In the fourth episode of the City Health and Wellbeing podcast, Vishal Mehta talks to Romanus Opiyo, an urban planner by training and SEI's program head in their Africa center located in Nairobi, Kenya.
Vishal and Romanus discuss the work spearheaded by Romanus and the rest of the SEI team on air pollution.
In the fourth episode of the City Health and Wellbeing podcast, Vishal Mehta talks to Romanus Opiyo, an urban planner by training and SEI's program head in their Africa center located in Nairobi, Kenya.
Vishal and Romanus discuss the work spearheaded by Romanus and the rest of the SEI team on air pollution.
Vishal Mehta 00:09
Hello and welcome to our fourth episode of The City Health and Wellbeing podcast. I'm your host, Vishal Mehta. I'm a senior scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute, SEI based in the US center in Davis, California. SEI is an international nonprofit that works in several countries at the intersection of science policy and practice. You can find out more about SEI www.sei.org. We are interested in unpacking what makes a city a healthy environment where every citizen can have the opportunity to thrive. In this, our fourth episode, we move to Kenya at SEI's Africa Center in Nairobi. I'm delighted to have with us Romanus Opiyo, who is the program leader for Urban Sustainability at the Africa Center in Nairobi. Welcome Romanus. Thank you for joining us at seven in the morning, your time.
Romanus Opiyo 01:11
Thank you, Vishal, for having me.
Vishal Mehta 01:15
Well, before we start our episode, which I'm very excited to let you all know that today we'll be focusing on air pollution studies. Before we do that, Romanus, how about you tell us more about yourself for the audience... bit more about your background? And also about the Africa Center... you know, how big is it? What are its areas of focus?
Romanus Opiyo 01:41
Thanks a lot, Vishal, for those introductions and also for inviting me to share some of the issues about our City Health and Wellbeing, focusing on Africa. Yeah, my name is Romanus Opiyo and I'm an urban planner by training; that's my background. I've been at SEI since 2019, working in the City Health and Wellbeing [Initiative] at the SEI's African Center. Within SEI African Center, we have three programs. One about sustainability, which I head, which I am a program leader, and which is also the host of the program we are going to discuss on City Health and Wellbeing. We also have a program on Energy and Climate Change. Also, the third program for Natural Resources and Ecosystems. Of course, the Kenya office covers the entire Africa; so Kenya is just hosting the African office. So... in terms of size, we have around 12 researchers who are domiciled in the African Center, having around five nationalities here within the African center. And also, we have a rich program, internship program, and also the PhD and postdoctoral fellowship program, which... which we host people from different other centers, also from other universities, not only in Africa, but also postdoctoral students in other universities outside Africa - Europe, US and other areas. So... we are a fairly... we are a fairly... a global institution based in Africa. So that's the spirit of SEI Africa.
Vishal Mehta 03:19
Well, Romanus, in our previous episodes, Steve Cinderby, Diane, Rachel... they've mentioned quite a bit about the City Health and Wellbeing Initiative. Steve told us a lot about the well being survey, participatory mapping, focus on water and waste manage... waste management from the citizens' perspectives. And also the problems of fluorosis or excess fluoride and groundwater. So, I thought that this episode, we could focus more on your air pollution work. And let's start from the beginning. When did this air pollution work start? And did it actually start in Nairobi, if I remember correctly?
Romanus Opiyo 04:01
Yeah... this work of air pollution from the African Center perspective, actually, in collaboration, actually... the University of York has been working very closely since the year... since the year, 2018, on this issue of air pollution. It, actually, started in 2018, when York and the African Center... they work in... work in the informal settlements in Nairobi, Mukuru. Mukuru is one of the informal settlements around the industrial area of Nairobi. And this is where the air quality work started with Rachel. It started as a citizen science engagement where the locals who are given the opportunity to participate, to air their views about air quality and also to have some of the basic evidence using low-cost sensors in terms of collecting air quality data. So, this marked the foundation of this work but later on, the Center invested in 2019 through the Clean Air Coalition, CCAC and the union; they worked with the Nairobi County in trying to have a more institutionalized way of collecting air quality data. And this led to the issue whereby the center, providing support to the Nairobi City County to come up with an air quality regulation so that with the best information now they are able now to know what is the status of air quality; it can now inform the issue of regulation. So that's where it started. Of course, you know, most of these projects are normally short term, maybe two to three years. And policy evolution takes more time because you need to get buy-in from the politicians. So, that led to a lot of investment, the co-ounding trying to ensure that we partner with UNEP and other partners to ensure that we... that we give back. So that's about the foundation. So, moving now to... maybe to Nakuru with regard to City Health and... City Health and Wellbeing where we use one of the evidence to support our work on environmental health and quality. We use air quality as one way of coming up with evidence which can help the team to analyze areas where we feel that the city is not doing well in terms of air quality. And we mapped out various zones. One was the open... what we called the green spaces, we have one of the green spaces within the city. And we had our sensors there... low-cost sensor called Purple Air Sensor. And other sensors, we placed it in a... in a mall, yeah; a commercial... a commercial mall near a traffic... near a roundabout where there's a lot of motorized traffic, and other sensors we placed in a... in an office... in a public office, actually, by the Department of Environment and another sensor, we placed it in our NAWASSCO offices. So this was just to measure to see whether a land use has an impact on air quality. And of course, from the basic analysis, we found actually the best air quality was within the green space, where we find is one of the... where it is the least... in terms of the air quality scores. So that gives an indication that actually air quality is a land use oriented... oriented concern. And this is very, very useful for the for the City Health and Wellbeing [Initiative] to know how do we ensure that we encourage certain kind of land uses and also look at how we absorb the air quality... the bad... the bad air in our urban spaces, which I think is critical for most of the work we're doing at City Health and Wellbeing.
Vishal Mehta 04:01
Yeah, and that brings up so many fascinating questions, right? I mean, for example, I'm sure there were... there are and have been air quality laws, you know, national air quality laws for a long time. So in what way is this helping, maybe, understand the actual levels of air pollution? That's one question, another I can think of is there must already be some air quality monitoring. Is it too infrequent or too sparse? Not reliable? In what ways has this data revealed new insights? Is one question I had. And is there like you talked about land use, but what about, you know air quality regulations for motor vehicles, you know, emissions testing, is it getting to that stage as well? And I have a few more questions. But maybe we'll start with this.
Romanus Opiyo 09:01
Vishal, I think one thing we need to appreciate that this part of the world, especially Africa, the dens[ity] of sensors is still low, in terms of investment on sensors because this was given to the national government through the meteorological department in Kenya. And we find that the meteorological department... they don't have much, much sensors in terms of... that is, they have not invested. So they have strategic places where they can measure relative humidity and also the rainfall and others which are not quite there. So you find that at national level, that's the role of the of the of the meteorological authority. But in Kenya, we have a devolved system since 2013. Where we have devolved units and we have 47 counties, and most of these 47 counties, they don't have capacity to .. or invest in sensors. And even if they invest in those sensors, they don't have capacity to interpret the data. So, this is... this is what we are trying to change in order to effect a change. First, encourage that you can still invest in low-cost sensors, these two are best like that. And if you encourage the investment in low-cost... low-cost sensors, we are going also to increase the dens[ity] of air quality sensors within the counties. So, to me, I think we are trying to... to develop this to ensure that even at the lower levels of administration, we are able to have baseline information. And this information can only be done through encouraging to have the sensors. And secondly, also to look at the frontline officers; look at their capacity. Are they able to interpret the basic data available to download. And... and what we're trying to encourage most of our counties and cities is to go for real time data which they don't have to which they can monitor from their desks, and be able now to download and inform and make decisions. And, see we have very elaborate environmental laws. Through Kenya, we have National Environment Management Authority, which is which is mandated to come up with environmental law. So they have all this about air quality regulations, and all this, but at the county level or at the city level, you don't have such a vibrant way of dealing with this. And most of the counties are now coming up with the climate change action plan, which are supposed to... to help them to institutionalize ways of measuring this air quality as part of it and other aspects. So, there are a lot of things which are... which we are also... which we are trying to help the government and the county government and at the district level to institutionalize which were missing. So we have good laws at national level but at the city and county level, we're still grappling with how to undertake all this.
Vishal Mehta 09:48
And Romanus, how about the question about, say, emissions policy... for motor vehicles? Is the... is the conversation at too early a level or stage to talk about, you know, phasing out certain fuels? Supporting, say, electric vehicles, moving away from diesel and petroleum? Is... is it getting that far? Is it helping, this air pollution data, make connections to human health? And then is it connecting up with the climate action plans in the transportation sector?
Romanus Opiyo 12:32
Yeah, I think there's a lot of engagement because of our country's, Kenya's commit[ment] to the NDCs, I think which is over-ambitious, but it also gives us an opportunity to fast track some of the efforts we have in terms of that. So, in Kenya, we have National Transport and Safety Authority, which is mandated to look at the issue of the air quality, and also the issue of look[ing] at the regulation for the transport sector. And with this, with the Minister of Environment, there's been a lot of effort to ensure that we look at how can we test these emissions of vehicles. But we need to have a foundation first, by training of the officers so that they have the capacity to train these. And the capacity…of course of vehicles because we have, for Kenya. they say that we have more than 5 million vehicles. Of course not like India. Yeah, but so I mean this... and maybe, we have only, maybe, let's say, maybe 200 or 300 officers who have capacity to do this. So how long will it take them to train [in] this? And how frequently? So, those are the laws they're trying to create to ensure that... because, I know last... around two years ago, the government was keen for initiating this in 2021, to see whether we can have testing units where we can have vehicles every... I think every three years, vehicles which are over 10 years to be tested so that we are given sticker to operate. But this has not happened so far. But I think there's a lot of goodwill, because I know the current government, because now we have a new government which was elected to power in August last year. The new government is trying to come up with a supporting system of e-mobility transition of going to electric vehicles, but we still have challenges in terms of chargers or charging infrastructure. And also, in Kenya, just like India, we have a lot of motorcycles which are... which are used for public transport, yeah, And the target is fast. How do we... how do we have the motorcycle to transit from the carburetor system to the to the e-mobility where they need to transition. So there's a lot of effort and I think we have a lot of pilot projects at around eight companies which are dealing with that. And we hope that if you're able to get our transition right in terms of getting the power, which can enable people to get confidence to have labour and quite a number of charging infrastructure, I think that will be very critical in addressing... in addressing the issue of air quality, reducing the negative impacts of air quality, which actually has an health impact. And you see most of these vehicles operate in city, which is the focus... That will be.. Yeah.
Vishal Mehta 15:21
You know, Romanus, you mentioned the term NDCs earlier, and just for the benefit of our audience, can you describe what you were referring to there? Because we... we are talking to, you know, yes, any audience right now.
Romanus Opiyo 15:34
I get you. Nationally Determined Contributions in terms of what are some of the contributions to the climate issues. And the most of the traditional, we have the energy, we have the transport, you have the agriculture waste, these are major, major contributions. And right now, I was using transport just to demonstrate in terms of the transition from the carburetor system, to the electric vehicles, how that can be a contributor to the Nationally Determined Contribution to climate.
Vishal Mehta 16:00
Okay. I wanted to go back to another thing you mentioned, Romanus about local sensors, right?
Romanus Opiyo 16:07
Not really, as such, actually what I meant, the low-cost in terms of costs.
Vishal Mehta 16:13
Oh, sorry, sorry...
Romanus Opiyo 16:14
Low cost sensors. Yeah...
Vishal Mehta 16:16
...yeah...
Romanus Opiyo 16:16
...that's what we are...
Vishal Mehta 16:18
So, where are they coming from them?
Romanus Opiyo 16:18
Yeah.. they are coming from different areas, yeah... because these are now... the market is open. And I know the Purple... like, the Purple Air Sensors is one of the one of the cheapest. And also, it's a small sensor which you can... I think it's around $20. So for an institution, this is something which you can... which you can... which you can invest in and you can get the real time data. So that's what we are looking at. We're not looking for very expensive... very expensive sensors because the spirit here is to increase the dens[ity] of air quality monitoring within Kenya and also most of the African cities. Yeah, that's the spirit.
Vishal Mehta
And... what are the constituents that your... these sensors measure? Is it mostly and only particulate matter? Or other constituents as well?
Romanus Opiyo
Yeah, the low-cost sensors, most of them, the matter... they measure the particulate matter (PM) the 2.5 and 10. And, also so they can also measure humidity... very basic but we are focused on the PM 2.5, which, you know, in terms of the health impact, it's dangerous in terms of ... so, that's what we are focused on the PM 2.5 especially.
Vishal Mehta 17:30
Yeah, I mean, this reminds me of a study. I had an intern a few years ago from Bangladesh. She was actually studying for a PhD in Tokyo. But she came and joined me for a few months. And her dissertation was monitoring air quality and lung function at a school, which was near some sort of industry, I forget which industry, but it sounds like in Nakuru, at least, the dominant source of particulate matter pollution is from transport sector, right?
Romanus Opiyo 18:06
You're right. Yeah, transport sector, yeah.
Vishal Mehta 18:08
So let's talk about the two cities, then. I mean, Nairobi is... like... a huge city, right? How many people in Nairobi?
Romanus Opiyo 18:14
Around 5 million... 5 million?
Vishal Mehta 18:16
Right. And Nakuru is what? 10% of that?
Romanus Opiyo 18:20
Yeah, around 500,000 to 600,000 there.
Vishal Mehta 18:24
Yeah. So, it must be very different to design sampling and placement of these sensors and the number of sensors between Nairobi and Nakuru, right?
Romanus Opiyo 18:36
Yeah, yeah... you're right, yeah.
Vishal Mehta 18:38
So, how many did you end up putting in Nairobi versus Nakuru so far? Just roughly?
Romanus Opiyo 18:43
Yeah, I think [in] Nairobi, we have over 200 sensors, because we are also working closely with UNEP there, because UNEP has really... So there, there are sensors which... which we are working with UNEP. You see, the sensors also... because we're working with the local authorities, they are demand driven. They guide us in terms of where they feel they need these sensors; in terms of, where they want us to monitor and still along the industrial area, we have a lot of concerns of people complaining about it... the air quality. So, you have a lot of high density [of] sensors around the industrial area for Nairobi 'cause in Nairobi, we started a long time I think 2018 and the network has been working. Yeah. So the new kid on the block is Athletics Kenya because, you know, Kenya is an athletic country. We run... we have good runners. So, for the last two years, we've been working with the Athletics Kenya. And even last weekend, we had an athletic, an athletic... an athletic game, yeah... on Sun... on Saturday, last Saturday. And we were there... even the president of the country was there. And there were some runners from the US... runners from the US and Jamaica were here. And what we normally do as SEI Africa, we normally work with Athletics Kenya, to locate sensors in the stadium so that we are able to monitor the air quality around the stadium [for] a week and maybe during the... during the sports and after the event. So, we are doing that and we are really working there. And now, we are also expanding this to Africa, where we are now even working with the Senegal... Senegal government and also Zambia to locate sensors in their study area. So, we are there to look at air quality and health and sports. So, we are looking at that also.... we look at the health of the of the sportsmen. So... coming back to Nairobi, that's what we have there. So, Nakuru we only managed to do 8 sensors so far. And in this in the following manner. We have one in an open space, one in a commercial facility, one in a health facility, another in a... in a school education facility, another one in a sports facility. Also, we have athletics Kenya... athletics... Nakuru athletics club which also produce the most of our rugby players. You see Kenya will be playing Rugby 7s. So, the Athletics Club is one of the producers of most of the Kenyan rugby players. So we have our sensors there. So that's how we... so, as I say, it is demand driven; we are looking at the demand driven so that in future, we have enough resources. We are able, now, to look at rationally from the sample perspective, how do we how do we allocate in all the land uses like agriculture. We know agriculture is also a major emitter of air quality, [you] know, Kenya being an agricultural country. Yeah? So, it is something which we need to expand once we have... we have resources to make it more objective to cover more aspects of land usage.
Vishal Mehta
So, Romanus, tell us how you... how, at least, your work with your partners is trying to institutionalize this in terms of, you know... I'm just wondering... in terms of raising the funds to, you know, get these sensors, install them, maintain them, interpret the data, download the data, understand it, and then, you know, put it to good use... that entire chain, how does it get institutionalized? What stage are you at? What are your thoughts and hopes about where it can go and when?
Romanus Opiyo
Of course, Vishal. I think, to me, there are three aspects which you need to look at the constituency, the people who can benefit from this particular intervention. One, at the lowest level where the community people live there, who normally bear the brunt of the air quality, especially if it is compromised. So to me, it's very useful to work with the... with the community to understand how these things impact them so that they are sensitized. The second level of... of constituency in terms of who can benefit as partners, or as stakeholders, is the government or the county government. In general considered the duty bearers, people who are supposed to undertake all this in terms of making the standards, and also they are protecting the health and wellbeing of the citizens. So to me, they are they are also very critical in terms of taking this. The other... the third aspect, are the researchers and academicians in terms of documenting this for continuous and also for ensuring that whatever we do, can also inform future generation in terms of people who are studying, but also other researchers who are doing this. When they publish this, it also reaches out beyond... beyond the local constituency. And then the fourth element, which I think the fourth level, people will need to look are our other partners. These are development partners, and even funding partners because we're working this place. And this, we've been working closely with GiZ. GiZ is the German Development Authority. And also we've been working with SDI... these are Slum Dwellers International - Kenyan Chapter on this because they've been supporting a lot of work on this. So, in terms of institutionalization... to make the institutionalization, of course the cities are big players. But the county government becomes very important and the local authorities becomes very important. And the local authorities become important from the three levels. Here the technical officers, we might call them the frontline officers. These are the environmental officers who are able to pick this data to make information and to make... to help in making decisions and also in terms of regulating what's happening. So, the frontline officers are very important... the technical officers. Then, the level at the local authority that are very important are the... the politicians, yeah. You have the county assemblies where the county... the local assembly, yeah? you have the lawmakers. If they are able to formulate laws using this evidence, which... which we have institutionalized and to enable the frontline officers use those particular laws and policies to make information that is very, very, very, very important. Of course, the third level, which is the highest... the executive... these are the governor or the mayors. So, to me, if we can get the buy-in at local level, for these three from those three of.... three categories, they're the technical, well, the frontline, they're the politicians who are the lawmakers and the executive, then I think we'll go far. So, in terms of now trying to institutionalize, we are trying to work very closely with the county to ensure that we are able to sensitize the politicians, the executive, and the technical officers, in terms of the usefulness of this particular data and, more so, the technical officers' ability to interpret and to download this data to make a decision. To me, if you are managing... if you're able to do this, then I'll be a very happy man because they won't need my presence... even maps as they are able to use these to make to make informed decisions.
Vishal Mehta 26:16
Yeah. So Romanus, I was wondering if you'd like to share one story with the audience... with all of us, you know, where you were doing this work, because I know that you work very closely at all these levels, you know, with the community level, the county level. And I was just curious if you could share one story where, you know, you showed the data and you had some interaction and then you had like a very fulfilling ... inspiring moment emerge from that.
Romanus Opiyo 26:47
Yeah! Friends, maybe... maybe one of the memorable story is during when we had during the interaction with the policymakers... we had an engagement workshop with them. And in the policy workshop, we also invited some of the community leaders, I normally call them the gatekeepers; these are the Chiefs within the local administration. Yeah.. so to have a feel in terms of how policymakers also view this particular issue. And one of the fascinating thing is how we have a lot of solutions within the community members. More times, we normally... you know, think that they're not expert in anything. But once they have useful information, they have more creative ways in terms of how we can... how we can address this issue. Because, remember, Vishal, we had a lot of our work was... in Nakuru was focused on informal settlements. Informal settlements in Africa, maybe in India... these are unplanned settlements, so there's no plan for them, in terms of its official land uses. And one of the major challenges in this particular area, since we demonstrated within the city, which had an open space, that the air quality was low, just for grades, and the most of our informal says that they don't have open space, official open spaces, like a football pitch or others. So they were saying that there are areas which have been... been come out because they have what we call high power voltage. These are the powerlines, yeah? So we find that you cannot develop anything beneath those particular areas. And they say, "yeah, you cannot build a... cannot build a house, because of the risk it has. But because these have high power voltage, there's nothing with it... I can't use this as open space, and even have air quality measurement or whatever. You see whether is it safer than our houses or where we normally crowd and cook and people ate and the other thing... and they challenge the policymakers to see how creative[ly] they can use such kind of spaces near the ferry in the South along the river line, which can be made or be made active so that they can interact with those particular spaces. And this will... which make a lot of sense even from a planner... I'm an urban planner, but... because those places are supposed to be reserved, but I could see how they can also be made active for people who don't have space to interact and also to relax. How do we make them active? ...yeah! So, to me that was very fascinating coming from very local people who are not trained in anything, but they have seen that green spaces have... less air quality, and they are looking at where there are green spaces within their areas which can be used... which can be very useful. So to me, those are areas which are critical, which make... if you look at the nature-based solution system, then we are... you can... you can see how do we make such kind of active in informal settlement with the more safe and more attractive uses within the residents of such kind of settlements... yeah.
Vishal Mehta 29:14
Right! Yeah, thanks Romanus. That's very, very fascinating. What are your thoughts for the next phase for this air pollution work? Where you... would you like to see it in the next couple of years? And I think that, with that you can just share your ending thoughts for this episode.
Romanus Opiyo 30:03
Yeah... thanks... I think two things in terms of my thoughts. One is look at the governance of air quality, and the city so that, for example, we know that most of the planning, zoning, zoning regulations and development control measures, they don't take into account most of the air quality concerns. We are concerned about the space use, about the setbacks, about the accessibility, but very critically, we don't factor in the air quality. So I'm saying that in future we need to see how do we embrace air quality in terms of informing our zoning regulation, and then revise these zoning regulations? Because Nakuru just became a city in the year 2021 officially. That's when it becomes... became a city that was, I think, December 2021... that's when it became a city. So...
Vishal Mehta 30:57
Oh...okay!
Romanus Opiyo 30:57
...now, as they define their city's zoning regulation, I think it will be very important to use some of our data to inform such kind of decision. And secondly, is to look at how do we ensure that these aspects are institutionalized and which is now beyond the CHeW... the CHeW or the City Health and Wellbeing (Initiative). I think, we are trying to work around with other partners such as GiZ and the SDI and even the county... the county of Nakuru to ensure that whatever we have, can inform their decision. Around 2 weeks ago, they set up a process through a GiZ-supported process doing a climate risk assessment, to enable them to come up with more informed and objective climate change action plan for the... for the entire county and Nakuru is one of the largest counties in Kenya. It has 55 wards. So, they need to come up with the ward action plan which will be an amalgamated to one for the... for the county. So, such kind of a living document, to me, I think they are very important because it gives you joy to see that the evidence you started and the process you started, can... can live beyond you. And to me, I think, those are the things that I look at... the legacy of the project, to me, I'll be very keen...
Vishal Mehta 32:27
Right, the legacy!
Romanus Opiyo 32:28
...about legacy of the CHeW[initiative]. And that should be such that it should go beyond me... and beyond us, Vishal... we are modeling. It is very important to see how this goes beyond us. Yeah...
Vishal Mehta 32:39
Exactly.
Romanus Opiyo 32:40
...yeah!
Vishal Mehta 32:40
I mean, I can't think of better words to end this episode. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us Romanus. And I hope we can have you on again for a future episode and I hope I can join you in Nairobi and Nakuru myself.
Romanus Opiyo 32:52
You're welcome!
Vishal Mehta 32:53
Thanks again!
Romanus Opiyo 32:53
Thanks, thanks.
Vishal Mehta 32:55
SEI is an international nonprofit that works in several countries at the intersection of science and policy. You can find out more at www.sei.org