Bangkok - Shi Han Min, who led the Beijing's effort to clean up its air for the 2008 Olympic Games, on Wednesday won the first Kong Ha Award for excellence in air quality management. The award, which included a 10,000-dollar purse, was granted to Shi at the Better Air Quality 2008 workshop in Bangkok, which has drawn 900 delegates from the region.
Shi, director of Beijing's Environment Protection Bureau, was credited for introducing many initiatives to clean up the Chinese capital's notorious air pollution for the Olympics which were later institutionalized and replicated in other Chinese cities.
For example, during the Olympics Shi introduced an odd-even traffic scheme whereby cars with plates ending in odd numbers were banned for a day and cars with even numbers for the following day.
The bureau has since October 1 reintroduced a modified version of the odd-even scheme in Beijing, keeping an estimated 800,000 vehicles off the roads.
For the Games, Shi implemented euro 4 fuel standards in the capital, which have now been imitated in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
Shi, who flew to Bangkok to accept the award, pledged his continued commitment to follow up on his Olympic success.
The award was named after Kong Ha, chair of the Clean Air Initiate for Asian Cities (ACI-Asia) who died unexpectedly in April 2007.
