The head of the United Nations Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, will attend the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics on August 8 as part of the agency’s continuing support for the greening of the games, the UN announced today.

UNEP has been working with the Beijing Olympic Committee for the last three years with the aim of making the games environmentally friendly.
The Chinese government has spent $17 billion on a large-scale green drive ahead of the games, including a series of long-term environmental improvements for the city.

The city has introduced tougher standards for vehicle emissions and phased out ozone-depleting substances.

Beijing’s public transport network has been expanded with three new subway lines and Beijing has introduced 3,800 compressed natural gas buses - one of the largest fleets in any city in the world.

UNEP says the Olympic venues themselves also have many green features. Twenty percent of their energy comes from clean wind sources; solar power features prominently in the Olympic Village; and the Bird’s Nest stadium has an advanced rainwater recycling system.

Steiner will visit several of the green facilities built for the Olympics including the new subway lines and the Solar Wall - 2,000 square metres of solar panels.

On August 8, he will take part in the Olympic torch relay before attending the Opening Ceremony. While in the city, Steiner will also meet with China’s Environment Minister Zhou Shengxian and also with Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang.

Steiner will take part in a special event on volunteering for the Olympics on August 7 alongside film star Zhou Xun, who is the Chinese Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Development Programme, and Khalid Malik, the UN Resident Coordinator in China.

About 160,000 people will attend the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday, said a Beijing city government official here today.

About 70,000 will be guests, VIPs, athletes and actors performing at the ceremony and the remaining 90,000 will be the audience, staff and volunteers, said Zhou Zhengyu, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Committee of Communications, at a press conference.

The authorities have tested a plan to get this huge number of people in and out of the National Stadium, or Bird’s Nest, said Zhou.

The guests, athletes and artists will take chartered buses and the audiences will take public buses and the metro.

In the second half of 2008, UNEP will produce a post-games environmental report to assess the successes and challenges of the environmental measures taken by Beijing for the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reminding U.S. citizens traveling to China for the Olympics that international treaties and U.S. wildlife laws limit the types of items they can buy and bring home.

“Just because you find something for sale overseas doesn’t mean you can import it,” said Benito Perez, chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement. “Some products made from wildlife are illegal to import while others may require permits.”
The United States, China, and most other countries protect their native animals and plants under national laws and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES. Signed by more than 160 nations, this treaty supports sustainable trade in wildlife and plants while safeguarding endangered species.

In many cases, U.S. laws provide even stronger protections. The United States generally prohibits the importation of elephant ivory. Goods subject to seizure would include ivory carvings, jewelry, and figurines as well as raw and carved tusks.

Products made from sea turtle, such as tortoise shell jewelry and items with tortoise shell inlay, are prohibited and so are big cat skins and furs.

Restricted goods also include traditional medicines made from or parts of tiger, rhinoceros, leopard, Asiatic black bear, musk deer, pangolin, and seahorse.

“CITES regulates trade worldwide in more than 30,000 different animal and plant species,” Perez said. “Travelers need to ask questions and check trade restrictions before they buy.”

Travelers returning to the United States must indicate on their Customs declaration form whether they are bringing back any wildlife or wildlife products acquired abroad. Additional requirements apply if the species is protected under CITES or is a live animal or if they are importing eight or more of any item.

“By making informed choices, travelers can support conservation and avoid having their souvenirs confiscated at the airport,” Perez said.

More information about U.S. requirements for wildlife imports can be found under the International Travelers and Importers/Exporters tabs on the Office of Law Enforcement’s website at: http://www.fws.gov/le

from: ens-newswire.com

The haze was back on Monday after several more or less clear days, bringing with it new concern about pollution affecting the Beijing Olympics.

“We are looking into what is happening. Yesterday was a wonderful day. Today, is it hazy? Is it pollution? I don’t know,” said International Olympic Committee marketing chief Gerhard Heiberg.

Local organizing committee (BOCOG) spokesman Sun Weide said the Air Pollution Index (API) was below 100 and therefore suitable for competition.

According to the forecast, today’s air quality is grade two. The API is under 100,” said Weide. “We thing this is suitable for outdoor activities, including sports events.

The IOC has announced contingency plans for endurance events such as cycling road races, marathons and triathlons of the air quality is too bad during the Games which open on Friday and run until August 24.

“We are most concerned for the athletes,” said Heiberg.

China has moved and closed down factories and is imposing drastic traffic restrictions in Beijing to reduce pollution. Further restrictions could apply during the Games if necessary.

from: bangkokpost.com

Japan’s Olympic delegation will carry 500 dust masks for industrial use to guard against the notorious air pollution in Beijing, a corporate official said Monday.

Koken, a major Japanese maker of respirators, gas masks and air purifiers, has provided the masks for free to the Japanese Olympic Committee for possible use in training at the Beijing Games.

“These are not the kind of masks that are sold at drug stores to protect yourself from flu or hay fever,” said Kohei Kubo, an official at Koken’s life safety division.

“They are used at dusty factories and other industrial sites, as well as hospitals, where they are used to prevent infections,” he said.

The masks can cut by more than 95 percent the number of small particles that the athletes would inhale, he said.

They are equipped with superlight filters, each weighing 11 grammes (one third of an ounce), and an exhaust valve.

The company recommended the products to the national Olympic committee last year as international concern grew about Beijing’s air pollution, Kubo said.

“We provided the products to the committee in mid-July and they are bringing them as a precaution,” he said.

Poor air quality in Beijing has prompted International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge to warn it could result in the suspension of some events, particularly endurance races such as the marathon.

Beijing has closed many of the most polluting factories around the city and banned more than one million cars from the roads every day.

Despite the measures, visibility in the city remained poor on Monday, and officials have warned they may need to take more drastic steps to clear the skies ahead of the Games, which begin August 8.

source: afp.google.com

Eight days before the 2008 Summer Games kick off in Beijing, the city’s air quality is still so unpredictable that officials were forced Thursday to announce emergency contingency plans.
In recent days, the Chinese capital has been blanketed in a haze, and vehicle emissions have been higher than those expected by experts. Olympic organizers fear the pollution could not only prove a nuisance to spectators, but also hinder the performance of athletes if they deeply inhale the pollutants.
Chinese authorities had previously earlier ordered many gunk-spewing factories to move out of town or shut down. On Thursday, the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced that officials would close another 220 factories, coal-fired power plants and steel plants in Beijing, nearby Tianjin city and surrounding Hebei province if air quality was forecast to be poor for any 48-hour period.
Beijing will also ban all forms of construction “if there is very unfavorable weather, and the air quality is forecast to not be up to standard for the next 48 hours,” according to the ministry’s Web site. Experts said they interpreted this to mean that the emergency plan would begin if Beijing’s air pollution index, or API, was forecast to be 100 or more for two days in a row.
Officials describe an API over 100 as unhealthy for sensitive groups such as the young and the elderly.
On July 20, authorities began banning cars from the roads based on their license plates — vehicles bearing odd and even plates were given permission to take to the roads on alternate days. But afterward, the city’s API actually increased, from 55 that Sunday to 110 on Friday and 118 on Saturday.
Zhu Tong, an environmental sciences professor and the director of the Beijing Olympics Air Quality Research Group at Beijing University, said officials hadn’t calculated that creating special highway lanes dedicated to Olympic travel would clog the other lanes.
“We expected that with the odd and even restrictions there would be no traffic jams, and therefore fewer pollutants emitted. But because of the special Olympic driving lane, there are still a few traffic jams, so the emissions are higher than our predictions,” Zhu said.
Still, Zhu said the measures imposed July 20 have already improved air quality, and the emergency measures announced Thursday were only a “just-in-case” plan.
“The hazy days we had last week were due to unfavorable weather conditions,” Zhu said. “If there’s no unfavorable weather, I think we can guarantee good air quality during the Games.”
Under the new emergency measures announced Thursday, more cars would be taken off Beijing’s roads with a ban on vehicles whose license plates had a last digit that matched the date, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection. There are more than 3.3 million cars in Beijing, and more than 1,000 are added to its streets every day.
Some greeted the measures with a degree of cynicism.
“Being able to drive is an important part of ordinary people’s quality of life. If they expand the restrictions, it will be even more inconvenient,” said Xu Shuqiang, 34, a university law school lecturer.
“Government policy should be fair to everyone, not injure some groups in favor of others. I suspect all these measures are only for the Olympics, just to please the foreigners, since they will end on Sept. 20,” Xu added. “Beijing is always polluted. They should come up with a long-term solution.”

An estimated 50,000 athletes and 22,000 journalists are expected in Beijing for the Games, which run from Aug. 8 through Aug. 24. Leaders want to showcase not only China’s economic and athletic prowess but also its environmentally friendly policies. The capital now has an expanded subway system, a new bus fleet powered with natural gas and state-of-the-art Olympic venues that recycle rainwater.

By Wednesday, thanks to rain showers and a strong breeze, which helped disperse pollutants, the API had dropped to 44. By noon Thursday, it was 69, still within the acceptable limit of 100, which is considered moderate in Beijing.

But even moderate levels in Beijing are still above the World Health Organization guidelines for healthy air, experts said. Beijing describes an API over 100 as unhealthy for sensitive groups such as the young and the elderly.

Part of the problem is that Beijing does not regularly monitor nor publish data on the two most dangerous pollutants that affect respiratory health — ozone and fine particulate matter known as PM 2.5.

Officials are also weighing other expert suggestions, Zhu said. “Some say we should adjust the way we use the Olympic lane, others say we should spray the streets with water, still others say we should do more propaganda to get more people to take public transportation. Some experts say maybe we should adjust the opening hours of gas stations.”

source: washingtonpost.com

With 10 days to go until the Beijing Olympics opens, the smog simply refuses to lift and the Games organisers are preparing emergency measures to clear the air ahead of the big day.

The traffic on the streets of Beijing is noticeably lighter, and many of the big steelworks and coal-fired power stations have been silenced. But the capital was still enveloped yesterday in a haze that restricted visibility to a couple of hundred yards.

For years the authorities have been trying to clear the yellow-tinged smog masking the city, including a recent batch of measures as a quick-fix solution. “We will implement an emergency plan 48 hours in advance if the air quality deteriorates,” Li Xin, a senior engineer with the environmental bureau, told the China Daily newspaper.

It is only a week since the government introduced an odd-even number plate system which bars more than one million of Beijing’s 1.3 million passenger cars from the streets. Now the government is considering banning 90 per cent of private cars and closing more factories as a last-ditch attempt clear the skies before the games start on 8 August. Beijing has already spent 120bn yuan (£8.9bn) on tackling the pollution, to no avail.

The authorities say the haze was normal for Beijing for a balmy late July and had nothing to do with pollution. “The air quality in Beijing during the Olympic Games will not affect the health of athletes,” said Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing’s Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, the man charged with soothing fears that the Games may be a smoggy event. Athletes planning to bring respirators were only adding unnecessarily to their baggage weight, said Mr Du, who emphasised that the figures showed the air quality was improving: “A blue sky doesn’t mean the air quality is good. If you take a shower, you can’t see clearly because of the steam, but it doesn’t mean it’s pollution.”

“We can guarantee a good environment for athletes. The International Olympic Committee and its medical commission have concluded that good air quality is fully guaranteed,” Mr Du added.

However, with some athletes already training in Beijing and elsewhere in China, and others due to arrive in the coming days, the government’s assurances are unlikely to assuage fears that China’s promise of a “Green Games” is dead in the water.

The Olympic gold-medallist and world record holder Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia has pulled out of the Beijing marathon because he suffers from asthma and believes that the pollution threatens his health.

The environmentalist group Greenpeace released a report saying that Beijing’s air quality was still well short of international guidelines and that levels of particulates in the air were twice as high as recommended by the World Health Organisation.

It is still not clear exactly how bad the air has to be for an event to be cancelled, and it is forbidden to bring in measuring equipment for any independent measurement of air quality.

Jacques Rogge, the head of the International Olympic Committee, has warned that poor air quality during the Games could result in the suspension of endurance races such as long-distance cycling and the marathon.

from: independent.co.uk

China’s Olympic sailing venue, Qingdao Bay, has been hit by the worst algae blight in living memory, forcing officials to order an emergency clean-up of threatened regatta routes.
While the Chinese have promised to host a green Olympics in August, the thick carpet-like layer of seaweed bloom was not what officials had in mind. The spinach-sized clumps of algae have made it impossible for even rowing boats to cross the bay, which sits on the Western edge of the very polluted Yellow Sea.
“It’s a climatic disaster and we can only hope the heavens will be kind to us in August,” said Wang Haitao, the city’s Olympics spokesman.
“We can only haul the blue-green algae manually and we’re doing all we can with our arms full and by the boat-load. All you can see is fishing boats along the coast.”
The city has mobilised more than 1,000 fishing boats to scoop up the algae and contain the outbreak. But the root cause cannot be banished. Warmer waters, increased rainfall and high levels of nutrients in the ocean brought about the algae explosion along vast stretches of the 500-mile coastline, according to the Qingdao Weather Bureau.
Qingdao is a renowned north China resort that produces the country’s most famous beer, a legacy of its time as a German trading concession. More than 400 sailors from 60 countries are expected to compete there in the Olympic sailing competition.
It is not the first time its viability as an Olympic racing venue has been called into question. Last August a regatta at the £250 million marina built for the competition was marred by a lack of wind. Competitors drifted in a windless Yellow Sea and race planners said Olympic racers would have to reassess standard tactics.
Zang Aimin, a top Chinese Olympic yachting official, said the Olympic competition schedule would have to be altered to feature more races in the late afternoon, when the wind picks up.
China, which has a horrendous ecological protection record, has promised a “Green Olympics” that will be sensitive to environmental concerns.
Beijing officials are shutting factories and taking cars off the road in a bid to reduce pollution in time for the Aug. 8 opening ceremony.
The International Olympic Committee has said it will reschedule events if smog threatens athletes’ health.

from: telegraph.co.uk

Athletes competing in a marathon on Sunday showed less concerns for air pollution during the incoming Beijing Olympics rather than possible heat waves and humidity.
The 42.195-kilometer race was held as a test event for marathoners to run on a newly designed Olympic course which meets historical cites and major business streets including China’s top two universities and is different from that adopted in annual Beijing marathon event.

The temperature dropped to about 15 Celsius degrees after the start, much cooler than the last two days when a race walking challenge was held at nearly 28 degrees. It turned heavy raining one and a half hours later, breaking up mass martial art performance in the finish, the National Stadium, or “Bird’s Nest”.

“Although it is freezingly raining today, I would make more preparation for heat and humidity in August,” silver medalist Zhou Chunxiu, expected as another Olympic hope for China’s track and field besides hurdler Liu Xiang, said in all wet body covered by towel after race.

No information from the marathoners was available during the race because the organizers temporarily canceled live TV broadcast on Sunday morning, giving a reason that there was no remote pickup unit in a short notice.

Being repeatedly asked by foreign journalists for a comment on Beijing’s air pollution, many athletes stood shivering when passing the mixed zone, leaving only “it is cold.”

“The pollution yesterday was bad, but today it rains and does not really bother the competition,” said Mara Rosalind Yamauchi who finished fifth.

“Air pollution will be a challenge for the Olympics and I hope the organizers could improve it,” she said.

The British, who married a Japanese, said she will come to Beijing this summer and try her best in marathon, but also confirmed that she will do her training in Japan, Macao and Switzerland before August.

“The overall preparation is good, it is just a test event,” Yamauchi said the course is “smooth” and the stadium is “fantastic”, despite some details to be improved.

Mongolia’s Serod Batochir, gold medalist in men’s race, said he had not felt any pollution because of the rain, adding that hot and wet weather in August will be a more headachy problem for him.

Toilet was another issue in the marathon race started from Tiananmen Square at the heart of the capital as a symbolic venue to hold prominent ceremonies in China.

The British marathoner told she has not found any toilets at the start to some foreign journalists.

However, some Chinese journalists and volunteers who had not been to the marathon start insisted that there must be some toilets since Beijing has held many marathons.

“It is also possible that the British athlete did not ask the volunteers at the start or they failed to told her toilet’s location,” one of the volunteers working at a press conference room for the race, “it is unfair to say there is no toilet only for one athlete claimed she didn’t find one.”

from: chinadaily.com.cn

An analysis of Beijing’s air quality indicates that the health of the vast majority of athletes competing in the summer Olympic Games will not be impaired, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Monday.
Over the past few weeks, the IOC has made an analysis of a set of air quality data - including temperature, wind, humidity and SO2, NO2, CO, Ozone and PM10 readings - which were taken by the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau in August 2007 and given to the IOC.
“The findings indicate that, at Games time one year out, the health of athletes was largely not impaired,” said the Lausanne-based IOC in a statement.
The findings are also supported by the fact that no health issues related to air quality were reported to the Beijing Organizing Committee or the IOC by any team physicians looking after athletes who competed in the August 2007 test events, the statement said.
Besides, no air quality-related problems were reported at the IAAF Junior World Championships that were held in Beijing in August 2006, it added.
“As with all Olympic Games, we want to ensure that air quality risks are mitigated and that measures are put into place to protect the health of the athletes,” said Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC’s Medical Commission.
“For a few sports where we do see a possible risk, we will monitor the situation daily during Games time, and take whatever decisions are needed at the time to ensure the athletes’ health is protected,” he said.
The official expressed confidence that measures already put in place, plus those planned by Beijing organizers and city authorities, will continue to improve the city’s air quality leading up to - and during- the Games.

from: chinadaily.com.cn/olympics/2008-03/18/content_6543550.htm

China has ordered all pharmaceutical plants to tag medicines that contain stimulants to prevent athletes from mistakenly using banned drugs during the Olympic Games, a drug watchdog official said here on Sunday.
Drugstores were told not to sell such medicine without tags that read “athletes cautious” on the package, said Wu Zhen, vice director the State Food and Drug Administration at a press conference on the sidelines of the parliament session.
Only approved pharmaceutical plants and wholesalers are allowed to produce and wholesale protein assimilation preparations and peptide hormones, the official said.
The Chinese law also forbids the sales of protein assimilation preparations except insulin or the sales of peptide hormones, Wu added.
The moves were aimed at a fair and clean environment for the Games, Wu noted.
A catalog of drugs needed during the Olympic Games has been compiled.
China is resolute against doping and the Beijing Olympics will feature the largest number of doping tests in the history of the Games, according to officials with the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG).
Anti-doping requirements have been issued to all participating athletes at the Beijing Games, officials said.

from: chinadaily.com.cn/olympics/2008-03/16/content_6540272.htm

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang on Thursday urged foreign press members to do their part to create a favorable news coverage environment in China.
To honor its commitment in the bid for the right to host the Olympic Games, the Chinese government started on January 1, 2007 to implement the “Regulations On Reporting Activities in China by Foreign Journalists During the Beijing Olympic Games and the Preparatory Period.”
With a serious attitude toward the implementation of the Regulations, concerned government agencies and local governments have made great efforts to earnestly carry them out. “Any unbiased journalist will feel that a freer press coverage environment is available to foreign journalists now and they enjoy more facilities and services in China today,” Qin said at a regular press conference.
Generally speaking, he noted, the Regulations have been carried out well since they were put into force, and the move was commended by the international community, including foreign governments and media. However, there were some problems, Qin said, explaining that it takes time to carry out the Regulations in depth as conditions vary in different places in view of the country’s vast territory and big population. On the other hand, some foreign journalists need to rethink profoundly about their behaviors. Many cases of resistance to press coverage were caused by violations of the Regulations by some journalists, or their insistence for interviews against the interviewees’ will.
In violating journalistic ethics, Qin said, some media members even distorted facts and fabricated stories. “So both of us need to do our best to efficiently carry out the Regulations with an aim at improving press conditions in China and making news coverage acceptable to more organizations,” Qin added.

from: http://en.beijing2008.cn/news/dynamics/headlines/n214268530.shtml