The environment alongside climate change has been a hot topic in recent years starting with the worldwide protest against the exploitation of natural resources as well as the lack of sensibility coming from the heads of governments around the world that was initiated by Greta Thunberg, regardless of this notorious movement, concerns around this topic and on the amount of natural capital we have left before incurring in mass extinction, have been spreading for quite a long time now.
There are several targets in place to be met before 2030 that would prevent this destructive event and some countries have been more disciplined than others throughout the years, one that’s globally known as specialized in mass production, which eventually leads to the same amount in waste, and that has repeatedly stood clear of internationally shared treaties on climate change is China, the country has shown the world multiple times that it isn’t interested nor available to commit to any environmental protection policy since it has established as its first goal to raise the living standards of the Chinese citizens through economic growth, not considering though, the effect that overexploitation has on the matter.
Rapid industrial development and the dominance of economic growth have impacted strongly China’s environment in the last decade, as a matter of fact, hazardous levels of water and air pollution are now daily phenomena as the frequent natural disasters that hit the said country are more present now than ever before.
China’s environmental crisis derives from a decade of rapid industrialization, and it threatens not only the health of its 1.4 billion citizens but also contributes negatively to the struggle the world is facing with the fight against climate change, it being the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas emission which causes the most concerning environmental issue in China’s territory today: air pollution, affecting potable water as well leading to its scarcity and soil contamination.
With the aim of finding a solution to all of this, China signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 pledging to become carbon neutral by 2060, however, due to the fact that, at the same time, China needs to maintain its exponential growth, ease the public discontent as well as overcome tensions with the second-largest emitter in the world, the US, standing by its promises hasn’t been easy.
Internationally speaking, a massive step towards the solution of environmental problems worldwide is that President Xi Jinping has indeed recognized climate change as first of all existent, and then as one of the problems that piles upon the difficulties that afflict his government, therefore he vowed to take part in the fight against it in a more concrete way starting with setting for his country the goal of carbon neutrality, which implicates reaching peak carbon dioxide emissions before the 2030 term, having renewable energy as 25% of total energy consumption, reducing carbon intensity per unit of GDP by more than 65 %, alongside installing solar power generators and boosting forest coverage by 6 billion cubic meters by the same time frame that has been established by the UN to have more effective and long-lasting results, these are obviously ambitious targets, notwithstanding the fact that they’re not in line with the Paris agreement terms which hope for these goals to be achieved by 2025.
As far as what concerns international cooperation, China only recently grasped the gravity of the issue, for decades it stood up to the possibility of an alignment with the UN framework claiming that China shouldn’t have had to sacrifice its development for environmental protection, which the already developed countries couldn’t care less for, creating a loophole between non developed and developed countries on who’s to blame for the current endangered situation without finding concrete solutions and not taking into consideration the consequences climate change has on people no matter their location.
In spite of this, the two most polluting countries in the world have tried to go for a smart cooperation on the matter, in fact, under Barak Obama’s administration China and the United States of America expanded collaboration momentarily but all of this stopped when Donal Trump came to office and assumed a more confrontational approach even publicly questioning the very existence of climate change in the first place and, given the influence that an American president has on both his citizens and on the rest of the world, he did unrepairable damage by diminishing the importance of the issue, in addition, the American attitude shifted again with the election of president Joe Biden who proclaimed his commitment to restoring American leadership on climate change and in doing so, he tried to repair its country’s ties with China as well.
Regardless of the political side of it, groups of individuals all over the world organized hundreds of protests, including in the city of Kunming, Shanghai, and Wuhan, moreover NGO’s have pushed the Chinese government to confront this problem, as a consequence the PCC fears that this kind of activism could catalyze democratic social change and therefore it did everything in its power to constrain these types of demonstrations by recurring to dictatorial means including censorship and arresting activists.
An important milestone has been reached on October 13th, when more than a hundred countries all together were reunited in order to set priorities for what concerns the protection of natural habitats as well as to understand what decision-makers can still do, individually, to preserve what little of resources we have left on this planet to exploit, in doing so they have adopted a key declaration at a UN biodiversity conference hosted in China’s Kunming as per the country’s environment minister suggestion, the statement was discussed during a meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, also known as COP15, what it contained can be summarized by the call of president Xi Jinping on countries around the world to join hands to “start a new journey of high-quality development of humanity”, the document though, states minister Huang Runqiu, is of political will and not a binding international agreement.
The Kunming Declaration calls for an “urgent and integrated action” to reflect biodiversity considerations in all sectors of the global and crucial economic issues, this effort will be backed up by the United Nations’s will to protect global territories following the so-called ’30 by ’30 target, although a one-size-fits-all would be an inappropriate method, if China could meet its vast potential for emission reduction, it will play an enormous role in tackling global climate change.
The current draft text is made by 21 targets to be met over the next decade with the aim of prioritizing actions with the largest health, social and economic gains as well as promoting sustainable and healthy cities, transport, and food systems eventually moving to an economy based more on wellbeing rather than mere profit, as the world’s largest developing country, China will comprehensively promote a modernization in which humans and nature coexist in harmony while adopting more practical and effective policies and measures to strengthen ecological and environmental protection, the country will shoulder international responsibilities compatible with its level of development and its capabilities, and make due contributions to global biodiversity governance.
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Countries call for urgent actions on Biodiversity, available at:
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