Improvement of Air And Water Quality in China by 2024 - 10/24/2024

The Yellow Bo River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, ripples in the green, and the city complex is bathed in brilliant morning light in Yichang, Hubei province, China, Oct 24, 2024. On October 22, 2024, China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment announced that in the first three quarters of 2024, China's air quality and surface water quality continued to improve overall. In terms of air quality, 85.8 percent of the 339 cities at or above the prefecture level had good air quality on average, up 1.6 percentage points year on year. The average number of days with heavy pollution or above was 1.1 percent, down 0.7 percentage points year-on-year. In terms of surface water, among the 3,641 national surface water assessment sections, the proportion of ⅰ-III sections with excellent water quality was 88.5%, an increase of 1.4 percentage points year-on-year. Among them, the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and other seven river basins, northwest rivers, southwest rivers and Zhejiang and Fujian rivers, the proportion of class ⅰ-ⅲ excellent water quality sections increased by 0.8 percentage points year-on-year. Among the 210 key lakes (reservoirs) monitored, the number of class I - III lakes (reservoirs) with excellent water quality increased by 4 percentage points year-on-year.