On December 17, 2022, with the support of Energy Foundation China, the Air-Climate-Health Integrated Research Program and Exchange Platform, and the Monsoon Asia Integrated Research Sustainability-Future Earth Program, the School of Environmental Science and Engineering at Peking University hosted an Air, Climate, and Health forum, and launched the Society on Environmental Exposure Sciences. Zhu Tong, Dean of the school, hosted the opening ceremony of the online forum. Zhang Jin, Vice President of Peking University; Liu Yu, Director of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); Zou Ji, President and CEO of Energy Foundation China (EF China) gave their opening speeches.

Zhang Jin, also Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that carbon neutrality could only be achieved in China with support from all academic fields including air, climate, and health studies, and from consolidated interdisciplinary research and platforms. He hoped this forum would facilitate innovation in key scientific issues, inspire scientific discussion for China’s integrated air, climate, and health strategy, improve the coordination of health-driven climate change and air pollution mitigation, and provide scientific evidence for policy decision-making and implementation.

Director Liu Yu said that with the focus on air, climate, and health, the high-level academic presentations at this forum would be helpful for addressing the four major challenges in the field of environmental health, i.e., basic scientific theories and frontier technologies, international treaties compliance, regional and city cluster air compound pollution, and environmental health problems.

Zou Ji said that establishing the correlation between energy transition, clean air, climate mitigation, health protection, and economic prosperity would help address the current problem of insufficient investment and weak economic growth, and also lay a good foundation for future development. As an international philanthropy and regrantor, EF China —and its Air Quality taskforce—would love to cooperate with NSFC and continue to work with experts and think tanks to focus on five areas in the air-climate-health field: strengthened scientific knowledge of the relationship between human health, air quality, climate change, and energy consumption; the updating of air quality standards and the introduction of environmental health risk assessment; the assessment of economic and social impact before and after policy introduction; wide dissemination of the integrated air-climate-health strategy and local policy pilots; and research synthesis, policy implementation, and experience exchange, he said.

With the overall theme of “The Harmony of Civilizations and Prosperity for All,” this forum was focused on human health effects of climate change, new findings on the synergistic health effects of air pollution, health-driven policies and pathways for the synergistic management of air pollution and climate change issues, and exposure assessment technologies. More than 30 leading experts attended the forum, including Professor Joel Schwartz from Harvard University, Professor Gregory Garmichael from Iowa State University and Chinese Academy of Sciences Member He Kebin from Tsinghua University. Liu Xin, Director of EF China’s Environmental Management Program gave his presentation on the drivers for and pathways toward an environmentally friendly and healthy China .