Although air quality in Europe has improved over the last decade, there are still many places where concentrations of such pollutants as particulate matter (PM) or benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) significantly exceed WHO guidelines and EU norms. Pollution with PM2,5 only was responsible for 374 000 premature deaths in EU-28 countries in 2015. In countries as Poland, air pollution kills each year over 10 times more people than all road accidents. In 2017 as many as 17 countries registered PM10 concentrations above the EU norm. The situation is the most serious in hot-spot areas. For example, in many Polish cities concentration of benzo[a]pyrene exceeds the EU norm around 10 times. [1]As research shows, air pollution is not only a problem of large urban populations. Air within rural regions is often even more polluted, especially in the heating season. This in particular relates to such pollutants as PM and carcinogenic BaP or dioxins – as they are released when coal, wood or waste is burned in household heating appliances. [2] One of the worst air pollution hot spots in Europe covers CEE countries, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania and Romania, i.e. countries of project leaders and partners. Localities from these countries top all rankings of air pollution with PMs or benzo[a]pyrene in Europe . Although air quality in Spain is in general better than in Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic or Romania, Lithuania there are many areas which also suffer from excessive air pollution with particulate matter and benzo[a]pyrene.Health effects of long term exposure to high particulate matter and benzo[a]pyrene concentrations range from respiratory diseases (asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic bronchitis), through cardiovascular diseases (heart attack, hypertension, arrhythmia, cardiac insufficiency) and diseases of the nervous system (brain stroke, depression, anxiety, Alzheimer) to different types of cancer.The main reason behind high pollution levels in CEE is reliance on solid fuels (coal, wood) for heating. The household sector constitutes the largest single source of PM10 and B[a]P emissions in the analysed countries. The table below presents its share for respective countries. In Spain, residential heating with wood accounts for nearly half of particulate matter emissions. Biomass consumption in Spain increased by 27% since 2000. Czech Republic Poland Romania Slovakia Spain LithuaniaPM10 38% 52% 74% 83% 43% 55%BaP 87% 87% 63% 84% n.a. 77%Source: Informative Inventory Reports for each country prepared under the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air PollutionA large portion of households in these countries continue using sold fuels (coal and wood) for space heating. In Poland alone the number of single family houses using coal and wood for heating exceeds 4 million buildings. Low quality coal and wood remain the cheapest source of heat energy. They are often mixed with waste, which significantly aggravates the problem and health effects.Transnational approachAs the problem of air pollution concerns all EU countries it requires applying a transnational approach including, cooperation between the countries, experience sharing and development of joint measures. Not only because the sources of air pollution and required solutions to the problem are similar, but also because air pollution has a strong transboundary character. Project partners come mainly from one of the most serious European hot spots, i.e. CEE area. Participation of Spain will allow for diffusion of project products and results to other parts of the EU, beyond CEE.Objectives, target groups and needsThe objective of this project is to raise awareness in the countries covered by the project about the problem of air pollution, its reasons, health effects and possible solutions that can be taken by inhabitants in order to mitigate the problem and reduce local air pollution. This objective will be achieved by providing training for teachers in the topic of air pollution and equipping them with innovative, interactive education materials that they will use to teach their pupils and students about the problem. One of the main project outputs will be the game. This is the response to the feedback from the previous project realised by the consortium. The teachers taking part in the pilot testing in all the countries suggested that the interactive game would be a great tool to teach about air pollution. Recent reports in Poland show that 92.7% of respondents declared that in their future work will use computer games. [3]1.Air Quality in Europe – 2019 Report, European Environment Agency, 20192.See for example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-QOsHuWI0UhcldwYi1fUVd4M0E/view?usp=sharing and http://polskialarmsmogowy3. https://depot.ceon.pl

A large portion of households in EU countries continue using sold fuels (coal and wood) for space heating. In Poland alone the number of single family houses using coal and wood for heating exceeds 4 million buildings. Low quality coal and wood remain the cheapest source of heat energy. They are often mixed with waste, which significantly aggravates the problem and health effects. As the problem of air pollution concerns all EU countries it required applying a transnational approach including, cooperation between the countries, experience sharing and development of joint measures. Not only because the sources of air pollution and required solutions to the problem are similar, but also because air pollution has a strong transboundary character. Project partners came mainly from one of the most serious European hot spots, i.e. CEE area. Participation of Spain allowed dissemination of project products and results to other parts of the EU, beyond CEE. The objective of this project was to raise awareness of rural communities in the countries covered by the project about the problem of air pollution, its reasons, health effects and possible solutions that can be taken by inhabitants in order to mitigate the problem and reduce local air pollution. This objective was achieved by providing training for teachers from rural areas in the topic of air pollution and equipping them with education materials that they will use to teach their pupils and students about the problem. The project focused on rural areas due to the fact that public awareness of the problem is much lower among rural communities compared with inhabitants of larger cities. Therefore, the project responded to awareness and education gap that is the most serious within rural areas.

The project aims to develop tools based on the 3R's approach to allow the empowerment of the non-informed people. The project addresses the main problem of our society now namely climate change and shows the activities which can be taken now by the people in European countries. This training content will let the target group achieve new knowledge and skills. Moreover the project will improve the awareness of the importance of the clean environment and encourage target's group participants to develop their competences. We want to empower local communities to rethink their relationship with resources by supporting them with independent knowledge and streamlined tools to drive change more efficiently

The aim of CARES is to further develop remote emission sensing instruments, data handling and analysis such that it becomes a widespread means for the monitoring and enforcement of real-world vehicle emissions, leading to reduced emissions and improvements in air quality. To reach this goal, CARES will complement existing commercial remote emission sensing instruments with two other non-intrusive and contactless methods of measuring real-world vehicle emissions to greatly expand current measurement capabilities. We develop plume chasing instruments into easy to use tools for enforcement agents to detect high-emitters in free flowing traffic. We turn fast-response air quality sensors into roadside point samplers, adding particle mass, number and size to the remote emission sensing measurement capabilities. Furthermore, we speed up the data handling of all types of remote emission sensing instruments – existing commercial types as well as those further developed within CARES – to move them towards a real-time analysis of vehicle emission data; we merge the emissions data with vehicle technical data from national vehicle registers and relevant data from traffic and air quality management systems. Third, we eliminate today’s often very time consuming data analysis by providing a suite of open-source analytical functions for a first, quick analysis of remote emission sensing data. All our innovations aim to improve the user friendliness, to bring down costs by quicker and more automated operations, and to achieve a broader deployment potential of remote emission sensing. CARES will demonstrate these developments in three major, heavily air polluted cities in Europe identifying the best fit for the respective purpose. Finally, CARES will bring together researchers, remote emission sensing technology providers, local, regional and national authorities and many other stakeholders from Europe, China and the rest of the world, to maximize the project's exploitation potential.

MoRe4nature aims to trigger transformative change in conservation efforts regarding zero pollution, biodiversity protection and deforestation prevention by including citizens and communities as key actors in collaborative environmental compliance assurance (ECA). A key element in reversing the trend in environmental degradation is a change in environmental compliance assurance interventions. Citizen Science Initiatives (CSIs) present innovative ways of joint data and knowledge production and of empowering citizens in sustainable natural resource management. However, barriers to the uptake of Citizen Generated Data (CGD) and citizen actions in ECA have not been effectively tackled. MoRe4nature will use a socio-technical approach to address these challenges and deepen the role of citizens and communities in ECA by i) strengthening the capacity of existing CSIs to provide relevant and valid data and understanding the importance of ECA, ii) fostering and supporting collaboration and partnerships among citizen science initiatives and authorities to cover data gaps and shape policy monitoring frameworks, iii) developing and testing tools to validate data obtained from CSIs, thus contributing to the integration of such data sources in environmental governance and in European Open Science Cloud, iv) making CGD available as a node in the Green Deal Data Space and v) channeling the urgency for concrete and immediate action of many citizens and communities by creating synergies between citizen science initiatives and LivingLabs for EU Missions, partnerships and other initiatives such as Fab Labs which share the values of sustainability transitions and which can help co-design actions as part of green and digital transformations. MoRe4nature will ensure uptake and impact beyond the project duration by engaging 162 existing CSIs and 98 authorities and national agencies in 40 cases in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa as well as selected LivingLabs and Fab Labs in Europe.