At present, the global climate crisis is becoming increasingly serious, and extreme weather events are frequent, which has a significant impact on the global natural ecosystem and poses serious challenges to the survival and development of human society.
On November 24, the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) was concluded in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan. Parties reached consensus on the new collective quantified goal, the operationalization of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and other issues.
Chinese delegation shared the Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization and China’s achievements in climate actions, participated in consultations on various topics in a comprehensive and in-depth manner, contributed constructive plans for negotiations on key issues, and promoted all sides to expand common ground while resolving differences, making important contributions to reaching the outcomes of the meeting. In the process of responding to global climate change, China has evolved from a participant, contributor, to a frontrunner, and China’s ideas have been widely recognized by the international community.
China has formulated a clear top-level design for climate governance. In September 2020, President Xi Jinping solemnly announced the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, which is to achieve peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. China is determined to achieve the highest global reduction in carbon emissions intensity in the shortest time in history. Since the Industrial Revolution, the West has generally taken one to two hundred years to reach carbon peak, while China only took 50 years. On the road to carbon neutrality, the EU plans to take 60 years, the US plans for 43 years, and China plans to take that goal in only 30 years.
President Xi Jinping has repeatedly pointed out that achieving “the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals” is not something that others ask us to do, but something we ourselves must do. The third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China（CPC） attached great importance to the construction of ecological civilization, and made a series of major arrangements in terms of improving the basic system of ecological civilization, improving the ecological environment governance system, and improving the green and low-carbon development mechanism.
The third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of CPC emphasized the focus on building a beautiful China, accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development, improving the ecological environment governance system, promoting an ecological priority, conservation and intensive, green and low-carbon development, and promoting harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. Strong top-level design, widespread societal consensus, and joint participation of all industries have made the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature a basic feature of Chinese modernization.
China’s rapid and effective climate governance actions have achieved remarkable results. China is actively building a carbon neutrality “1+N” policy system and promoting the “Ten Actions for Carbon Peaking”. China has the largest installed capacity of renewable energy power generation, accounting for about 40% of the world’s total, which is the sum of US, EU, and India. As of the end of September this year, China’s wind power and solar power generation installed capacity totaled 1.25 billion kilowatts, completing the goal of reaching more than 1.2 billion kilowatts by 2030 as promised at the Climate Ambition Summit more than six years ahead of schedule. China’s energy structure has been continuously optimized and its energy consumption intensity has dropped significantly. Over the past decade, China has supported a 6% economic growth with a 3% energy consumption growth rate. From 2012 to 2023, China’s coal consumption ratio dropped from 68.5% to 55.3%, while the proportion of non-fossil energy increased from 9.7% to 17.9%.China has also actively carried out land greening actions, contributing 1/4 of the world’s greening area in the past 20 years. In 2023, the forest reserve reached 19.496 billion cubic meters, and the forest coverage rate reached 24.02%, achieving the goal of zero land degradation in 2030 ahead of schedule. The Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, China, covers an area of 337,600 square kilometers and is the world’s second largest mobile desert. On November 28, the last blank area on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert was successfully “locked and closed”, marking the complete closure of the 3,046-kilometer green sand-blocking protection belt surrounding the desert. It is a model for land afforestation actions in China and even the world.
China’s active promotion of South-South cooperation in climate governance has won wide praise. Developing countries are the biggest victims of climate change due to their weak ability to cope with climate change and insufficient support. As a responsible developing country, China continues to provide practical assistance to other developing countries in promoting energy transformation, improving climate resilience, and advancing green and low-carbon development through South-South cooperation. Since 2016, China has invested more than 177 billion yuan, signed 53 South-South cooperation documents on climate change with 42 developing countries including Pakistan, Ethiopia and Chile, planned nearly 100 projects to mitigate and adapt to global climate change, implemented more than 300 capacity building projects, and provided more than 10,000 training opportunities for more than 120 developing countries.
China and Africa have jointly built photovoltaic power stations with a cumulative installed capacity of more than 1.5 gigawatts, and the Adama wind power project in Ethiopia can provide more than 630 million kilowatt-hours of green power generation every year. China has actively responded to the United Nations Early Warnings For All Initiative and released the world’s first national early warning action plan at COP29, providing relevant assistance to Bolivia, Uruguay, Botswana and other countries to support developing countries in improving their early warning capabilities. China is willing to work with other developing countries to jointly address global climate change and safeguard the common interests of developing countries.
In recent years, Pakistan has been deeply affected by climate change. Floods and droughts have caused great losses to the lives and social development of the Pakistani people, and smog has seriously affected the production and life of Lahore residents. Pakistan attaches great importance to the impact of climate change, formulates various climate policies at the national and local levels, and actively carries out international cooperation. As an important strategic cooperative partner of Pakistan, China has always cared about and strongly supported Pakistan’s various climate governance actions.
In accordance with the MoU titled Provision of Goods Under South-South Cooperation for Addressing Climate Change signed by the two countries, China has provided Pakistan with thousands of Residential Solar Power System, and will provide Pakistan with several climate change monitoring and disaster early warning systems in succession, providing support for Pakistan to enhance its ability to respond to climate change and actively promoting the green and low-carbon development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor（CPEC）.
The joint statements of Prime Minister Shehbaz’s visit to China and Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Pakistan this year both stated that the two sides will continue to cooperate in addressing climate change and disaster prevention and mitigation under the framework of the CPEC, and strengthen communication and cooperation in the multilateral process of addressing climate change, and jointly safeguard multilateralism and the solidarity of developing countries.
In the next step, China is willing to do its utmost to continue to provide support and assistance to developing countries including Pakistan in addressing climate change, reduce the adverse effects of climate change and extreme weather, and accelerate the building of a closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era, to benefit the two countries and the two peoples.
