#air-quality

🇬🇪 Georgia · Green Pole

Volunteers in Tbilisi are hand-building low-cost sensors to fill the gaps in Georgia's threadbare state air-monitoring network, one rooftop at a time.

🇺🇬 Uganda · AirQo

A Makerere University-born network of low-cost sensors giving African cities real-time, street-level air pollution data.

🇨🇿 Czechia · Arnika

A Prague-based watchdog whose lab testing of toxic chemicals in everyday products has driven Czech and EU-wide policy change.

🇰🇪 Kenya · BURN Manufacturing

A Nairobi factory mass-manufacturing fuel-efficient Jikokoa cookstoves that cut indoor smoke and charcoal use in African kitchens.

🇲🇽 Mexico · Bicitekas A.C.

Since 1998, this cyclist collective has been trading car exhaust for pedal power on the streets of Mexico City.

🇬🇭 Ghana · C40 Cities

Accra is wiring itself with low-cost sensors to see, for the first time, exactly where its toxic air is hitting hardest.

🇲🇳 Mongolia · Breathe Mongolia - Clean Air Coalition

Breathe Mongolia is a volunteer-founded coalition using air quality data and advocacy to fight Ulaanbaatar's severe coal-smoke pollution.

🇵🇰 Pakistan · Pakistan Air Quality Initiative (PAQI)

A citizen-scientist network put Pakistan's invisible smog on the map, one low-cost monitor at a time.

🇮🇹 Italy · Cittadini per l'Aria

A Milan-founded network turns ordinary residents into air-quality researchers, then takes City Hall to court over the pollution the data reveals.

🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan · MoveGreen

A youth-founded Kyrgyz NGO turned Bishkek's invisible smog into real-time public data, then built a region-wide coalition to act on it.

🇹🇭 Thailand · Thailand Clean Air Network (Thailand CAN)

A citizen network of scientists and activists drafted Thailand's own Clean Air Act, and in 2025 got it through parliament's lower house without a single vote against.

🇵🇭 Philippines · Clean Air Asia

A Manila-based network founded in 2001 turns air-quality science into action plans for hundreds of choking Asian cities, from Metro Manila to New Delhi.

🌍 Global · Clean Air Fund

A London-based philanthropic fund channels grants to grassroots and government air-quality projects across India, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

🇭🇰 Hong Kong · Clean Air Network

Hong Kong's only dedicated air-pollution NGO has spent over 15 years turning smog data into policy wins that let the city breathe easier.

🇧🇬 Bulgaria · Za Zemiata (Environmental Association / Friends of the Earth Bulgaria)

Za Zemiata's research and advocacy helped drive Sofia's low-emission zone, slashing the number of high-polluting cars entering the city center within months of enforcement.

🇷🇸 Serbia · Eko straža (Eco Guard)

A volunteer-run citizen movement born on Facebook in 2019 has become one of the Balkans' loudest voices against Serbia's toxic air.

🇭🇺 Hungary · Levegő Munkacsoport (Clean Air Action Group)

A federation of 60-plus Hungarian NGOs has spent decades pushing for cleaner air through green taxes, sustainable transport and hard data.

🇦🇹 Austria · GLOBAL 2000 (Friends of the Earth Austria)

Since six activists founded it in 1982, GLOBAL 2000 has turned public petitions into Austrian law, from a landmark 1997 anti-GMO referendum to the country's 2011 climate protection act.

🇮🇳 India · Care for Air

A volunteer-driven Delhi non-profit that turned parental worry over toxic winters into a Supreme Court petition and a citywide clean-air education movement.

🇮🇩 Indonesia · Bicara Udara (Yayasan Udara Anak Bangsa)

Three worried mothers turned a change.org petition against Jakarta's smog into a nationwide youth movement for the right to clean air.

🇮🇳 India · Kheti Virasat Mission

A former journalist's grassroots mission is replacing Punjab's smoke-choked stubble fires with mulching, composting, and organic farming.

🇮🇳 India · Mahila Housing SEWA Trust

An Ahmedabad-founded women's NGO training female construction workers in Delhi to monitor air quality and demand clean-air action.

🌍 Global · OpenAQ

A Washington DC-based nonprofit that aggregates the world's open air quality data into one free, public platform to fight 'air inequality.'

🇵🇱 Poland · Polski Alarm Smogowy (Polish Smog Alert)

What began as a Kraków social-media campaign against coal smog has grown into a nationwide coalition of over 50 Polish grassroots groups.

🇺🇦 Ukraine · Ecoaction (Center for Environmental Initiatives)

Ukraine's largest environmental NGO is steering coal-mining regions toward a fossil-free 'just transition' and pushing green standards into the country's war reconstruction, even as Russian attacks continue.

🇵🇭 Philippines · EcoWaste Coalition

Grown out of the campaign that won the Philippines' Clean Air Act, this coalition now battles the backyard trash fires that keep filling Filipino neighborhoods with toxic smoke.

🇹🇼 Taiwan · Citizens of the Earth, Taiwan

A Kaohsiung-founded foundation that has spent two decades taking on the coal plants, crackers and illegal factories fouling Taiwan's air.

🇨🇳 China · Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE)

A Beijing NGO turned government smokestack data into a public app that lets millions of citizens see who's polluting their air.

🇳🇵 Nepal · The Cookstove Project

A small US nonprofit building smokeless brick-and-steel cookstoves with rural Nepali families to replace smoky open fires.

🇬🇭 Ghana · Toyola Energy Limited

A Ghanaian social enterprise sells ceramic-lined charcoal stoves that cut smoke, fuel bills, and burns for low-income households across West Africa.

🌍 Global · Clean Air Institute

A Washington-based nonprofit helps Latin American governments design clean-air policy and tracks the region's most polluted cities.

🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina · Eko akcija

Eko akcija runs Bosnia and Herzegovina's citizen air-quality monitoring network and pushes Sarajevo's government to tackle the wood-and-coal smog that chokes the city each winter.

🇮🇳 India · Chakr Innovation

A Delhi cleantech startup built a device that clamps onto diesel generator exhausts and turns the captured soot into usable ink and paint.

🇵🇰 Pakistan · Urban Forest (Shahzad Qureshi)

After Karachi's deadly 2015 heatwave, one engineer began planting dense Miyawaki forests to cool Pakistan's biggest city.

🇺🇸 United States · WE ACT for Environmental Justice

Founded by Harlem residents in 1988, WE ACT puts air-quality sensors and policy power directly into the hands of the Black and Brown New Yorkers who breathe the city's worst air.

🇮🇳 India · Warrior Moms

Five worried Delhi mothers turned lockdown blue skies into a pan-India movement demanding clean air for every child.

🇺🇸 United States · West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project

Residents choking on port-truck diesel exhaust turned themselves into scientists, building the community air-monitoring model that reshaped California clean-air law.

🇿🇦 South Africa · groundWork Friends of the Earth South Africa

groundWork's #DeadlyAir lawsuit forced South Africa's courts to declare toxic Mpumalanga Highveld air a violation of the constitutional right to a healthy environment.