Hyderabad and three other Indian cities including Delhi, Chennai and Pune have been chosen for ‘Air Pollution Governance Across Cities Study’, also known as the ‘6+ Cities Study’ to characterise how coordination between ‘understanding’ and ‘governing’ air pollution is happening in different cities.
Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, a government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all non-medical fields of science and engineering, the study originally had six cities with research groups in Beijing, Bangalore, Houston, Philadelphia, New York City and Albany.
Funding and research
The study, which also supports comparative insight and cross-city dialogue, has been expanded to the Indian cities plus Los Angeles. Research in India is being funded by the Azim Premji Foundation with Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad researcher Aalok Khandekar, assistant professor of anthropology/sociology, Department of Liberal Arts, coordinating the study, an official release said .
Research groups based in each city are coordinated out of the University of California, Irvine, Department of Anthropology by professors Kim Fortun and Mike Fortun. “We want to understand how actors in different communities identify problems, produce and use relevant data, interpret and think creatively about that data, and are moved to action. Our hope is comparative perspective on air pollution governance styles will advance both fundamental understanding of environmental governance and practical work on ground,” said Dr. Khandekar.
6+ Cities Study aims to characterise distinctive styles of environmental health and risk governance through interviews, observation of public events, analysis of media, government, NGOs and scientific reports. The team will also examine different stakeholder roles links between environment, transportation, health and education.
Biggest health hazard
World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified air pollution as the world’s single largest environmental health risk and attributes one out of every eight global deaths to air pollution exposure — that is a staggering seven million premature deaths in 2012 (WHO 2015).
“This project is also an experiment in new forms of research collaboration and supporting digital infrastructure. What brings our team together is concern about environmental public health. Our work itself is an intensive coordination challenge,” explained Prof. Kim Fortun.
The study also contributes to a growing archive of publicly accessible research material on environmental health sciences and politics around the world. It is part of The Asthma Files ( http://theasthmafiles.org ), an on-going project to build research infrastructure and capacity to understand cultural dimensions of environmental health.
An array of educational outreach initiatives, including programs for K-12 students, community education and museum exhibits are also part of the study.
