Articles

Section submenu:

Current Articles

Development as China's environmental solution

by Jiahua Pan, Research Centre for Urban and Environmental Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Science, a member of the Global Climate Network.
Telegraph - 02 October 2009

China has faced a continuous shift of challenges over the past 50 years: from poverty in the 1950s, ecological degradation in the 1970s, environmental pollution in the 1990s, to global warming in the new century.

Before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, China was trapped in poverty. Agricultural development was therefore one of the first priorities.

But there was only a partial success because traditional technologies were unable to increase agricultural productivity substantially. And ecological degradation also became an increasing concern due to deforestation, overgrazing and drainage of wetland areas.

Industrial development was then seen as a solution for improving agricultural productivity - through infrastructural projects such as dams and irrigation facilities, and supply of agro-chemicals such as inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.

These measures undoubtedly helped to resolve the problems of food shortage and ecological degradation, and since the mid-1980s, famine has disappeared and forest cover has started to increase.

Large scale industrial development has helped generate more employment and improved living standards. But it has brought with it new problems: local environmental quality has deteriorated at an accelerating pace, rivers are being polluted, and soil contaminated. In addition, acid rain has been recorded over one third of the country. In China’s 10th five year plan (2001-2005), the target was to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions by 10 per cent, but in reality there was a 27 per cent increase.

So what is the solution? One possibility is to shut down all the sources of pollution. But this would create more problems such as unemployment at home and economic crisis around the world. Development clearly has to continue but it has to be sustainable, and investment in environmental infrastructure is an essential part of this.

In China’s 11th five year plan (2006-2010), a more ambitious environmental target is set to reduce key pollutants by 10 per cent while keeping the economy growing at a relatively fast rate of eight per cent or more. Recent statistics show that China is well on track to meet the environmental targets set in this plan.

However, global climate change has increasingly become an even more serious challenge because China’s current development is highly carbon intensive. However, there is a firm belief that more sustainable development can be highly consistent with climate change mitigation through improvement in energy efficiency, development of zero carbon energy sources, increase in forest sinks, and high quality but climate-friendly living.

And China has been making substantial progress on all these fronts. In the 11th five year plan, energy consumption per unit of GDP is to reduce by 20 per cent, a target that no any other economies have achieved in the world. The rate of increase in wind and solar energy has been faster in China than most of the other countries. China has also initiated an ambitious nuclear power programme. New building codes require a 65 per cent energy efficiency rate. New investment has been made in public transport systems, smart grid and utilisation of renewable energy resources.

Yet China’s emission of greenhouse gases is expected to grow in the near future. It seems that there is no immediate solution to this challenge.

China is determined to follow a low carbon development path - but only through development can China have the capacity to reduce emissions without negative impacts on living standars. Development here is multi-dimensional, involving economic, social, technological, institutional and human activities.

As a global problem, international cooperation is vital for ensuring China’s faster transition to a low carbon path. The development of low carbon-high living standards in the developed nations indicates the direrction to follow.

Hand-shaking instead of finger-pointing must be the basis for global efforts to forge a historical agreement on climate at the end of this year in Copenhagen. China is ready to work together with the international community to find a solution.