Interview: China plays critical role in global climate actions: UN climate chief

China has always had a critical role in global efforts to address climate change, and made contributions to renewable energy development, said United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Figueres said she expected the coming meeting of Chinese and European leaders to inject confidence to complete an ambitious climate agreement in Paris at the end of this year.

Figueres, Executive Secretary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said China's policies to control pollution, encourage renewable energy, build a carbon market and to ratchet down the energy intensity of the economy as a formal part of its development plan delivered "remarkable results" in China and globally.

"Clean energy investment (in China) in 2014 at over 80 billion U.S. dollars was almost twice that of the European Union," she said, "China is now the world's largest wind power market. China's solar power industry has contributed to a 70 percent drop in global solar panel prices in recent years."

Referring to Chinese leader's recent reiteration that China would peak carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and work hard to reach the peak at an even earlier date by increasing energy saving measures and cutting level of CO2 per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), Figueres said, "This open statement of intent, backed by policies and action, is the spirit required to build trust and confidence between countries ahead of Paris."

She added that high-level political decisions were required to complete a new global climate agreement in Paris. Cooperation between countries were "extremely important to ramp up confidence" to these decisions.

She expected Chinese and European leaders to pledge to seek an ambitious agreement to tackle climate change when they meet next week and to collaborate with each other to enhance efforts.

"I look forward to the final result of that meeting with great anticipation," she said.

The UN official said that the Paris climate conference needed to put in place the paths, ways and means to encourage and enable all countries and actors to accelerate the transformation of global development.

"A full set of ambitious developed countries plans are most important. It is also essential that developing countries get a clear sense on how they will be supported to build their own clean energy futures and adapt to climate change," she said.

Figueres said the rapid and dramatic growth of emerging economies were very necessary to pull as many people as possible out of poverty as rapidly as possible. Many developing countries were voluntarily making policies, passing laws and investing in climate actions to integrate their development priorities into their climate change efforts.

To ensure these initiatives grow, "an effective Paris agreement and a strong international system that channels adequate finance and technology to developing countries" were needed.

She pointed out that developed countries must ensure that their financial support to developing countries will reach at least 100 billion U.S. dollars by 2020 as they promised.

"The G7 at its June meeting reiterated this pledge, but sources and pathways to get there need to be further clarified," she said.

Figueres expressed her confidence that Paris climate conference would result in "a new, universal agreement that puts the world on the right path" for three reasons:

First, the science of climate change has proven this unprecedented threat to our survival. Second, governments see that climate action is in their long-term economic interests. Third, business, investors and citizens across the world recognize the same truth and have sparked a huge groundswell of new climate actions.

She said that joint efforts from actors including governments, business, investors and citizens were needed to keep the global temperatures from rising above two degrees Celsius from pre-industrialized levels.

"We all now need to speed up," she said. Endit