The Twentieth Tripartite Presidents Meeting (TPM20) among the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) of China, the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) of Japan and the National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) of Korea, was held from October 31 to November 1, 2023 in Tokyo, Japan.

President LI Haisheng presented the historic, transitional, and comprehensive successful progress of China’s ecological and environmental protection in the past ten years, especially the achievement of the air quality improvement. He introduced Chinese President Xi Jinping’s strategic deployment at China's National Conference on Ecological Environmental Protection, which provided direction and action guide for China’s ecological and environmental protection work in the new era.

President LI Haisheng shared the progress of CRAES’ mission-oriented management reform pilot. He introduced that focusing on the national major strategic requirements of the ecological and environmental protection, CRAES has innovated the “1+X” mechanism to implement coordinated scientific research and operations with interdisciplinary and multi-departmental integration, which supported high-quality development with high-level scientific and technological innovation.

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of TPM, President LI Haisheng spoke highly of the achievements made in the past 20 years, believing that TPM has developed into an important platform for scientific and technological exchange, mutual understanding and learning, and win-win cooperation among the three institutes, which has set a successful example for regional environmental cooperation. He suggested that the three institutes take the opportunity of the twentieth anniversary of TPM to build more extensive cooperation on the basis of common interests, adhere to the original intention of TPM establishment, and focus on the world's scientific frontier to lead regional and promote global environmental governance, and jointly write a new historical development chapter of TPM mechanism.

After listening to the research progress of three institutes since TPM19, the activity reports of 4 Potential Research Areas (air pollution, water environment, climate change and environmental health), the presentations of “Comparative Study on water environment”, the three Presidents expressed their expectation and suggestions for further strengthening the in-depth cooperation. They agreed to jointly optimize future collaboration under the TPM mechanism and signed the Joint Communiqué of TPM20.

The parallel workshop (PWS) on “Environmental Health Exposure Parameters in East Asia” was held during the meeting. Deepened discussion on the scientific issues related to the exposure parameters research was conducted in the PWS.