The Clean Air Action Group

The Clean Air Action Group (CAAG) is one of the best-known environmental NGOs in Hungary. Founded in 1988 by three local green groups, it is now a national federation of more than 60 NGO’s. Its Experts’ Board consists of about 60 specialists of various professions. It is open to anyone who wants to help clean up the environment. A detailed, illustrated description of our achievements can be downloaded here (pdf)

Our main fields of activities are the following

  • greening the state budget
  • sustainable transport
  • sustainable energy policy
  • sustainable urban development
  • protection of green areas in cities

The activities of CAAG include research, consulting, public awareness campaigns, publishing and advocacy at the local, national and international levels.

Some examples of our activities

  • CAAG prepared a number of important studies on transport and the environment, energy issues and also economic policy, all designed to influence decision-makers and inform the public.
  • CAAG is the most often cited environmental NGO in the national press. In 2010 more than 800 newspaper articles, television and radio reports appeared about its activities.
  • CAAG has organized many nation-wide and local public awareness campaigns. For example it collected 20,000 signatures petitioning for better transport in Budapest and handed them to the local government, which helped to stop further deterioration of public transport. CAAG initiated and carried out together with other NGOs, trade unions and local governments a successful campaign to save the railway branch lines (about 50% of the national railway network). Since 1992 CAAG has worked out each year proposals for greening the state budget and campaigned to get them accepted by the government. A number of their proposals (e.g. the introduction of green taxes on several products, and the implementation of a distance-based fee for trucks) were accepted by the Parliament.
  • CAAG played an important role in making the transport policy of the World Bank much more environment-friendly.
  • CAAG's Information Office has helped many citizens to solve local environmental problems.

CAAG is a member organization of ALTER-EU, Climate Action Network Europe, European Environmental Bureau, European Federation for Transport and Environment, EU-Russia Civil Society Forum, Green Budget Europe, and Health & Environment Alliance. We cooperate with other international environmental organizations, like World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Greenpeace, and the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) as well as with a number of national NGO’s in various countries.

In the past few years our activities were supported among others by

  • European Commission
  • Climate Works
  • European Climate Foundation
  • European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme
  • the Hungarian Ministry responsible for Environment
  • Hungarian Railways
  • Budapest Transport Centre