On November 6, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27) started in Egypt, with countries jointly seeking to combat the global climate crisis. Collective, complementary and collaborative actions by the world to adapt to the effects of climate change, mitigate its negative repercussions, and provide climate finance have become the focus of the globe.
Since the beginning of 2022, heatwaves, torrential rains, floods, droughts and other natural disasters occurred one after another around the world. Climate change has been a matter of survival and no country could be immune to such crisis. Active adaptation and mitigation to climate change have been “realistic and urgent” tasks, asking for true efforts devoted by the major economies and low-carbon transition of country’s development.
Guided by the vision of a community of life for man and nature, China is a country of action to pursue a green and low-carbon development path. As emphasized in the Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, respecting, adapting to and protecting nature is essential for building China into a modern socialist country in all respects, featuring harmony between humanity as the key element of the Chinese style of modernization.
Facts have proved that based on creating two miracles of rapid economic development and long-term social stability, China is creating a new miracle of green transformation. In honor of its vow to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060, China has made tremendous efforts as adjusting industrial structure, optimizing energy structure and developing renewable energy. In 2020, the share of coal-fired power in China’s installed power capacity dropped to a historic low of under 50%, while total emissions of the coal-fired power industries reduced by nearly 90% over a decade, saving over 700 million tons of raw coal over the past decade. By 2021, China has become the top non-fossil fuel consumer worldwide, with non-fossil fuel accounted for 16.6% of its total energy consumption. China now generates and installs more hydro, wind, solar and biomass power than any other country in the world and has been also leading the world on new energy vehicles sales for seven years running.
Green transition and ecological civilization help China achieve higher-quality development. China has decoupled economic growth from emissions, with its carbon emissions per unit of GDP has decreased by 34.4% over the past 10 years while its GDP has more than doubled. According to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China, the country has achieved average annual economic growth of 6.6% in the past 10 years, with a yearly increase of 3% in energy consumption. China now has also made remarkable progress in air and water pollution treatment, making solid contribution to meet people’s demand. Beijing, for example, saw its annual average density of PM2.5 particulate matter reach 33 micrograms per cubic meter, compared with 89.5 micrograms per cubic meter in 2013, the first year that the air pollutant was monitored in the capital. China now has all the resources, technologies and ingenuity to achieve robust economic growth and provide sufficient, secure and low-carbon power, offering a new and effective mode for developing countries to achieve modernization with sustainability.
As a doer on ecological progress and climate governance, China has voluntarily assumed international responsibilities commensurate with its national conditions. Despite of its state as developing country and with largest population, China is committed to completing the world’s most dramatic reduction in carbon emissions and realizing carbon neutrality in the shortest time, which demonstrates China’s sense of responsibility as a major economy. With great efforts in the past decades, China now accounted for 30% to 50% of global energy conservation, energy efficiency improvement, renewable energy development, and green transportation and construction. The country will continue to be the global leader in renewable energy capacity growth over the next five years, and will continue to inject direct impetus into global climate governance and help accelerate the process to realize the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In its pursuit to build a community with a shared future for mankind, China assists other countries in their process of mitigation and adaptation as climate response. By 2021, China has conducted more than 200 foreign assistance programs to enhance climate action and provided energy-saving and new energy products and equipment to nearly 40 countries, with 2 billion yuan (about 275.8 million USD) provided to developing countries. More than 2,000 officials and professional personnel specializing in climate response from 120 developing countries benefits from training programs within China’s South-South cooperation framework. China has also donated equipment to developing countries such as micro-satellites, meteorological mobile stations, and drones to support natural disasters monitoring and early warning, as well as climate adaptation.
As a good friend, brother and partner of Pacific island countries (PICs), China takes very seriously the unique situation and concerns of PICs on climate, and has actively helped PICs mitigate the impact of climate disasters and build response capacity. The China-PICs Climate Change Cooperation Center has been launched to enhance climate exchanges and capacity building. Under the framework of South-South cooperation, China have signed five project documents on providing material assistance to PICs, trained nearly 100 professionals for PICs specializing in climate response and provided financial assistance to the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program(SPREP). In September this year, China’s special envoy on climate change Xie Zhenhua and diplomatic envoys from PICs in China had an in-depth exchange of views on policies and actions to address climate change, which has produced positive outcomes and formed consensus on expectation of COP27 and South-South cooperation on climate change. China will further enhance dialogue and exchanges with PICs to coordinate positions and expand cooperation in order to uphold the common interest of developing countries.
As we in China often say, “The going may be tough when one walks alone, but it gets easier when people walk together.” Now that there’s still a long way to go when it comes to climate action, it is necessary to increase mutual trust and cooperation on the basis of existing multilateral consensus. Developed countries, in particular, need to honor their historical responsibility and due international obligation on climate change. I do believe that with all countries working together to expand common ground and build synergies for better global governance, the world will witness greater harmony between human and nature.