An official with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) on Saturday praised Beijing's advanced environmental monitoring system and its efforts of improving air quality.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said at a press conference in Beijing that the environmental monitoring system here is modern and verifiable.

Achim spent two days going around the public transport system in Beijing, and visited the city's Environmental Protection Bureau and some monitoring stations.

"There have been some questions about whether (the city's) monitoring data can be relied on. Let me tell you that the 27 monitoring stations in Beijing are calibrated. They are not machines people can manipulate, at least in terms of the data that is available to you and to us," he said.

"I can assure you as long as anyone can form a visit like this, (you will believe) that this is a data that we can work with," he added.

"Another interesting thing I have never come across before is the vehicle for environmental pollution monitoring. In many countries, we have the police on the roadside having a radar, trying to catch fast drivers. Here in Beijing, there are a number of environmental supervision units that actually do monitor pollution on the roadside with the camera and will stop the vehicles that are polluting beyond the permissible levels," Achim said when elaborating the city's environmental improvement method.

He also visited the new Olympic Forest Park, over 600 hectares of newly forest land, considering that it is the major asset for Beijing and its people.

In responding to a question on weather Beijing will be a livable city in the future, he said everyone who would have been here in 1998 to take one year and comes to Beijing in 2008 cannot but say that the city of Beijing has already become more livable.

(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2008)