China working on new plan to combat climate change

• Source: The Global Times
• [17:04 May 21 2009]
• Comments

China is working on a new national plan to deal with climate change, a senior official said May 20.

“The plan is based on the longer term in a bid to strengthen the enforcement of international treaties on the issue,” Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said.

It is designed to deal with climate change as well as boosting economic growth, he said.

Although Xie did not give full details of the plan, he said the country hopes to accumulate useful experience on establishing a low-carbon economy through several pilot projects.

In 2007, a leading national group on climate change, headed by Premier Wen Jiabao, was established to oversee a variety of issues related to climate change.

In the same year, the government issued its National Climate Change Program, the first of its kind by a developing country, which details a range of strategies and measures that could be implemented to tackle climate change.

Since then, the country has made significant progress on a number of environmental issues, Xie said.

Figures show that the country’s energy consumption per unit of GDP fell 4.6 percent last year, and a total of 10 percent between 2006 and 2008.
Also last year, China’s emissions of sulfur dioxide, a major air pollutant, fell almost 6 percent, and were down almost 9 percent over the past three years, according to figures from the NDRC.

The speed at which we are fighting climate change cannot be slowed because of the global financial crisis, Xie said.

However, the expectations put on China by the international community should be “fair and reasonable,” he said, adding that the country’s average per capita greenhouse gas emission volume is just a third of that reported in most developed countries.

Xinhua