Can citizens play a part in cleaning London's air? I gave it a go

• London air pollution levels exceed WHO limits
• Wandsworth citizens’ assembly called to guide cleanup push
• Process aims to overcome backlash to previous measures

Laurie Goering is the Climate Change Editor for the Thomson Reuters Foundation based in London, and has more than two decades of experience of covering the issue

LONDON - When the London borough of Wandsworth introduced "low traffic neighbourhoods" a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, blocking off some streets and adding cycle lanes in an effort to spur more healthy walking and cycling, the changes backfired.

Queues of fume-spewing traffic built up on major roads and with alternative routes blocked, emergency vehicles struggled to get through. Frustrated drivers hefted road-blocking flower planters out of their way and protest petitions took off.

Plans to expand the zones - in part to deal with air pollution and climate change - were soon abandoned, and some of the existing changes scaled back.

"It was just imposed in a rush, and it clearly didn't work," said Judi Gasser, who has since become Wandsworth Council's cabinet member for the environment after 2022 elections that saw the Labour Party take control of the southwest London borough.

So when the council recently began efforts to update its air quality improvement plan, in line with national requirements, it decided to try something different: asking local people what they wanted.

"I don't believe in imposing measures. I believe we should listen," Gasser said.

That's how I ended up spending four Saturdays this spring - with 49 other Wandsworth volunteers selected to represent the diversity of the borough - learning about local air pollution and advising on how to fix it and deal with climate change too.

The choices we faced are those many more people around the world soon will have to grapple with as wildfires, drought and other climate change impacts drive worsening air quality - most recently in New York, which found itself in an unexpected red haze of Canadian wildfire smoke last week. 

A lot to learn

After decades of reporting on climate change and the environment - including covering the UK's own national citizens' assembly on climate change in 2020 - I was ready to try my hand at creating policy, with councillors promising our suggestions would guide them on crafting new borough rules.

Turns out, I - and all of us - had a lot to learn.

Wandsworth, like all of London, has air pollution levels that far exceed tough new World Health Organization limits. That was not necessarily a surprise in a city that has long battled for clean air.

But we were astonished to discover, for instance, that a third of the small particulate pollution (PM2.5) we breathe - the stuff that often causes asthma and that doctors increasingly link to dementia - comes from home fireplaces and from restaurant charcoal grills and other commercial cooking.

That's more than is created by road traffic - and three times as much as is produced by industry and home heating and power combined, experts said.

Rules on "wood burner" sources of pollution haven't been updated since the last national Clean Air Act in 1993, they said. Cutting that pollution should be a big win - right?

Turns out Wandsworth has little power to regulate such sources of emissions - and that national incentives to promote the use of "renewable heat" in recent years have led to huge increases in wood burning, said Jo Barnes, an associate professor of clean air at the University of West England.

When it comes to asking people to give up their beloved home fireplaces or start cooking on something less polluting than charcoal, for the greater good, "it's a difficult conversation to have with people," admitted Jason Andrews of Wandsworth's air quality team.

Less controversial change

Other needed changes, though, are less controversial. As those of us in the citizens' assembly gained knowledge, put together proposals and began testing them with other residents, via online voting, we found some things most of us agreed on.

Ensuring all public buses swiftly become electric, for instance, is backed both by residents that generally favour green measures but also by those that say they need their cars and don't like curtailment of their freedom to drive.

Most people agree on planting more trees and other green spaces and don't mind limited bans on driving near schools, to keep the air children breathe safer.

Of the 568 residents who voted as part of the online consultation on our proposed policies and offered some of their own ideas, 424 fell into a group that wanted more walking, cycling, public transport - and even low-traffic neighbourhoods, though better-planned ones.

Already Wandsworth is seeing needed changes. About half of households now don't own a car - and new car registrations (except for electric vehicles) are falling even as the borough's population rises.

Measures such as London's introduction of the Oyster travel cards, and a congestion fee for driving into central London, as well as growth in cycle lanes, means 73% of trips in Wandsworth now happen by bicycle, walking or public transport, said David Tidley, a transport specialist with Wandsworth Borough Council.

Other ideas from our citizens' panel included using cargo bikes for most deliveries, expanding public transport in poorly served areas, and experimenting with innovative measures such as linking parking permit fees to a vehicle's emission levels.

Assembly members also backed innovations such as rating restaurants on their pollution as well as their cleanliness, asking doctors to educate their patients about air pollution, and only permitting new construction that has the highest energy efficiency standards and is located near public transport.

"We are your neighbours," read a prelude to the recommendations crafted by the group.

"We are you, making difficult decisions every day."

Difficult decisions

Retired engineer John Burnett, of Tooting, for example, sold his beloved but polluting diesel Alfa Romeo while taking part in the citizens' assembly, driven by expansion of the ultra-low emissions zone in London and worries about air pollution.

"Now if I want (a car), I'll rent a Zip car," he said.

Ella Kone, an assembly member who lives near Putney's high street, where high levels of pollution have been recorded, said she had organised an air quality assembly at her secondary school.

"I'm a lot more aware and can make other people more aware - and that makes it easier to change," she said.

And Yanmina Captain, who lives on a busy street in Battersea, said she had realised her husband's backyard bonfires - and other parents idling their cars outside her 2-year-old son's nursery - need a rethink.

Now, "we need to do what's right – not just what's convenient for us," she said. "We need to really start making radical change," both for air quality and the climate.

The question, she asked, is: "how do we all make good changes, for everyone?"

(Reporting by Laurie Goering; editing by Kieran Guilbert)