Seoul-Beijing Bilateral Cooperation Research Report 2025
In 2013, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) and the Beijing Municipal Government (Beijing) established the “Joint Committee of Exchanges and Cooperation” to promote systematic and pragmatic cooperation between the two capital cities. Expanding into the environmental sphere in 2015, this bilateral partnership created the Environment Team under the Joint Committee, strengthening cooperation in air quality management and climate governance.
To facilitate policy exchange within this framework, the ICLEI East Asia Secretariat has conducted two rounds of the Seoul-Beijing Bilateral Cooperation Research Projects from 2019 to 2021 and from 2021 to 2022. The first research featured a comparative analysis of the two cities’ overall air quality management, showcasing their approaches to boiler replacement, vehicle control, fugitive dust management, and seasonal air pollution measures. The second expanded its scope to climate change and carbon-neutrality policies in energy, building, and transport sectors, highlighting the importance of integrated management of air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. These two reports provided a systematic review of Seoul and Beijing’s efforts and achievements in air quality improvement and low-carbon transition, laying a strong foundation for subsequent collaboration.
Over the past decades, through ambitious policies and bold actions under initiatives such as Clear Seoul 2010, Clearer Seoul 2030 and the Blue Sky Protection Campaign, Seoul and Beijing have witnessed remarkable achievements in air quality management, significantly reducing fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen oxides (NOX), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) levels. Building on these achievements and previous research, the current research examines the governance of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of the two capital cities, which has become an increasingly critical focus in air pollution control in both Seoul and Beijing.