A clean-up at power plants and tighter controls on vehicle emissions were cited as key factors that saw an improvement in air quality in China’s Pearl River Delta last year, according to the latest regional air quality report. But concerns are mounting about the deterioration of roadside air in Hong Kong.
New research from Greenpeance and Peking University revealed that the Chinese capital’s air contains excessive amount of heavy metals, especially arsenic, which can lead to nerve system damage, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Following the news on environmental issues here in China can be a grim business. The first months of 2013 alone brought coverage of January’s “airpocalypse,” when air pollution in Beijing reached historic levels; news of thousands of dead pigs floating in the Huangpu River, a primary source of Shanghai’s drinking water; and a new report indicating that China sees 1.2 million premature deaths each year due to outdoor air pollution – almost 40 percent of the world’s total of such deaths.
Amid such bleak headlines, it can be easy to miss any kind of progress.
China will expand the country’s air quality monitoring network by installing 440 monitoring stations in 116 Chinese cities by the end of the year, according to the vice minister of environmental protection.
The term PM2.5 will disappear in China and be replaced with a new Chinese name at the behest of the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies.
In the most optimistic diplomatic announcement for some time, China and Japan have agreed to “promote technical co-operation and explore further measures for dealing with harmful air pollution”.
Beijing city will at the beginning of next month impose new sanctions that ban the sale and registration of sub-standard gasoline cars in a bid to help curb its record-breaking smog problems.
Japan is seeking to co-operate and exchange information with China on the recent bout of severe smog in many Chinese cities as Japanese fret that the toxic haze may drift into their own skies, according to a report by the Associated Press.
China is looking at further steps to bring its notorious coal industry under control including setting higher thresholds for the scale of coal producers and encouraging mergers to form industrial conglomerates.
Oil companies in China must begin delivering cleaner fuel this year according to a report in Xinhua citing a mandate issued by the country’s State Cabinet on Wednesday.
Vietnam is introducing a waste-water system to reduce pollution in its largest city. Ho Chi Minh City has proposed zoning plan for waste-water discharge areas covering 97 rivers, streams and waterways.
Government representatives from 19 Asia Pacific countries are meeting in Bangkok to look at ways to catalyze fast action to reduce the impacts of short-lived climate pollutants – so-called SLCPs – in the region.
SLCPs – such as black carbon or soot, methane, tropospheric ozone and some hydrofluorocarbons – are responsible for a substantial fraction of both the warming experienced to date and the current rate of global warming and can be dangerous air pollutants, with various detrimental impacts on human health, agriculture and ecosystems.
China should adopt a strategy of multi-pollutant control in reducing emissions from its coal-burning power plants, according to a report released this week.
Whilst the Chinese government is finally acknowledging Beijing’s air pollution and acting on it, the Indian government still refuses to take action despite pollution levels in the capital New Delhi far exceeding its northern neighbor.
While Beijing is planning to transition power generation to natural gas in a bid to improve the city’s notorious air pollution, the authorities should also concentrate on reducing the high levels of sulfur in vehicle fuel.
Beijing will take 180,000 old vehicles off the road and replace coal-burning heaters in 44,000 homes in a bid to cut air pollutants by 2 percent this year, according to the city’s acting mayor.
Beijing has proposed unprecedented new rules governing how China's capital reacts to hazardous air pollution, as deteriorating air quality continues to raise ire among the city’s 20 million plus residents.
The new Air Pollution Control Regulation will formalize previous ad-hoc measures by targeting vehicles, factories and even outdoor barbecues, and warns of large fines for those who break the rules.
A top environmentalist has hailed draft measures to clean up Beijing's air as a major breakthrough after record-breaking smog continues to besiege the city - but residents seem less impressed.
When it comes to polluted cities Asia leads the world. While Beijing was hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons as pollution rose to ‘off-the-scale’ levels, and Hong Kong’s government was revealing plans on how it is going to tackle the city’s pollution, there are a number of other cities throughout the region, which are in an even worse state.
While you may think Mongolia is all about un-spoilt wild landscapes and horses with little pollution, the latest data released by the UN Agency World Health Organization points to Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, as the world’s most polluted city.
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
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