China's climate commitments "specific, powerful, pragmatic": special representative

Chinese special representative on climate change Xie Zhenhua has said at the COP21 here that China's climate commitments were "specific, powerful, and pragmatic."

He said that China's Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) differed from other countries in that the Chinese document was very complete and included "mitigation and adaptation, strategy and policy, as well as specific measures, even several operational and specific projects."

A key difference was in its "adaptation" to climate change, which had not been mentioned by several countries in their respective INDCs.

According to Xie, China has presented detailed measures in its INDC such as how it will focus on areas such as agriculture, forestry, water resources, urban and ecologically fragile littorals in order to resist climate change and to improve gradually early warning, forecasting, disaster reduction and prevention system.

Xie revealed that ahead of the climate change conference, China had been supported by many countries in the practice and plans for adapting to climate change in several previous negotiations and consultation meetings amongst ministers.

Recently, some international media doubted that China would adjust the emissions reduction target in their INDCs because of China's adjustment in coal consumption in 2012 and its new two-child policy.

But Xie stressed it was not necessary for China to adjust its INDCs because the factors of increasing data and new population policy had been taking into account by China.

Xie said China was seriously determined to stimulate the economic development with higher quality and higher efficiency to deal with climate change.

"The biggest bottleneck problem in Chinese socioeconomic development is environment and resource issues, which reflect the necessity and the urgency to deal with climate change," he said.

He believed that technology and capital were two key words in narrowing the gap between the INDCs and long-term climate change goals. Meanwhile, China was willing to help other developing countries improve their capacity in getting financed by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other international institutions in order to deal with climate change. Endit