China Perspective

Wen: Copenhagen summit key moment to tackle climate change

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-11-30 22:08

NANJING: Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday says the upcoming Copenhagen Conference represents another important moment in international action on climate change.

"The willingness and commitments to be expressed by countries at Copenhagen will promote the historic advancement of green economy and sustainable development," Wen said when delivering a speech at the closing ceremony of the fifth China-EU Business Summit.

Wen said the Chinese government will take an active and constructive part in the Conference and looks forward to a positive outcome at Copenhagen.

According to Wen, people need to establish a recycling and sustainable national economic system that generates high output with low input, and that is featured by low consumption and low emissions, so as to leave to future generations a planet where they can survive and thrive.

People need to transform the existing patterns of development and consumption and move the world to a development path characterized by high productivity, prosperous lives and sound ecology, Wen added.

A review of world industrialization over the last 200 years or more showed that the modernization of developed countries, with a population of no more than 1 billion, was achieved at a great cost of the resources and ecology of the whole world, he said.

A couple of days ago, the Chinese government announced that by 2020, China's carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP will be reduced by 40 percent to 45 percent from the 2005 level, the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption will be raised to around 15 percent, forest coverage will be raised by 40 million hectares, and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters.

"These are voluntary actions China will take in light of its national conditions," Wen said, adding they represented China's great contribution to a strong global response to the climate challenge and fully demonstrated China's sense of responsibility to the Chinese nation and the entire human race.

Wen said extraordinary efforts will be required to meet these targets. And "we are determined to adopt even stronger actions and more effective policies to fulfill this commitment."

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, also attended the closing ceremony.

The annual business summit, with the theme of "The Green Agenda: Sustaining Growth beyond the Recovery," focused on how to achieve a sustainable recovery from the global financial crisis, climate change as well as the development of China-EU trade relations.

Running in parallel with the annual China-EU summit, the business summit is recognized as the highest-level platform for exchanges between Chinese and EU business leaders.