Interview: Chinese cities making economic gains from clean air atmosphere

Chinese cities and towns are increasingly investing in air quality improvements as an incentive to tourists and investors, although serious gaps still remain on meeting the standards set by the UN World Health Organization (WHO), a top Chinese scientist said on Tuesday.

Professor He Kebin, Dean at the School of Environment at the Tsingua University in China, told Xinhua in Nairobi that although a combination of measures have been in place to reduce pollution, Chinese manufacturers of industrial products like cars were still faced with a bigger challenge of yielding to consumer habits.

"We have recorded good progress in improving air quality in the last 15 years but we can still say that these improvements are work in progress. There is a big gap between what we have achieved and the WHO guidelines," He said.

"This is because these improvements are being made in bigger cities. At the same time, smaller cities may not be achieving these standards and you cannot contain the contamination of air."

According to the Chinese scientist, bigger cities such as Beijing, have made consistent gains in improving the quality of air to local city residents by reducing emissions from a mixture of coal and vehicles through a combination of short-term and long-term measures.

The improvement of the quality of air in urban centres, cities and towns around the world, is one of the major topics of discussion at the ongoing UN Environment Assembly (UNEA), holding in Nairobi May 23-27 in an effort to ensure a cleaner and healthier atmosphere for the world population.

He said ensuring equitable improvement in the quality of air and reducing air pollution from industrial waste was a major challenge for some Chinese manufacturers, especially car manufacturers.

With the Chinese economy growing much faster in the past few decades, consumer preferences and tastes have grown, forcing auto-mobile manufacturers to continue producing higher capacity engines, which also tend to increase demand for fossil fuels, He said.

"The car emission standards are working for the manufacturers. They have contributed to the air quality improvements and fuel efficiency. The steps are also focused on low sulphur diesel fuels and lead-free fuels. It is possible for China to get to less and less average air pollution," He said in an interview.

Chinese cities, He said, are being forced to work towards environmental improvements due to the increasing public awareness on the need to maintain clean air in the atmosphere.

Chinese cities have at least 1,500 air quality monitoring stations with devices linked to space stations around China, providing data on the status of the environment for some 300 cities in China.

"The government is able to rank these cities based on the air quality monitoring reports. The cities will poor rankings are constantly under public pressure to improve to avoid losing investments and tourists. The Mayors of these cities are opening up for major emission trading enterprises," the don added.

Meanwhile, UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner has urged countries to acquire the technologies to monitor the air quality in their cities and towns. Endit