Air pollution was at that time THE environmental topic that European citizens worried about most. It was responsible for 400,000 premature deaths (2015) in Europe each year, and has put considerable damage to agriculture as well as our natural environment. Despite these facts the readiness and power of European citizens to take actions themselves was limited. Civil society organisations were challenged 1) to transform attitudes of citizens to active behaviour, 2) to combine the knowledge of all the players involved in a collaborative process of finding innovative solutions and actions and 3) to have powerful and high-quality instruments for discussions with decision makers.
The drivers of the CAPTOR project were three large civil society organizations. Being the interface between ministries for environmental issues, national and local political decision makers and the citizens, their experience evidences that the provision of data and information on air pollution to citizens in top-down and passive ways, as it happend at that time, was not sufficient to engage a critical mass of participating citizens required to support transitions in the systems of production and consumption that were the root cause of air pollution.
