|
CCICED Policy Recommendation to the Chinese Government was adopted by the Annual General Meeting of CCICED held in Beijing from Nov. 28-30, 2007. The following is the full version.
OVERVIEW
The First Session of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) Phase IV was held in Beijing from Nov. 28 to 30, 2007. The theme of the meeting is “Innovation for an Environmentally-Friendly Society.”
CCICED members highly appreciate the full set of innovative strategic ideas and policies on environment and development put forward in the recent 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Encouraged by this, by the “Three Transformations” set out in 2006, and by efforts during the first two years of the 11th Five Year Plan, CCICED views that China is now entering a period of strategic transformation for environment and development.
This transformation towards a “resource conserving and environmentally friendly society” will be a long-term undertaking, but with a clear need to meet important milestones such as the environmental targets in the 11th Five Year Plan. The Council believes that it will be extremely difficult to achieve these targets with the current framework for environmental management, levels of investment, and pollution-intensive mode of economic growth. The higher than expected rate of economic growth, fuelled by a range of incentives at the local level, intensifies these pressures. Reconciling China’s environment and development policies is likely to be even more difficult during the 12th and 13th Five Year Plans since the problems will become even more complex, including a growing “ecological deficit.”
Also, while China is focusing its main efforts on primary environmental problems caused by industrial and municipal pollution, a range of secondary, often non-point source pollution problems, mostly from the use of various chemicals, are threatening its environmental security and public health. The Chinese government has begun to pay great attention to the problem. The members of CCICED also have expressed deep concerns about how to address these problems. They involve a wide range of pollutants, including those produced by the burgeoning chemical industry sector.
It is against the backdrop of globalization that China’s industrialization and urbanization revolution is taking place, including the building of a knowledge-based society, and a socialist market economy. China’s environment and development process has become integrated with that of the world. While China is faced with new environmental challenges brought about by globalization, it is also creating impacts on global and regional environments. China’s ecological footprint, a measure of human demand on the planet’s biologically productive land and water, is still low by comparison to many other nations, if measured on a per capita basis. Yet it already exceeds China’s own biocapacity and it is growing. It should become a matter of concern in policy decisions such as those affecting international trade, climate change and other international cooperation.
The future of China’s environmental quality hinges on tackling the issues mentioned above, and others, through changes that involve fundamental reforms and mechanisms for involvement of the whole society in their outcome. This is the key message arising from successful transformative approaches to environment and development in other countries such as Germany and South Korea. Incremental change is not enough.
China’s commitment to becoming “an innovative society” is an essential step in the right direction. Innovation is the opportunity side for environment and sustainable development. The key to its success lies in taking a comprehensive innovation approach to institutional change, policies and technologies.
Supported by various Task Forces and other research efforts, the 2007 CCICED AGM has focused on policy innovations, particularly on the following two aspects: (1) innovation of strategic thinking, including the transformation of environment and development strategies, as well as the challenges brought by globalization; and (2) innovation of specific policies and mechanisms, particularly on emissions reduction for the 11th Five Year Plan and beyond, and for chemicals management.
This examination of “Innovation for an Environmentally-Friendly Society” is intended to set the stage for future work of CCICED, including Task Forces on Innovation for Sustainable Development, Environment and Health, and on Energy and Environment. It marks a shift in CCICED’s attention towards collaborative work to identify early warning of key problems, and towards creative solutions that will rely much more on technology and policy innovation worked out in China. The business sector, long recognized as both the origin and centre of innovation, will play a key role in developing and implementing solutions for an environmentally friendly society. Business engagement is key since business makes the operational decisions that most affect environmental outcomes. However, enterprises cannot do so if unclear about their obligations, which need to be clearly defined and legally enforceable.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The following major recommendations to the Government of China are based on the deliberations and agreement at the CCICED AGM. In addition, more detailed recommendations from the individual CCICED task forces and special study reports will be forwarded for consideration.
1. Strengthen and add new policies and mechanisms to achieve emission reduction targets.
Achieving the 11th Five-Year Plan emissions reduction targets is a major challenge for the Chinese government. Despite the significant efforts to date, the challenge is made more difficult by the pace and composition of economic growth. The emission reduction objective was calculated on the basis of the emission volume at the end of the 10th Five-Year Plan period. But the Chinese economy is growing much faster than the original estimate of 7.5%. This fast growth rate, and the even faster growth of high energy-consuming, high pollution-emitting industries, will result in a need for a much higher level of emissions reduction than predicted. Structural changes in the economy are essential, as well as policies that provide incentives for process change rather than end of pipe solutions, but this may not occur quickly enough for 2010 targets to be reached. Very demanding targets for pollution reduction will be needed for the foreseeable future, at least to 2020.
The program for achieving the target of reducing SO2 emissions by 10% compared to the 2005 baseline is heavily dependent on installing FDG (Flue Gas Desulphurisation) equipment at coal-burning electricity stations. This strategy is impeded by the poor performance of FDG equipment and operation, and higher than expected levels of sulphur in coal. Cost effective approaches such as coal washing have not been given sufficient attention. These concerns need to be addressed urgently. Achieving the target of reducing energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving the SOx target. Further efforts will be needed to reduce SOx emissions from the non-power sector.
COD (chemical oxygen demand in water) is an even more difficult problem. It is doubtful that the very ambitious program for constructing urban sewage treatment pipes can be completed as planned. More attention should be paid to sludge treatment and to discharges from the industrial sector and non-point sources. The pricing and financing policies applied in this sector need to be re-examined.
There are serious problems in terms of quality control and performance. Monitoring is inadequate, and is impeded by three sets of data that EPBs (Environmental Protection Bureaus) work with that are not compatible. Local EPB often lack the authority and means to fulfill their responsibilities, and some local governments undermine their efforts. In short, management and institutional weaknesses are holding back progress. Inadequate financial investment is also a major constraint in reducing pollutant emissions. Using international definitions such as those of OECD and Eurostat, environmental expenditures amount to about 0.6% of GDP, about half of the official estimates, and low for countries at this stage of development.
End-of-pipe pollution control approach is necessary but not sufficient to deal with the growing volume of pollution in China. What is needed is an effective total emissions control (TEC) approach that controls both the volume and concentration of pollution. More emphasis should be put on cost-effective approaches such as washing coal, structural adjustment in the energy and industrial sectors, and on removing incentives such as favourable financial conditions that foster excessive investment in polluting industries such as coke and steel. Greater use of market instruments is needed to provide continuous incentives to find cost-effective approaches to pollution prevention and control, including through innovation. This can include cap& trade market-based systems. Energy conservation and new processes that eliminate pollution production can help. Other economic instruments and strict enforcement of regulations are needed so that it is no longer cheaper to pollute than to clean-up.
It is vital that environmental management systems within government be made much more functional, with clearly understood responsibilities and accountability at each level. The performance assessment of local political leaders should place greater emphasis on their environmental performance. Failure to do so results in economic considerations over-riding environmental policy objectives.
Therefore, we recommend:
1) Strengthening environmental management capacity at the national level through a larger, full cabinet-level Ministry of Environment.
2) Adopting a new “Five Shifts” approach and examining how it could be implemented not only in the 11th, but also the 12th and 13th 5 Year Plans: (1) Move to a focus on reducing total emissions and specific improvements in environmental quality; (2) Move from an over-reliance on reducing pollution from selected industries to reducing pollution from all industries; (3) Move from total control of single pollutants to the coordinated control of many pollutants; (4) Move from increasing the number of pollution reduction projects to increasing their quality; and (5) Move from reliance on administrative mechanisms to greater use of market-based instruments.
3) Under the leadership of the State Council, establishing a technological analysis platform for economy-energy-pollutant emission reduction and a joint policy making system between the relevant government departments to carry out dynamic tracking, early warning and response in regard to pollutant emission reduction; and with a strategic focus on understanding the benefits and costs of changing the economic development mode;
4) Constructing a total emission reduction system composed of reduction of resource-energy inputs, much greater efficiency improvement in production processes, and end-treatment of pollutant emissions;
5) Reforming the performance assessment system for local government officials to take account of their responsibility for achieving environmental targets and related policy objectives; creating a simple evaluation system for government officials based on a locally-appropriate energy and emission reduction index as well as the degree of compliance by enterprises with current environmental laws and regulations in their jurisdiction.
6) Improving the technical support capacity of both the central and local governments, including the development of a more integrated environmental information system, a scientific indicator system of pollutant emission reduction, an accurate emission reduction surveillance system, and a rigid emission reduction examination and evaluation system;
7) Improving the operability of COD reduction programs focusing on the key polluting industries and non-point source pollution especially from agricultural sources; on funding and faster construction of urban sewage pipes networks and sewage treatment infrastructure. Optimize SO2 reduction programs through integrated programs that broaden the focus from scrubbers and other stack controls including quality of coal, and the proportion being washed, more effective supervision of the quality of FDG equipment, and developing a program to reduce pollution from coal-fired boilers in the non-power sector.
8) Beginning now to study trends in pollutant emissions, and how they could be reduced most cost-effectively in the 12th Five-Year Plan period, paying attention to all the points mentioned above, but emphasizing greater use of public-private sector approaches to necessary investments; establishing long-term emission reduction mechanisms using market-based instruments including environmental taxes; resource pricing; emissions trading; the establishment of appropriate environmental finance mechanisms; and continuing efforts to build a high-performing administration and management system, particularly at the local level, with necessary upgrading of laws and regulations.
2. Integrate chemical management strategy into China’s overall national environmental and health management systems.
Currently, China is producing and marketing 47,000 or so kinds of chemical products, with about 100 new chemicals in line for registration annually. In the course of production, storage, selling, transportation, utilization and waste disposal, chemicals can create vital impacts on human health and environmental security owing to misuses, abuses, emergencies, and maltreatment of wastes. Many hazardous chemicals that are widely controlled internationally, are still produced and used without restriction in China. In addition, accidents involving hazardous chemicals happen frequently. The international community is vigorously promoting SAICM – Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management, with a proposed target of 2020 for production and use of chemicals in ways that minimize environmental and human health harm.
The rapid development of China’s chemical industry sector makes formulation of a robust chemical management system an urgent matter. China’s existing chemical administration is mainly limited to the professional safety administration of the flammable, explosive, and acute toxicity chemicals. The methods of chemical environmental administration are limited to end-treatment of toxic chemical pollutants and the registration of toxic chemicals upon importation and exportation. The currently used classification system for hazardous chemicals in China does not fully reflect various potential environmental and health hazards and risks of chemicals. China is yet to exert systematic and institutional environmental administration on the chemicals that have potential and long-term harms on human health and environment.
Therefore, we recommend:
1) Establishing China’s Environmentally Sound and Strategic Management of Chemicals System, with environment protection departments as the major responsible institution but coordinated with other relevant departments; and strengthening capacity building to carry out effective testing, evaluation, monitoring and management of chemicals from an environmental perspective.
2) Formulating China’s chemical environmental administration strategy, with “prevention as the key measure, combining prevention and rectification of problems, strengthening surveillance and regulation” as the guidelines. A long term action plan for risk assessment should be developed. Chemicals with high risks to health and environment should be given earliest attention for possible replacement, and their manufacture and management should follow clean production and green chemistry concepts. The strategy should be WTO compliant.
3) Formulating a special law or administrative regulations on chemical environment administration. This should establish a basic institutional system on chemical environmental administration, including classification and labeling, notification of new chemical substances (currently established only by a ministerial rule), risk assessment and management of new and existing substances, national criteria for prioritization of chemicals of very high concern, appropriate environmental monitoring systems, a right-to-know system for release of toxic chemicals, and environmental accident prevention and emergency response systems coordinated with existing mechanisms.
4) Establishing a system of release recording on toxic pollutants and a publication system for toxic chemical pollutants so that the Chinese public is informed and can participate in the government decision-making on chemicals management.
5) Promoting and supporting voluntary measures on the part of chemical enterprises, including Responsible Care and product stewardship initiatives that have been successful in other countries or internationally, and clarify the legal status of voluntary agreements between government and industry and actions taken under China’s “Cleaner Production Promotion Law”.
3. Seize the opportunity provided by China’s strategic transformation of its environment and development mode.
CCICED notes the substantial progress since 2003 towards creating a coherent approach to environment and development policies. It is encouraging for the future, despite the magnitude of challenges today. China is setting in place necessary conditions to optimize the potential of future innovations for sustainable development. The current transformation of environment and development strategy in China is a necessary step for China’s social advancement. According to international experience, China should strive for strategic transformation of its environment and development path for the coming 15-20 years, leading to significant improvement of its ecological environment as well as its economic development.
The 17th National Congress of the CPC, especially, marked a turning point for China’s new strategic system to guide sustainable social-economic development—using Scientific Development Theory as an overarching framework for building a harmonious socialist society.
Signals for a strategic transformation of Chinese government policy relevant to environment include: a new industrialization pathway with five criteria, as well as a peaceful development path internationally; and elevating environment protection to the level of an “ecological civilization”, where the objective is building a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society. The guiding idea has shifted from “rapid and sound development” to “sound and rapid development.” China is demonstrating its immediate commitment through the difficult pollutant emission reduction objectives in the 11th Five-Year Plan.
Other countries such as Germany and Japan in their period of transformative change for environmental improvement, have found four key factors. One is public participation and involvement of the whole society in decisions on environment and development. Second is that in most cases it is problems of environment and health that have galvanized action, whether Minamata Disease caused by mercury pollution in Japan, or by the effects of smog in Los Angeles. Third is the need for a progression of changes, some immediate and others longer-term, towards fundamental technological and institutional changes over periods generally of 5 to 10 years. Fourth is the need to take into account international aspects of the transformation as well, including impacts of the transformation on other nations. The results include substantial new economic opportunities and positive influences on environmental standard-setting and practices influencing all sectors in society.
CCICED believes that China is now in the most significant period for strategic transformation when it will be possible to accelerate the turn-around in the relationship between environment and development. To take full advantage of this key period, the Chinese Government must solve three outstanding problems. First, the strategic transformation is taking a top-down approach and lacks the full involvement and support from all stakeholders and levels of government. Second, detailed and effective policies, capacities and action plans are still missing to carry out the strategies and principles set up by the central government. And third, it is essential to continue searching for better value from existing levels of investment, and at the same time, increasing the flow and level of funds in support of environmental protection.
Therefore, we recommend:
1) Building public awareness and participation so that the whole society plays a role in the strategic transformation, including household and workplace consumption and environmental health, monitoring of local development, and direct participation in environmental improvements. Encouraging the participation of environmental NGOs as a way to draw upon perspectives from across the range of societal views. Also, providing special training and education to the policy makers, administrators and managers, especially of local governments at various levels, and enterprises. This capacity building is necessary to sharpen their consciousness of the importance and urgency of the coordinated environmental-social-economic development, and to enhance abilities to deal with practical implementation.
2) Accelerating improvement of China’s existing environmental protection institutional system to take maximum advantage of environmental legal frameworks, management techniques and technology. This should include upgrading the institutional status of SEPA and local environmental protection departments; rewriting of key laws such as the 1989 Environmental Protection Law; appropriately stringent standards and the means to enforce their observance; allocating more human, capital, and technical and equipment resources to the environmental protection departments so they are well-equipped to be the mainstay for promoting the strategic environment-development transformation. Clearly the greatest need is to build a high-performing system that will drastically reduce the extent of illegal environmental behaviors, reform the penalty system to ensure that financially effective penalties are in place,; create enabling situations where enterprises, cities and towns, and projects of all types have the means to address environmentally sustainable development;; and improve the environmental judicial system to secure both public and private environmental welfare and exercise environmental justice
3) Making full use of market-based policies to promote the environment-development strategic transformation, including environment taxation, resource-energy taxation, green credits, environment insurance, ecological compensation, and emission trading, etc. This market-based approach, with carefully constructed incentives, is essential to fully realize the benefits of innovation, including development and commercialization of environmental and sustainable development technologies.
4) Reviewing current levels of environmental investment in the environmental sector to determine the amounts actually being spent in support of high priority activities, and where necessary re-direct or increase the funds required for these priorities. In addition, place greater attention on how to encourage private investment for the substantial expenditures required to carry out ecological/conservation innovations in the industrial sector and to establish innovative resource-conserving and environment-friendly production and consumption models, including those that support a Circular Economy.
4. Address in a more timely and effective way the challenges brought by economic and environmental globalization.
China is facing new environmental pressures through its participation in economic globalization. As the “world’s factory”, China is host for the relocation of many high energy-consuming and high pollution-emitting industries. The introduction of carbon constraints in developed countries will spread the displacement of these industries to China and increase the risk of technology lock-in for high energy, high-polluting sectors. While China enjoys a “trade surplus” in economic terms, it is also building a domestic “ecological deficit”, generated by the export-oriented economy that consumes a large quantity of energy and resources and produces a large volume of pollutants and greenhouse gases. In addition, China is also facing severe local impacts from illegal trade of hazardous waste.
China also needs to pay greater attention to addressing environmental effects its market supply chains may have on other nations. But at the same time, China should give full recognition to the positive contribution that a global competitive marketplace could have on China domestic environmental advancement. These are rather new effects that will grow in significance over coming years as Chinese multinational businesses become more active, and as China’s resource needs and economic activities continue to increase. China may find itself increasingly vulnerable to various forms of environmental protectionism and other retaliatory action, perhaps involving third parties.
CCICED is encouraged by the new “coordinate and cooperate to protect our only earth” international environmental cooperation principle that was put forward by the Party’s 17th Congress. China’s effort in protecting global environmental conditions, such as ODS (Ozone Depleting Substances) reduction, carbon sequestration through afforestation, and its 2007 Climate Change Program are notable. China’s own strategic environment and development transformation is linked to success of the international community’s in realizing progress on ambitious agreements to control global and regional environmental concerns, such as climate change.
China must be able to address global environmental concerns from its own perspectives and self-interests. But increasingly its influence on the world’s economy and ecology places China in a position of great responsibility to the community of nations. Indeed the world’s economic and environmental security is increasingly being perceived to be in China’s hands. Over the coming five years this perception is likely to be reinforced as China’s rapid economic growth continues. China needs to determine where it should place its major efforts to address global environment and development issues.
Therefore, we recommend:
1) Gradually changing the current growth mode of trade in order to adjust the relationship between trade, resources and environment. Make full use of China’s trade surplus to import products and technology with high embodied energy and resource content, and reduce export of some goods (especially commodities) with high embodied energy and resources. Find and expand substitutes for goods that require high energy consumption in their production, or sometimes, import them. Speed up transformation of the current foreign trade growth mode, moving from the traditional growth mode relying mainly on price competition, quantity expansion and seeking very high growth rates, to a mode relying on improvement of quality, increase of value-added, and optimization of structure. Expand the export of services, and strengthen their international competitiveness.
2) Optimizing regional structure for manufacturing goods for export, including strict environmental upgrading of all industrial processing in eastern areas, while making full use of the local abundant human resources in the middle and west of China, and introducing environment-friendly processing for trade to these areas. Levy an environmental pollution tax on products and industrial sectors with high energy consumption and high pollution, and assign costs for environmental damage to the responsible enterprises. Introduce appropriate advanced foreign technology and equipment, and promote energy saving and emission reduction activities to improve domestic environmental quality.
3) Strengthening environmental aspects of trade for recyclable and waste goods; and conduct regional planning within China for environmental management of trade for recyclable and waste materials. Carry out life cycle analysis for imported recyclables and wastes being re-processed as raw materials, and enforce strict environmental entry standards into China of such materials. Restrict those processing enterprises in China that import recyclables and wastes from exporting the resulting raw materials in order to ensure that such raw materials are used for meeting domestic needs, or for producing higher value export products—and not merely for getting foreign exchange, while leaving behind pollution byproducts. Work with other nations to ensure the honoring of international agreements and international monitoring in order to curb illegal trade in toxic wastes.
4) Developing appropriate regulations for and carrying out comprehensive environmental impact assessments on key market supply chains for raw products entering China, including agricultural products such as soybeans, edible oils, fish and cotton, wood products, biofuels, and minerals, and take steps to prevent negative influences on the environment in the countries of origin. Take additional steps to eliminate illegal timber trading and other such problems, including activities banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES).
5) Strengthening environmental management of Chinese companies that invest or operate overseas, and improve the Corporate Social Responsibility awareness of these enterprises. Encourage Chinese enterprises to obtain international advanced environmental managerial experiences and environment-friendly technologies through their investment overseas or establishment of joint ventures in other countries. Such investment in environmentally-friendly efforts will strengthen the long term competitiveness of Chinese companies.
6) Constructive participation of China in bilateral or multilateral environmental cooperation. Promote the implementation of international environmental conventions within China by setting up complete domestic implementation mechanisms, management systems and framework of policies and regulations. And, participate more actively in the construction of the global environmental regime, while adhering to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities; maintaining the right for development of all developing countries including China; building an international image of China as an environmentally-responsible nation through its actions. Shoulder international obligations within China’s capabilities, explore technological cooperation opportunities through South-North cooperation, and strengthen environmental cooperation activities between China and other developing countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
7) Combining the endeavors of energy conservation and pollutant emission reduction in China with that of CO2 emission reduction so as to develop an energy and industrial system with a relatively low CO2 emission. In other words, begin moving towards a pathway in China consistent with global efforts to achieve a low-carbon economy in the future.
5. Construct an “ecological civilization” through innovation.
It is time for China to build greater domestic capabilities for “Made in China” advanced solutions to environmental and sustainable development technologies, along with the associated institutional strengthening and systems to ensure that good ideas turn into commercially viable, widely used products. China’s Medium- term S&T Plan calls for a major emphasis on environment in future R&D. Yet there are many challenges and barriers that have to be addressed in the National Innovation System (NIS) before it can achieve full potential. Furthermore, sustainable development in China and many other countries has tended to be implemented without much connection to the NIS.
There are significant problems with reliance on importing the new environmental technologies that would allow China to leapfrog in reduction on emissions in the same way as it has in other sectors such as telecommunications. The problems include limited willingness to share advanced technologies (auto emissions), technologies not suited to Chinese conditions, and the high costs of accessing some advanced technologies and intellectual property rights (IPR) such as for advanced electrical power generation systems. As well, some transformative technologies such as hydrogen-powered fuel cells require much additional development effort and time.
On the other hand, China has clear advantages that are not being sufficiently tapped for environmental innovation. Lower labour costs coupled with a potentially large domestic market could make Chinese environment and sustainable development products and services very attractive to the global marketplace. An example is solar photovoltaic panels.
The right enabling conditions for eco-innovation are not yet fully in place within China. These conditions include unleashing creativity within China’s vast research system, including academies, universities and the private sector, but with the recognition that short-term failure of some efforts should be tolerated. The financial investment systems for environmental innovation are still weakly developed and it is important that more venture capital be attracted at various developmental points so that environmental technology markets are strengthened. Regulatory frameworks favoring innovation are needed, especially market-based approaches that provide the necessary incentives for industry to move towards environmentally-friendly processing without pollutants and “green chemistry.”
Instruments such as green public procurement and green investments have the potential to stimulate market penetration of existing environmentally-friendly products and services, and to increase their competitiveness. In this way government gives a very positive signal by its own actions. The concept of green investments offers great potential for public-private partnership and a mechanism to accelerate the pace of new environmental technology adoption.
The decision to “make or buy” advanced environmental technologies is never simple, and must be decided on the basis of specific situations. International joint scientific and development initiatives are already in place, especially for energy efficiency and some pollution reduction efforts. These will need to be expanded, and more will be needed, especially in light of the urgency for solutions to sustainable use of coal, greenhouse gas reduction and other important environmental problems.
Therefore we recommend:
1) Mobilizing both national and local-level interest and willingness to implement environmental and sustainable development innovation strategies. The approach needed goes beyond environmental compliance, which is perceived to be cost-driven and inconsistent with economic growth. This need is even more urgent than investment in R&D for new technologies, since many technologies are already available but not effectively used by enterprises, or promoted as solutions by local government. A combination of enforcement, incentives, improved planning, awareness-raising, and capacity development is required to address this type of system failure. Development of regional “innovation clusters” appropriate for the environmental and economic conditions is needed to build local-level understanding and access to suitable innovation products and approaches, for example to address development in fragile ecosystems such as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the upper watersheds of major river basins, and in major coal-producing regions.
2) Strengthening and popularizing the field of environmental technology R&D and removing obstacles to commercialization. Numerous technological breakthroughs already exist in China and others are likely in the future. However they must move more quickly from trial stages to commercialization, and be seen as attractive opportunities for investment at all stages. Present incentives do not promote long-term innovation for environmental technologies. This problem can be addressed through a combination of government commitment and involvement in the earlier stages of scientific research and development, and the private sector and investors in the later stages. The problem should be tackled as a central issue via the NIS.
3) Taking action to overcome market failure that hinders environmental technology introduction. Private enterprises should become the main players for the development and implementation of technologies for an environmentally-friendly society. However this is not happening to the extent that it should. The limited markets for such technologies, reliance on command and control regulation, inadequate resource and other pricing policies, and the limited sanctions for non-compliance all need to be addressed as components of market failure. Better green procurement policies operating at both national and local levels of government are needed. Preferential loans for initiatives making use of environmental technologies and/or denial of loans for initiatives that shun their use needs to be implemented on a much broader basis than existing trial efforts.
4) With the growing focus on new products from biotechnology, nanotechnology and energy technologies, their potential for environmental improvement and sustainable development should be assessed, including their potential negative impacts. These types of assessment are different from project-oriented evaluations, and proper regulations and guidelines are needed. For some advanced technologies, the best method would be to make full use of international experience of foreign investment and international enterprises, but with strict regulations and guidelines.
5) Raising the public quality of environmental science and technology. China’s economic and environmental future depends on making the world’s most populous nation scientifically-literate and able to create the social environment for technology innovation of many types. The commitment to an “ecological civilization” depends on improvements to the educational system, dissemination of basic technology knowledge to China’s people, and on demonstration of real environmental value arising from eco-innovation.
6. Develop a road-map of pathways towards a Low-Carbon Economy for China.
China and all countries will need to understand the impacts, mitigation and adaptation steps related to climate change. These are pressing concerns that will have major effects on structure of the future economy, and on both local and national opportunities for future development. In turn, this will lead to new pressures, but also opportunities concerning international trade, investment and global environmental improvement.
Addressing China’s future economy in terms different than the past requires an understanding of how changing prices and taxes on energy, dynamics of carbon sources and sinks, international and domestic carbon trading, and a host of other factors will influence the relationship of energy, environment and climate change. Broadly, these can be addressed in the context of a low carbon economy. China needs to start now to build a comprehensive understanding of these new relationships, so that the implications of key policy choices are understood. As a start, there is a need for careful development of a road-map identifying major topics, approaches and potential impacts over the coming years and decades, if China reduces its reliance on growth in fossil fuel use as its economic development continues to rise.
|
