Community Engagement: The Key to Impactful Air Quality Monitoring

How do we know that something isn’t right with the air we breathe? Perhaps by the sound of coughing, the sight of a hazy skyline, or the smell of smoke lingering in the air. Although air pollution remains mostly invisible, modern technology can remedy this by turning what is an intangible threat into concrete data. However, collecting data is only half the battle. What truly matters is how that data is used, and that depends on the people on the ground.

For air quality monitoring to create real change, communities need to be involved at every step. With community buy-in, data becomes a tool for advocacy, education, and real-world solutions. Without it, it doesn’t matter how accurate the data is if it isn’t utilised meaningfully.

The Rise of Citizen Science

Citizen science has transformed the way we approach air quality monitoring. Rather than being passive recipients of information, community members become active participants in collecting, interpreting, and acting on data. This shift does more than generate numbers – it deepens people’s connection to their environment, builds ownership of local issues, and strengthens scientific literacy. At its core, community engagement can be nothing but an added value, seeing as it gives communities the tools to push for solutions that directly improve their own lives.

Stories of Community-Led Action

Around the world, communities are proving how powerful collective action can be. In Ecuador, parents from Pacha Ayllu are taking the lead in air quality monitoring by creating a Family-Led Clean Air Observatory to make real-time air quality data accessible. By placing monitors near schools and parks, the whole community is mobilised to work towards cleaner air, with a focus on safeguarding children’s health and giving families the tools they need to advocate for a healthier future.

Through the Aire Limpio Honduras project, youth volunteers at Sustenta Honduras are installing monitors, holding workshops, and building capacity in their neighborhoods to promote community participation and awareness about air quality. Through these actions, communities are pushing to develop the first Comprehensive Clean Air Law in Honduras which would establish clear standards and legal protections for the right to breathe clean air.

Furthermore, our project with UNICEF Laos illustrates the impotence of community engagement, even when building a nationwide network. The teachers, students, and officials in each individual community are trained to interpret data and use it for decision-making, ensuring the network is sustainable in the long run.

Why Community is the Secret Ingredient

These stories highlight a core truth: community engagement is the engine that drives meaningful change. This is because local involvement bridges the gap between real experiences and numerical data. People living and breathing the air in question are best suited to be working towards improving it by implementing targeted interventions.

Moreover, communities that feel connected to a project’s goals are more likely to maintain systems and use data effectively, even after a project has officially ended, and having access to understandable data will empower people in a community to engage with policymakers and demand change.

During our project with the Meechai bamboo school foundation in Thailand, AirGradient carried out capacity-building trainings for students and teachers to ensure they had the knowledge and skills to maximise impact

Resources for Action

We strongly believe in this community-first approach, which is why we’ve embedded it into the very fabric of the Low-Cost Air Quality Monitoring Toolkit that we developed with the UNDP Global Centre in Singapore. This toolkit is a comprehensive guide that walks communities through every step of the process, from planning and setup to ongoing operations. To truly foster sustainable and impactful projects, we developed dedicated sections of the toolkit to community engagement. You can read the toolkit’s chapters on Community Engagement Planning and Community Engagement in Operations to see how we guide users in building these crucial relationships.

Stay tuned for our upcoming posts on our Low-Cost Air Quality Monitoring Toolkit to learn more about our partnership with UNDP and gain a deeper insight into the content of our new toolkit.