Seoul takes action on air quality
On September 4th-5th, 2018, ICCT researcher Liuhanzi Yang presented the TRUE initiative at 8th Northeast Asia Forum on Air Quality Improvement, organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and co-hosted by ICLEI East Asia.
Attendees included government officials and policies makers from 32 cities in Northeast Asia as well as experts, NGOs and citizens with a total of over 300 participants. The goal of the forum was to exchange ideas and views on better ways to address growing air quality problems in Northeast Asia cities.
Joon-byeong Yoon, Vice mayor of the Seoul Metropolitan Government provided welcome remarks. He indicated that the air pollution problem cannot be solved by a single city, but requires cooperation among cities worldwide. Next, Rokho Kim from World Health Organization and Kil-choo Moon from University of Science and Technology delivered keynote speeches.
The first session focused on vehicle emissions control policies. Representatives from Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing and Hong Kong shared their experience and thoughts on reducing vehicle emissions at local level. Liuhanzi Yang from ICCT presented the TRUE initiative with an emphasis that remote sensing technology is a useful tool for in-use vehicle surveillance programs and individual high-emitter screening for city-level governments.
In the following sessions, officials and policy experts shared their actions on stationary emission reduction policies, cooperation for clean air, citizen participation for clean air and air quality monitoring programs.