Yes, I think that’s mostly fair.
Air pollution in South Asia has a lot of different sources requiring distinct policy interventions, and often at local levels. Eliminating emissions entirely from any one source category would address a relatively small fraction (5%-10%, say) of the problem in a given city or state.
Some interventions that are relatively scalable across India, and likely to be effective are politically intractable: power plant emission controls (expensive and with costs borne by a small group of influential firms), or subsidies to make cleaner fuels affordable for household cooking (expensive—needs an outlay of at least $1B/year).
That said, about $5M/ $18M spent so far in the program in India fund organizations that work with government agencies in identifying and executing interventions, leveraging existing government resources.
Some of the promising ideas so far that our grantees are working on include better handling of construction dust by large private developers, and support for city governments to handle dispersed sources (municipal waste burning, resuspension of road dust). We also think that crop residue burning in northern India has seen steady (if slow) improvement, and expect to continue supporting governments in this process.
Hi Midtermist, I think this is a pretty important worry and appreciate you sharing your perspective.
Just speaking for myself and the EA (global health and wellbeing) program I work on (though it’s mostly led by Mel Basnak now).
Here are a few things we’re doing:
We fund Probably Good, who try to empower people to think along impact-focused lines while remaining open-minded about how different people can best help others.
We support orgs like Founders Pledge and Charity Entrepreneurship, who share our core values but who do their own research and might have different views.
Our grants to effective giving orgs have not been conditional on them changing their recommendations (though we’re more likely to support orgs whose recommendations we believe in).
Tbc, I think it’s a tough problem and tradeoffs between respecting autonomy and standing behind your judgment calls as a grantmaker.