76 What Policy Makers and the Public at Large …
483
76.3 Policy Makers
The policy makers add least need to understand the messages for the large public,
from which they are part of. However, it would be good that they understand three
extra points.
First of all, they should understand how much or how little (depending on pollutant,
government level, …) they can influence air pollution. Linked to that is the question
of how much effect certain actions will have on the population for which they are
responsible. Linked to that question is also an understanding of the import–export
balance of air pollution and thus the understanding that not only their constituents
are influenced by the emissions abroad but also that the emissions in their area have
an influence outside of their borders.
Secondly, the numbers concerning what they can do and what not, have uncertainties and it is important for the policy makers to have a clue of these uncertainties.
In addition, temporal variability in meteorology creates an extra uncertainty in the
measurements obscuring several trends in air pollution. Nevertheless, it is important
that despite all uncertainties a certain knowledge base exists (such as the importance
of air pollution on health) upon which no major disagreement exists within the scientific community albeit without an exact quantification. In other words, although
we do not know the exact number of deaths due to air quality, we do know that this
number is very high.
Therefore, as a third point, stakeholders are encouraged to take action, from the
local scale on, which can help getting actions at higher levels moving (act local, think
global).
76.4 Conclusion
This paper describes a basic set of knowledge that should be known by the public
at large or more specifically by stakeholders. Once there is a consensus over these
points, it would be interesting to define the best ways in communicating these points
to the respective stakeholders and the large public.
Acknowledgements I want to thank the persons whom I collected interviews from: Silvia Trini
Castelli, Goran Gašparac, Saravanan Arunachalam, Philippe Thunis, Kees Cuvelier and Stijn
Janssen for their valuable input.
Reference
1. GBD, Global Burden of Disease (2017), Data: 2016. Source: https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbdcompare/. Accessed 24 Jan 2018.
483
76.3 Policy Makers
The policy makers add least need to understand the messages for the large public,
from which they are part of. However, it would be good that they understand three
extra points.
First of all, they should understand how much or how little (depending on pollutant,
government level, …) they can influence air pollution. Linked to that is the question
of how much effect certain actions will have on the population for which they are
responsible. Linked to that question is also an understanding of the import–export
balance of air pollution and thus the understanding that not only their constituents
are influenced by the emissions abroad but also that the emissions in their area have
an influence outside of their borders.
Secondly, the numbers concerning what they can do and what not, have uncertainties and it is important for the policy makers to have a clue of these uncertainties.
In addition, temporal variability in meteorology creates an extra uncertainty in the
measurements obscuring several trends in air pollution. Nevertheless, it is important
that despite all uncertainties a certain knowledge base exists (such as the importance
of air pollution on health) upon which no major disagreement exists within the scientific community albeit without an exact quantification. In other words, although
we do not know the exact number of deaths due to air quality, we do know that this
number is very high.
Therefore, as a third point, stakeholders are encouraged to take action, from the
local scale on, which can help getting actions at higher levels moving (act local, think
global).
76.4 Conclusion
This paper describes a basic set of knowledge that should be known by the public
at large or more specifically by stakeholders. Once there is a consensus over these
points, it would be interesting to define the best ways in communicating these points
to the respective stakeholders and the large public.
Acknowledgements I want to thank the persons whom I collected interviews from: Silvia Trini
Castelli, Goran Gašparac, Saravanan Arunachalam, Philippe Thunis, Kees Cuvelier and Stijn
Janssen for their valuable input.
Reference
1. GBD, Global Burden of Disease (2017), Data: 2016. Source: https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbdcompare/. Accessed 24 Jan 2018.