Congress Theme – Clean Air Partnerships: Coming Together for the Future

The quality of life for humans depends on clean food, clean water and clean air, but this can only be provided in a world of increasing population and increasing resource consumption through the advancement of knowledge and the forging of effective partnerships between the diverse interest groups in human society. This Congress will bring together specialists from science, industry and government to present insights into progress and challenges in the achievement of improved air quality, and to consider perspectives provided by representatives of the wider society. These exchanges are intended to examine local, national and international issues, not only those from the traditional economies but also those that challenge the developing economies.

The Congress aims to generate outcomes that advance the objectives of the Global Atmospheric Pollution Forum. The four major Congress subthemes, listed below, are based on determining the status and future of partnerships between seemingly diametric opposites. Contributors are encouraged to focus their papers on outcomes in one or more of these areas.

• Science and Society - understanding and application
• Industry and Government - innovation and implementation
• Urban and Rural - modern and clean
• National and International - progress and equity

Program Objectives

• To develop the four themes of Partnerships in oral and poster presentations and in workshops.
• To provide opportunities for discussion of topics under themes.
• To facilitate the framing of Congress resolutions.
• To provide opportunities for all Congress participants to be involved in sessions.

Invited Speakers

Bebet Gozun

Elisea "Bebet" G. Gozun, former Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the Philippines was recognized by UNEP as the 2007 Champion of the Earth for Asia and the Pacific. An activist who is involved with many environmental NGOs, she has served as a consultant on environmental management and urban development to World Bank, ADB, USAID, UNDP, UN Habitat, AUSAID and other development partners, She was President of the Concerned Citizens Against Pollution and Chair of the multi-sectoral Partnership for Clean Air which took the lead in making urban air quality management a national issue, pushed for early phase out of leaded gasoline and the passage of the Clean Air Act. She now serves as the Acting Chair of the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities Partnership Council.

Dr Alan Lloyd

President, International Council on Clean Transportation Reno NV - USA
Dr. Alan C. Lloyd is the President of the International Council on Clean Transportation. He served as the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency from 2004 through February 2006 and as the Chairman of the California Air Resources Board from 1999 to 2004. Prior to joining CARB, Dr. Lloyd was the Executive Director of the Energy and Environmental Engineering Center for the Desert Research Institute at the University and Community College System of Nevada, Reno, and the chief scientist at the South Coast Air Quality Management District from 1988 to 1996. Dr. Lloyd's work focuses on the viable future of advanced technology and renewable fuels, with attention to urban air quality issues and global climate change. A proponent of alternate fuels, electric drive and fuel cell vehicles eventually leading to a hydrogen economy, Dr. Lloyd was the 2003 Chairman of the California Fuel Cell Partnership and is a co-founder of the California Stationary Fuel Cell collaborative. He earned both his B.S. in Chemistry and Ph.D. in Gas Kinetics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, U.K.

The International Council on Clean Transportation, sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Energy Foundation, has the goal to dramatically improve the environmental performance and efficiency of cars, trucks, buses and transportation systems in order to protect and improve public health, the environment and quality of life.

Professor Ian Lowe

Ian Lowe AO FTSE is emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University in Brisbane and holds adjunct appointments at three other universities. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, a Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences, and President of the Australian Conservation Foundation. He wrote a weekly column for New Scientist for 13 years and received the 2002 Eureka Prize for Promotion of Science. He also won the Australian Prime Minster's Environmental Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement and the Queensland Premier's Millennium Award for Excellence in Science. He directed Australia's Commission for the Future in 1988 and chaired the advisory council that produced the first national report on the state of the environment in 1996. He helped develop the framework for the UNEP Global Environmental Outlook reports and has acted as a referee for the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, the Millennium Assessment and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program.

Professor Andy Pitman

Andy Pitman did his BSc and PhDs at Liverpool University in the UK, graduating in 1988. He is now Professor in atmospheric science and co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. His expertise is in climate modelling, with broad interests extending across climate change, climate impacts, land cover change, carbon dynamics etc. He is a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, national lead of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program, part of the science steering committee within the World Climate Research Program and the convenor of the ARC Research Network for Earth System Science. He represents the University sector in the Australian Community Climate and Earth System simulator project.

Locally, he has worked with researchers in CSIRO, ANSTO and the Bureau of Meteorology for a decade. Internationally, he collaborates with groups in Paris, Colorado, Washington and Beijing. He is a member of the advisory board of Risk Frontiers - an industry funded centre that explores questions of climate, volcanic and hydrological risk for the insurance industry.

Professor Veerabadran Ramanathan

V. Ramanathan is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences and the founding director of the Center for atmospheric sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego. In the mid 1970s he discovered the greenhouse effect of CFCs and numerous other manmade trace gases. He correctly predicted in 1980 with R. Madden, that the global warming due to Carbon dioxide will be detected by 2000. He showed that the greenhouse effect can be monitored from space and demonstrated that clouds had a large natural cooling effect on the planet. He led the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) with Dr P J Crutzen, which discovered the wide spread S Asian Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs). Using data collected during INDOEX, he showed that the South Asian brown clouds led to large scale dimming of the ocean, slowed down the monsoon circulation and decreased monsoon rainfall. He followed this with a path breaking study with agricultural economists to show that ABCs and greenhouse gases were responsible for a 14% decrease in rice harvest in India. He currently chairs the UNEP sponsored ABC Project with science team members from USA, Europe, India, China, Japan, Korea and other Asian countries. His current research focuses on the use of miniaturized instruments on unmanned aircraft to understand long range transport of pollutants and their climate impacts.

Dr. Ramanathan is the recipient of many national and international awards, including induction to the American Philosophical Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (by Pope John Paul II), the Academia Europea and the Third World Academy of Sciences. He currently chairs the US academy panel that gives strategic advice to the US Climate Change Science Program which is a $2B program in climate change research funded by 13 US Govt agencies.

Professor Joel Schwartz

Joel Schwartz is a Professor of Environmental Health and Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. His major substantive research in epidemiology has focused on -
a) the role of gasoline as the major source of lead in humans;
b) the health effects of lead, with an emphasis on effects in adults;
c) establishing airborne particulate matter as a major source of avoidable mortality;
d) establishing cardiovascular disease as the most important target for the health effects of air pollution;
e) examination of the importance of hot and cold days in mortality (e.g. heat waves), and the role of adaptation in modifying those responses;
f) the effects of disinfection byproducts in water and inadequate disinfection of drinking water on human health, and
g) the use of more advanced statistical methods to examine nonlinear dose-response relations. In risk assessment and environmental economics, he introduced the basic methodologies to value the reduction in cognitive function in children from environmental toxicants, which has been used in most cost benefit analyses of environmental neurotoxins, and the use of regression modeling to estimate the importance of particular pathways to exposure of humans to lead, manganese, arsenic, particles, ozone, and NO2.

While at the US Environmental Protection Agency, Dr. Schwartz lead the team that produced the regulation (and supporting cost-benefit analysis) that eliminated lead from gasoline in the US, and has done briefings for many governments in the developing world promoting the removal of lead from gasoline in those countries. In 1991 he received a John D and Catherine T MacArthur Fellowship.

Student Support Scheme

The Organising Committee advises that no travel grants are available.