Tackling Super Pollutants

Why This Matters

India’s climate challenge is deeply entangled with issues of equity, livelihood, and rapid urbanization. Current approaches tend to isolate super pollutants within fragmented technical and policy silos. Super pollutants are generated through everyday practices–cooking with biomass, managing waste, burning crop residue, and transportation. Addressing super pollutant emissions presents a rare opportunity: fast action with near-term impact on both global warming and human health.

A Multi-Layered Approach

We conducted secondary research to understand the landscape of SLCPs in India, supplemented by key informant interviews and expert consultations in Delhi and Bangalore. Using the socio-ecological model helped us to frame superpollutants not just as emissions, but as issues affected by layered contexts—individual behavior, community norms, institutional infrastructure, and national policy. It also made visible the interconnections between health, environment, and everyday life.

Sector-Wise Case Mapping

We analyzed cross-cutting challenges across five key sectors: residential, transport, waste, agriculture, and brick production. Prominent efforts were identified in these sectors that were run by startups or government bodies to understand the different ways design can play a role in addressing the problem of super pollutants.

Design Focus Areas

Our first phase of this programme has revealed the many ways in which design can shape climate-resilient futures:

• Shifting Perspectives By using storytelling and immersive experiences, design can deepen public understanding and spark collective responsibility around urban challenges.
• Influencing Behaviour Through accessible and relatable messaging, design can inspire individuals to take meaningful, sustainable actions in their daily lives.
• Catalyzing Dialogue Inclusive design processes create space for diverse voices and foster the cross-sector collaboration needed to tackle systemic issues.
• Reshaping Systems Design enables the reimagining of city systems—making them more intuitive, connected, and sustainable through integrated solutions.
• Empowering Communities By co-creating with communities, design ensures that interventions are culturally grounded, equitable, and rooted in lived realities.
• Driving Innovation Design draws from tradition while pushing boundaries—unlocking future-oriented, adaptive solutions that respond to emerging needs.

Radical Collaboration Labs

Harnessing the power of design through catalyzing dialogues, we gathered around 30 participants –including researchers, policy specialists, designers, technologists, and funders–as part of a participatory design workshop to tackle some of the most pressing urban challenges—rising heat stress, deteriorating air quality, and mounting waste. The goal: to imagine and influence the design of climate-resilient cities by 2050.

Using a speculative design approach, participants explored how design, technology, and policy could shape future behaviors at both individual and community levels. The workshop offered a space to reflect on how these challenges are already impacting daily life, while also surfacing bold new ideas and trends that could unlock transformative change.

Phase 2 will involve utilizing the research on super pollutants to launch a challenge, inviting the creative community to respond and build a stronger, sustained coalition of partners around this issue. This is an evolving journey—follow along on our social media channels for the latest updates and opportunities to get involved.