Bangkok--13 Nov--UNISBKK
Shi Han Min, director of Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau which led the effort to clean up the capital’s air for the 2008 Olympic Games, today became the first winner of the Kong Ha Award for excellence in air quality management.
Presentation of the award -- named after the chairperson of Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities who died unexpectedly in April 2007 — was made during the opening session of the Better Air Quality (BAQ) 2008 workshop in Bangkok.
Mr. Shi, who joined the bureau in 1978 and became Director in 2002, led his team in several ground-breaking initiatives to combat air pollution — including reducing pollution from coal-fired power plants by technical renovation, desulphurization, and denitration.
Some of Mr. Shi’s measures will have a long term impact as they will be replicated in one form of another elsewhere in China.
For example, Mr. Shi introduced measures to curb Beijing’s total vehicle population, which more than doubled from just over 1.5 million in 2000 to 3.5 million in 2008.
During the Olympics, he worked with the Transportation Department to introduce the odd-even traffic scheme whereby cars with plates ending with an odd number were banned one day and cars ending with an even number the following day. Since October 1, the bureau has continued to ban 800,000 vehicles each weekday through a modified version of the odd-even scheme. The restrictions are in force for a trial period of six months, after which they will be reviewed.
The bureau also banned heavy polluting vehicles from urban areas of the city during the Olympics — and versions of this ban will be reintroduced from January 1 and October 1 next year. Other Chinese cities have started imposing restrictions on vehicle use, especially government vehicles.
Moreover, Mr. Shi implemented a series of standards to improve fuel standards. The bureau implemented euro 4 fuel standard in 2008 and anticipates raising this to euro 5 by 2012. Cities such as Shanghai, Shenzen and Guangzhou want to follow suit in implementing euro 4. Shanghai will be the venue for the World Expo in 2010, while Guangzhou will host the Asian Games the same year. Both cities intend to follow Beijing’s example by drawing up action plans to ensure clean air for both events.
Mr. Shi and the bureau also took effective action to reduce emissions by scrapping heavily polluting old buses and taxis and by stepping up inspection and testing procedures on in-use vehicles. In addition, he introduced a large-scale program to control industrial pollution, closing or relocating 140 polluting industrial plants before the Olympic Games. Since the Games, to sustain such efforts plans have been made to close small cement and chemical plants.
The Ministry for the Environmental Protection announced that, based on the experience of the Beijing Olympics, China would begin regulatory monitoring of PM2.5 and O3. two of the pollutants most harmful to human health.
Recently, Li Xinmin, deputy director general of the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s Pollution Control Department said that the experience of air quality management in Beijing would be an important contribution to a review of the national environmental law,
Another major achievement of Mr. Shi was to forge cooperation with several municipal agencies and other stakeholders in tackling air pollution on a number of fronts. These ranged from controlling coal burning and closing or moving out polluting industries to curbing construction activity. Importantly, the Beijing bureau also worked closely with five neighboring provinces in a pioneering regional approach to air quality management.
In his acceptance speech, Mr. Shi pledged his continued commitment to follow up on the success of air quality management during the Olympics. He said he would provide strong support to hosting the BAQ 2010 workshop in Beijing.
The award, given by a committee chaired by Dr. Supat Wangwongwatana, was established by the CAI-Asia Partnership in memory of Kong Ha, who served as chairperson of the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities (CAI-Asia) from December 2004 to April 2007.
Through his commitment and knowledge, unflagging enthusiasm, and keen sense of partnership, Kong Ha played a key role in shaping and implementing policies to reduce emissions in Hong Kong’s transport sector for which the city gained the respect of the international air quality community.
He was also one of the initiators of the Better Air Quality workshops which started in Hong Kong in 2000 and grew to become Asia’s main regional meeting on air quality.
He took over the chairmanship of the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities from Dr. Supat in 2004. Under Kong Ka’s leadership, CAI-Asia initiated steps to become an independent organization, which took place in July 2007.
The Kong Ha award, which is administered by the CAI-Asia Center on behalf of the CAI-Asia Partnership, consists of a cash prize of US$10,000 and a commemorative plaque. The next Kong Ha award will be presented in 2010.
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