New Voices - About the Research - Mercy Borbor-Cordova

Mercy Borbor-Cordova, Ph.D., is chief of the Department of Environmental Control in Guayaquil, Ecuador. She spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in NCAR's Advanced Study Program. (Photo courtesy Mercy Borbor-Cordova.)

Seeking human and environmental health solutions in a global context

Mercy Borbor-Cordova's research projects extend from the equator across South America and on to Antarctica. From her hometown of Guayaquil, Ecuador, she has built a career that spans three continents, is conducted in two languages, encompasses the oceans and atmosphere, and brings together scientists, policymakers, and impoverished communities. She has found some solutions that are transferable anywhere in the world—and also found that every problem is unique.

Pollution and poverty in Guayaquil

Borbor-Cordova is chief of the Department of Environmental Control in Guayaquil, a job to which she has just returned following two years as a postdoctoral fellow at NCAR. Her postdoc work was the result of a meeting she had in Guayaquil about three years ago. "The leaders of the community came to me to say, We have a problem: We are facing air pollution from power plants," she recalls. Borbor-Cordova wrote a proposal that was funded by the International Development Research Center of Canada to do a study of how air quality affects children in two impoverished neighborhoods of the city. One of these communities is located near three power plants, while the other is adjacent to Guayaquil's harbor, where pollutants from both ships and the unloading process accumulate.

The research group monitored particulate emissions and used an air dispersion model to track their paths. After performing epidemiological and control studies, they found that children aged 6–14 who lived near the highest emissions sources were 18 times more likely to contract a respiratory illness than control cases from elsewhere in Guayaquil. Their final report made recommendations for ongoing air quality and epidemiological monitoring and other activities to alleviate the problem.

Borbor-Cordova and colleagues investigate housing conditions in an area close to the power plants of Guayaquil, Ecuador. (Image courtesy Mercy Borbor-Cordova.)

Science and politics: Cooperating from the start

The city government of Guayaquil has already put some management recommendations from the report into place and begun the capacity building needed for monitoring air quality. Borbor-Cordova credits this early success to the fact that "we worked shoulder to shoulder with the city government from the start. That's the most important lesson. If we want to apply our science to policy, we need to work with the decision makers. If we stay on the academic side, probably they will never take our recommendations.

"In my region, most of the people who are working on health and environment issues are facing big problems every single day," adds Borbor-Cordova. "It's not their job to think deeper about causes, develop hypotheses, and test them. To catch up with all we've done in the research area, we need to develop a group of scientists who will work with the policymakers and practitioners so that science reaches the community."

Community empowerment: One size doesn't fit all

The politicians aren't the only ones who got involved. The two impoverished neighborhoods have organized committees for health and environmental issues. "I'm really amazed and happy that this is happening," she says. "The people have a voice, they have leaders. They are not asking the city government for this or that; they are taking action to improve health in their own community." The committees are taking responsibility for managing solid waste and are sponsoring health events such as races for children and elders. "This social dynamic is really important to create a sense of a stronger community."

Borbor-Cordova believes that this model could be repeated in other parts of the world, "but it must be in the context of the specific problem. The community has to find their own solutions. You need to go to the ground, to talk to the people, to see why things are the way they are. From far away you can form a fine theoretical conclusion, but when you get closer, you see in the context what you couldn't see in the data."