Community-Based Air Quality Monitoring Framework

2.1 Identify Stakeholders and Potential Partners

These resources will help community groups identify all parties or stakeholders that should be involved in their air monitoring programs, and will help groups determine which government agencies they should engage with.

Purpose: Identify all parties who have potential roles to play in the community air monitoring program, and understand the actions and outcomes that each party is seeking.

Resources:

• Government Roles: A template web page summarizing the different government agencies and their role and jurisdiction. You could adapt this for your state/region to show who has responsibility for each aspect of the program. (CARB, webpage, 1 page)
• Stakeholders Worksheet: Prompts a project team to discuss the stakeholders they want to involve and to what extent. Also helps guide initial stakeholder outreach. (TD Enviro, worksheet, 4 pages)

Common challenges that these resources help address: It can be challenging to identify the appropriate partners for a community-based air monitoring project. This is partly because it involves understanding what each of the project partners – including government agencies, community groups and others – may be able to bring to the table. For example, government agency officials will want to clearly explain the scope of their jurisdictions, responsibilities and capacity to contribute to an air quality monitoring project, including how they may be able to take policy actions depending on results from air monitoring activities.

It may be difficult to determine an appropriate role for industry (i.e., polluters) in an air monitoring project. By identifying and engaging with potential industry stakeholders before initiating air quality monitoring, project participants can better understand how industry may be able to contribute to actions that would improve air quality for communities.