Images
of the Beijing sky-line, seemingly bathed
in a soup of smog and haze have been never
far from the world's TV screens over recent
days and weeks.
International reporters
with hand-held air pollution detectors have
been popping up on street corners checking
the levels of soot and dust.
Everyone seems keen
to prove that the city's air will be a decisive
and debilitating factor for one of the world's
most high profile sporting events.
Without doubt Beijing
is facing a huge challenge. There are real
and understandable concerns for the health
of competitors, especially those in endurance
and long distance events such as cycling
and the marathon.
But the current frenzied
focus is marked by a modicum of amnesia
- air pollution was a major concern in Los
Angeles 24 years ago.
Indeed few can forget
the dramatic scenes at the end of the women's
marathon when the Swiss competitor was seen
staggering and stumbling under the weight
of heat and perhaps air pollution exhaustion.
Air quality was also
an issue for the subsequent games in, for
example Atlanta, Barcelona, Seoul and Athens.
In respect to 2008,
some level of fair play should be part of
the debate.
Real and hopefully long
lasting achievements have been made by the
Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic
Games, the city as a whole; the government
and the six provinces concerned.
Ones all the more remarkable
when set against the city's double-digit
economic growth and the fact that this is
being staged in a developing, rather than
developed economy with all the social, health,
developmental and environmental challenges
this entails.
Let me share a few examples.
As a result of a $17 billion investment,
over 90 per cent per cent of the city's
wastewater is now treated; over 50 per cent
of the city is forested and natural gas
accounts for more than 60 per cent of energy
generation - up from some 45 per cent in
2000.
Meanwhile eight new
railway lines, covering 200km and with a
daily capacity of close to four million
people have become operational this year
alongside 60km of bus rapid transport systems.
New vehicle emission
standards now meet the most stringent equivalent
European standards and are higher than in
the United States.
50,000 old taxis and
10,000 buses have been scrapped and replaced
with new ones and 4,000 of these buses are
powered by natural gas - now the largest
fleet of its kind in the world.
Some 200 polluting industries
have been closed; switched to new kinds
of cleaner production or moved out of the
city over the past seven years.
These actions do not include the attention
to eco-detail at the Olympic venues themselves
such as the 400,000 square metre Olympic
Village.
Here water reclaimed
from the Qinghe sewage treatment plant is
being utilized for heating and cooling systems
with an estimated 60 per cent in electrical
savings.
In recent days the authorities
have also requested businesses to stagger
the working day in the run up, during and
after the Olympic Games to reduce traffic
volumes alongside a raft of other traffic
cutting measures.
Only time will tell
if all these actions will bring air pollution
down to acceptable levels. UNEP will certainly
make this a focus of its post-Games report:
building on the initial one issued in 2007.
But it is clear that
Beijing is striving to be part of the Green
Team-one that is now central to the modern
Olympic movement and increasingly part of
other big sporting events such as the Green
Goals for the 2006 and now 2010 FIFA World
Cups.
The public awareness
raised the ability to showcase new and more
sustainable ways of managing an urban setting
and the legacy of more environmentally-friendly
energy, transport and infrastructure should
also not be underestimated.
Humanity is currently
engaged in a far reaching and more urgent
marathon - one that is pitting the need
to embed a 21st century Green Economy against
the rapid implosion of our climate and natural
life support systems.
The catalytic and inspirational
possibilities of events like the Olympics
have thus a wider role to play - one that
might just assist in us in reaching that
other winning tape far faster before we
stagger and collapse under the weight of
our environmental degradation.
The author is a UN Under-Secretary
General and Executive Director of the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) which is assisting
the Beijing Organizing Committee on environmental
issues.
