China Daily Weekly - 02.08.2019

BySUNJINGYING

T

he United Nations 2030

Agenda for Sustainable

Development is the global

action plan for people, the

planet and prosperity. Sustainable

development can be seen as the

effort to create a better life for all

humans.

On Sept 24-25 this year, heads of

state and government will gather at

the UN Headquarters in New York

to comprehensively review progress

in the implementation of the 2030

Agenda for SustainableDevelop-

ment and the 17 SustainableDevel-

opmentGoals (SDGs).

Four years into the adoption of

the 2030Agenda, countries have

translated this shared vision into

national development plans and

strategies. TheChinese govern-

ment integrated it into its 13th

Five-Year Plan (2016-20) and

releasedChina’s National Plan on

Implementation of the 2030Agen-

da for SustainableDevelopment in

September 2016.

Guided by the five principles

of innovative, coordinated, green,

open and shared development,

China has worked vigorously to

promote all-around economic,

political, cultural, social and ecolog-

ical progress through the alignment

of strategies, institutional guaran-

tees, social mobilization, input of

resources, risk management, inter-

national cooperation, oversight and

review.

One of the most significant out-

comes inChina’s efforts to imple-

ment the 2030Agenda is poverty

eradication.By 2015, more than 700

million people had been lifted out

of extreme poverty inChina.Afew

weeks after the 2030Agenda was

officially unveiled, at the 2015Glob-

al Poverty Reduction andDevelop-

mentForum inBeijing, President

Xi Jinping vowed to lift all the

remaining 70 million impoverished

people out of poverty by 2020.

By the end of 2018, more than

half of the 832 poverty-stricken

counties had shaken off poverty.

What’s more, over 6.2 million

housing units were rebuilt in

rundownurban areas and 1.9 mil-

lion dilapidated rural houses were

renovated.

China has also made all-around

progress in green development.

TheChinese government has

strengthened the awareness of

ecological conservation and energy

saving, and mobilized the entire

society to participate in efforts to

protect the environment.China has

implemented three major action

plans on tackling air, water and soil

pollution in an effort to strengthen

prevention and control of pollution.

In 2018,China’s energy consump-

tion and carbon dioxide emissions

per unit ofGDP fell by 3 percent

and 3.6 percent respectively,

year-on-year. Water consump-

tion per 10,000 yuan ($1,450) of

GDP dropped by 5.1 percent. New

progress was made in ecological

conservation, with measures for

assessing ecological conservation

achievements introduced, the com-

mercial logging of natural forests

fully banned, and a wetland protec-

tion system put in place.

Furthermore,China has created

public goods for other countries

and regions, so as to contribute

to the common prosperity of the

international community. These

include: the building of a com-

munity with a shared future for

mankind, a solution to challenges

facing all human society; theBelt

and Road Initiative, a concrete

path to promote global economic

growth and provide momentum to

achieve the SDGs; and maintaining

and promoting the development of

an open world economy, and fairer

international system that benefits

all countries and economies.

For example, at the first and

secondBelt and RoadForum for

InternationalCooperation,China

announced a host of major mea-

sures for advancing international

development cooperation, inject-

ing strong impetus into the global

efforts to implement the 2030

Agenda.

At the second forum this year,

China set clear priorities forBelt

and Road cooperation and decided

to strengthen all-around and

multi-tiered cooperation. So far,

126 countries and 29 international

organizations have signed on to

partake in the initiative to expand

connectivity, trade and people-to-

people exchanges and pursue com-

mon development throughoutAsia,

Europe,Africa and beyond.

Chinasupported more results-

oriented cooperation and more

concrete outcomes.During the

secondBelt and RoadForum, for

example, more than 283 deliver-

ables were achieved and partici-

pants in the entrepreneur confer-

ence signed agreements worth over

$64 billion.

UN Secretary-GeneralAntonio

Guterres commented that with

the scale of planned investments,

theBelt and Road Initiative offers

a meaningful opportunity to con-

tribute to the creation of a more

equitable, prosperous world for all,

and to reverse the negative effects

of climate change.Countries today

need roads and bridges from the

unsustainable, fossil-fueled gray

economy to a clean, green, low-

carbon energy future.

However, there are also obstacles

in the way of achieving the SDGs.

The SustainableDevelopment

Goals Report 2018, issued by the

UN, shows that, in some areas,

progress is insufficient to meet the

agenda’s goals and targets by 2030.

This has placed even greater impor-

tance on the stability and growth

of the world economy. The unfavor-

able state of the global economy

casts a shadow in 2019 and beyond.

Behind the statistics and data lie

the greater risks of unilateralism,

protectionism, and populism, and

the rise of anti-globalization senti-

ment.

In this context,China adheres

firmly to multilateralism, the UN

system including the SDGs, and

the WTO for the multilateral trade

system, with the aim of realizing a

shared future for all humankind.

Going forward,China will con-

tinue to earnestly and fully imple-

ment the 2030Agenda under the

guidance of the vision of innova-

tive, coordinated, green, open and

shared development. In the mean-

time,China will continue to offer

assistance to the best of its ability to

other developing countries within

the framework of South-South

cooperation, and support them

in their efforts to implement the

2030 Agenda and achieve common

development.

The author is an assistant

researcher with the Institute of

World Economics andPolitics at the

ChineseAcademyofSocialSciences.

The author contributed this article

to China Watch, a think tank

powered by China Daily.The views

do not necessarily reflect those of

China Daily.

InChina’seffortstoimplementtheUN2 030 Agenda,povertyeradicationoutcomesaresignificant

Promoterofsustainabledevelopment

ByCHAOQINGCHEN

H

eat waves across many

European countries and

extreme weather events

such as hurricanes,

heavy rainfall and floods caused

by climate change have raised the

concerns of environmentalists and

ordinary people alike.

Intensive research and studies

show that compared with the pre-

industrialization period, the average

global temperature between 2006

and 2015 was higher by 0.86C,and

in 2018 it increased to 1.0C.Worse,

the period from 2014 to 2018 was

the warmest five years in recorded

history.

The rate of global warming is

different in different regions and

seasons.For example, temperature

is rising faster on land than in the

oceans, regions at higher altitude

are heating faster than places at

lower altitude, and temperature rise

is higher in winter than in summer.

More important, the warming

rate inChina is twice as much as in

the rest of the world.For instance,

from 1901 to 2018, the average

ground surface temperature inChi-

na increased by about 1.24C, which

is twice the world average.And the

past 20 years have been the warmest

since 1901 — especially 2018, which

was one of the 10 warmest years.

Climate change has had extensive

impact on the natural ecosystem

and human society. Since the mid-

20th century, heat waves have

occurred more frequently world-

wide and lasted longer. Rainfall has

become erratic, floods more fre-

quent and cyclones common world-

wide. In 2018, natural disasters

affected 62 million people across

the world.

Extreme weather events have

increased inChina, too, with tor-

rential rains paralyzing life in

cities as well as villages. In this

century, drought-like conditions

have affected many parts ofChina,

increasing by 37 percent, 16 percent

and 10 percent in the northeast,

north and southwest regions. Plus,

more typhoons are making landfall

inChina.

Worse, it is forecast that half

of the summer season would be

marked by heat waves acrossChina

around 2024.

Being most sensitive to climate

change, the ice sheets and glaciers

in theArctic andAntarctic regions

are melting at an unprecedented

rate, raising sea levels.

The decline in theArctic ice

cover has been extremely rapid

from1979 to 2018.And the sea ice

in theAntarctic has been melting at

a very high rate since 2016.

The melting of ice in theArctic

has not only led to extreme weather

events, but also affected the land

and ocean ecology and the environ-

ment, water resources, food safety,

and regional social and economic

development, creating great chal-

lenges for the world to protect the

ecological environment.

So if we do not reduce green-

house gas emissions, theEarth’s

average surface temperature would

rise by 0.3-4.8Cwith disastrous

consequences. If we act now, there

is a possibility we could keep the

rise in global temperature to below

2 C.

In order to build an ecological

civilization, we need to understand

that reducing emissions is the best

way to mitigate climate change,

prevent natural disasters and pro-

tect the environment and ecology.

In 2015, more than 170 countries

and theEuropean Union ham-

mered out the ParisAgreement

to cope with climate change. Last

year, the signatory countries met in

Katowice, Poland, and decided to

formulate a long-term low-carbon

emission development strategy, so

as to achieve the agreement’s objec-

tives and the SustainableDevelop-

mentGoals.

Therefore, all countries should

take joint and pragmatic actions to

fight climate change.AsforChina,

it will help propel the international

process to adapt to climate change,

and make due contributions to

reduce climate risks and protect the

global environment and ecology.

The author is deputy director of the

National Climate Center.The views

do not necessarily represent those of

China Daily.

Chinawillhelppropeltheinternationalprocesstoadapttoclimatechange

Cut emissions,protect globalecology

CHINA DAILY GLOBAL WEEKLY August 2-8, 2019 COMMENT 25