December 24, 2007 (United Nations Resident Coordinator in China, Khalid Malik) – In outgoing 2007, almost all important intergovernmental panels have so far focused their core topics for discussion on climate change, and this year will surely go down into the annuals of the world history as a crucial year.Internationally, a great deal of talks or discussions globally acknowledge that China would replace the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gas in the next decade. People, nevertheless, do not known much about the unremitting, continuous efforts and contributions China has so far made in dealing with climate challenges. China was expected to invest 10 billion US dollars this year on the research and development of renewable energies, and was thus cited as the global No. 2 in term of the input made in this sphere, only next to Germany.
At a recent summit of East Asian Leaders in Singapore, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to reduce energy consumption (per unit of GDP) by 20 percent over the coming five years. This pledge of Wen’s is more or less the same with the commitment of the EU member states to reducing their greenhouse gases emission by 20 percent by the year 2020.
China has launched its first ever national program to cope with climate change in 2007. Its policies towards climate change and energy conservation promulgated lately and the release of the memorandum of the UN Summit on Climate Change held in Bali Island, Indonesia have provided an absolute good opportunity for China.
China has already taken the lead globally in the realm of using solar and wind energies and, if coupled with a sound, efficient incentive mechanism and a “green investment” on a steady rise, it would be foreseen to provide a strong technical prop for its own as well as other countries, so as to help them attain the requirements for “green” science and technologies.
In the wake of the recent UN Climate Change Summit in Bali Island, the U.N. has been busy with reparatory work for the post-Bali era. In China, the U.N. resident agencies have worked closely with Chinese governmental, private and individual cooperative partners for jointly defining challenges regarding climate change and technology and financial support to cope with the challenges.
Simple and not so difficult things can bring forth immense changes once they take shape and, to date, technology can be applied to address challenges the nation faces with respect to global climate change. This technology is used to replace ordinary light bulbs with energy conserving lights, or refrigeroators and air conditioners in common use with the energy-conserving ones. And the U.N. was fortunate to work very hard with the Chinese government over the past decade, and we have gone on stepping up efforts in this regard with our Chinese peers, such as the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and some other cooperative partners at the regional level. Meanwhile, we have also witnessed the vital role the Chinese private companies and transnational firms have also given scope to.
In order to implement the UN resolution on Bali Island, the U.N.-China Climate Change Partnership Framework (CCPF) has been launched with joint U.N. and Chinese efforts. The program will bring together a team of nine UN agencies, a landmark inter-agency initiative to bring full force of the U.N. to hear on China’s mitigation and adaptation to challenges and offer the most frontier sciences and technologies. Consequently, the drafting of a post-Kyoto strategy and protocol along with the cooperation of global cooperation partners, nevertheless, constitutes a very crucial, concrete way for the post-Kyoto protocol era.
Science and technology is meant to be the key, crucial factor to the prompt solution. At present, technology can be applied to address the challenges the nations face with regard to the global climate change. Some new, high “green teches” can be applied to respond to challenges in this sphere. The U.N. too, has also a host of new operation methods and most ideal ways to share with China. The ways of solution by bringing forth new information and new technology represents the core contents of CCPF.
Furthermore, the U.N. would call together both leaders and pioneers in the sphere to help spur the knowledge-sharing bid by units at home and units of China and other nations globally, and explore the brand-new, practical and viable venues for brand-new “green investment and green technological transfer.” The program will explore steps toward a lower-carbon economy, ways to mainstream climate change into substantial production and consumption models, while promoting “green” illumination or lighting, making localized energy conservation products and resorting to other energy conservomh means of the great innovative significance.
Asia Cleantech 