Freetown Cityzen Hub, Youth Climate Council Sierra Leone

In Freetown, children in schools and families in informal settlements near sites like the Kingtom dumpsite breathe some of the country’s most polluted air, yet Sierra Leone has no enforced law setting legal limits on air pollution. An air quality and pollution regulation already exists in validated form, but it has never been adopted. Our project puts local air quality data to work to change that. We are training twenty young citizens as community data stewards and clean air ambassadors, running awareness campaigns in schools and settlements, and engaging policy makers and the Environment Protection Agency to move the shelved regulation toward formal adoption. Alongside this national push, we support Freetown City Council in using the same evidence to enforce existing waste management bylaws, so communities closest to the pollution see change on both fronts.

Sierra Leone still has no pollution regulation and no enforceable ambient air quality standard, even though a national standard has already been validated and left sitting on a shelf. This phase of our work builds the case for that standard to move from a validated document to an adopted policy. We are working with the Environment Protection Agency and other stakeholders to bring the political support the standard needs, so it stops waiting for a decision and starts guiding what a factory, a dumpsite, or a construction site can legally emit. Twenty young Citizens are carrying that message into their communities.

Mr. Foday Kamara, Africa Regional Coordinator, Youth Climate Council Global Alliance