The overall rank of the Philippines is 114th out of 178 countries with an overall score of 44.02 out of 100 based on the Environmental Performance Index for 2014. The Air Quality in the Philippines ranks 85th out of 178 countries on the same year. You may want to view your own country's rank and profile so please visit http://epi.yale.edu/ and find your country. They still do not have the data for 2015 so these are the latest. The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks how well countries perform on high-priority environmental issues in two broad policy areas: protection of human health from environmental harm and protection of ecosystems. 

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Environmental Management Bureau (DENR-EMB) is the one mandated to enforce and implement the Republic Act 8749, also known as the "Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999." The latest data available which can be downloaded from their website is the 2012-2013 National Air Quality Report. In the report, there are a total of 88 monitoring stations dedicated to Air Quality. Most of them were already Real time while some are still Manual. The Air Quality of Metro Manila, our National Capital Region (NCR), is the one that is primarily monitored as NCR is the center of our country. 

In an article from CNN Philippines just last August, it said that Metro Manila's air quality has slightly improved in a recent study of DENR (http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2015/08/05/Metro-Manila-pollution-air-improving.html). You can visit the website http://airquality-embdenr.com/ to view the current status and locations of monitoring stations of air quality in the capital region of my country. For a detailed report about these monitoring stations, please see "Gov't rolls out Metro Manila air monitoring portal" by Pia Ranada on Rappler at http://www.rappler.com/science-nature/environment/86629-metro-manila-air-pollution-monitoring-portal. The pictures below show the presence of smog in Metro Manila which is still alarming.

This is already good news because it means that the combined efforts of the government and the public are making progress. Maintaining good air quality and curbing air pollution had been hard as different infrastuctures and projects are being built for the sake of development. The Metro Manila is getting more congested as more people acquire vehicles which contributes to air pollution. Also, the government plans to build more than 20 coal-fired power plants in the coming years to neutralize the energy crisis. I hope the next president will realize the effect of this power plants to our air quality as national election will be held next year. Renewable energy is becoming cheaper and cheaper so they might consider this alternative.

Improving air quality might be one of the toughest challenge we can have as a nation. This concern is not only for us but for the whole world as we are interconnected. Many Local Government Units (LGUs) and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) had begun projects and movements to restore air quality and other environmental aspects such as tree planting, ticketing smoke belchers, banning the use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), shifting to renewable energy and information and awareness campaign. Air Quality is just one of the many things which can contribute to climate change. Let us maintain it for our future.