its founders, said funders need to realize the impact of allocating resources in a more decentralized and horizontal way. “We can do a lot with very little money,” she said. 

Data paving the way to awareness 

The lack of data, which also feeds awareness, remains the other major obstacle in the fight for cleaner air. 

“If you want to hide the damage that air pollution is doing to the population, the way to do it is to not make measurements,” said Imperial College’s Mudway. 

Data has been critical to the successful expansion of London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone, said Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy, Mete Coban. 

Good data allows you “to go out there and make the case”, winning over myths and disinformation. “Without that knowledge base, there’s no way that we could have achieved what we did,” he asserted. 

But Coban knows the work is far from over. Air quality has improved in the city as a whole, but there are still “pockets of London” that need improvement. Notably, those are most often a feature in lower-income areas. 

By tackling air pollution, the city can simultaneously tackle “a big social and racial justice issue, he said. 

Those changes need to be made at an accelerating rate, he stressed, due to the fast pace of climate change, whose impacts “you can literally see” this week in the city. 

But to be successful, changes also need to be co-produced and co-designed by communities that have to live with the consequences. In the end, Coban says, it all boils down to one question: “What type of cities do we want to live in?”

As Guterres said: “This is our moment of choice. Our moment of truth. Our moment of opportunity.”

Image Credits: Amanda Magnani.