About BAQ 2008

The Better Air Quality (BAQ) 2008 workshop will be held in Bangkok on 12-14 November at the Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel in Bangkok. BAQ workshops since 2001 have brought together a growing number of policy makers and stakeholders to discuss how to improve air quality management in Asian cities. BAQ 2008 promises to be the biggest BAQ yet, with 1,000 expected participants from across Asia and other parts of the world.

This year’s theme “Air Quality and Climate Change: scaling up win-win solutions for Asia” is a reflection of two important trends that are shaping the future direction of urban air quality management in Asia.

The first trend is that the climate change debate increasingly drives actions to reduce emissions from big air pollution emitters -- energy, transport and industrial sources. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007) stated that “Integrating air pollution abatement and climate change mitigation policies offers potentially large cost reductions compared to treating those policies in isolation.” The overwhelming attention for climate change offers great potential for the air quality community in Asia to make progress in air quality management by embracing a “co-benefits approach”, which actively integrates air quality management with climate change management. It is important now, however, to identify through research and increased discussion, which measures can reap such win-win benefits and those which will bring about trade-offs for air quality and climate change.

Second, there is an urgent need to “scale up” solutions for both air quality and climate change across Asian cities.  As reported in previous BAQ workshops, progress has been made in research, and the development of policies to address urban air pollution in Asia. However, air pollution control activities are only implemented in a limited number of Asian cities. For example, it is estimated that less than 20% of Asian cities have some form of air quality monitoring. There are at least 2,500 cities with a population of more than 100,000 each. The overwhelming majority of these is expected to make policy and investment decisions on their transport and energy supply structures that will lock in these cities to specific greenhouse gas and air pollution scenarios for the next 20-30 years.

Discussions on the future of international climate change governance are ongoing. Following the discussions in Bali (December 2007) it is expected that discussions in COP 14 in Poznan, Poland (December 2008) and in COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark (December 2009) will be crucial in reaching a global consensus on the future of the Kyoto Protocol. The discussions in BAQ 2008 are intended to help generate a consensus on how Asian cities can take a more active part in climate change mitigation by adopting a co-benefits approach which integrates urban air quality management activities, energy management and climate change mitigation activities.

Contact:

Cornie Huizenga
Executive Director
CAI-Asia Center
www://cleanairnet.org/caiasia
cornie.huizenga (at) cai-asia (dot) org

Links to previous BAQ workshops: