Beijing received recognition from the United Nations as the agency released a report about the strong efforts by the bustling city to battle air pollution. The report recommended further attempts to meet the standards on clean air.
The U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) recently published "A Review of Air Pollution Control in Beijing: 1998-2013" with the help of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.
According to the report, the residential population of Beijing expanded by 70 percent in the past 15 years. Likewise, the city saw a tripled increase in the number of registered vehicles, as well as the 77-percent boost in energy consumption.
"Remarkably, concentrations of key pollutants, such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and inhalable particulate matter, decreased by 78 percent, 24 percent and 43 percent, respectively," wrote Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP. "Notwithstanding significant challenges, the city improved air quality even as it maintained fast-paced growth."
Steiner added that the experience of Beijing in battling air pollution in the midst of the continuous increase in population, number of vehicles, energy consumption and other factors, is worth sharing with other countries and economies.
The report praised the capital city for its strong and continuous determination to decrease air pollution and improve the quality of air. This commendation was backed up by reliable data from monitoring the city in the recent years, as reported by the Global Times.
He Kebin, director of the Environment College of Tsinghua University and one of the authors of the report, explained that "Beijing's solution was a combination of energy structure optimization, coal-fired emission control, vehicle emission control and enhanced air quality monitoring."
At the end of the report, UNEP provided some useful recommendations for the city officials to improve their efforts against air pollution. The organization said that city planning needs to be enhanced. City layout also needs more optimization, and the city must promote clean energy and the better management of the transit system and facilities that use coal.