Spotlight: UNEP chief hails China's environmental protection efforts in past decade

Outgoing Executive Director of the UN Environmental Programme (UNDP), Achim Steiner, has lauded China's environmental protection efforts in the past 10 years.

Speaking to journalists on Friday before the end of a UN Environment Assembly that brought together environment ministers and experts in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, Steiner said that in the past 10 years, China had undergone probably the most radical shift in terms of acknowledging the challenge of environmental degradation and pollution "that I have witnessed in my career in any country."

He was responding to a question about "big shifts" he had witnessed during his tenure.

Steiner said China had moved from an "exclusive focus" on industrialization, GDP growth and urbanization to "being the country that has put into its five-year plan the concept of transiting towards ecological civilization."

He noted China's large public spending on tackling environmental challenges it is facing, and its global leading technology in renewable energy development.

Official figures show China spent 369.2 billion yuan (about 56.3 billion U.S. dollars) on energy conservation and environmental protection in the first 11 months in 2015, up 35.4 percent on a year ago.

A UNEP report launched this week says that besides hastening efforts to reach a target of 23 percent forest cover by 2020, China is also committed to scaling up investment in renewable energy and green transportation.

China is already the world's largest investor in renewables excluding large hydro, with its 102.9 billion U.S. dollars in investment in 2015 representing more than one third of the global total, according to a report issued by UNEP in late March.

Steiner also said China took global leadership by introducing the topic of "green finance" into the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting held in Shanghai in February, and had established a G20 study group on "green finance", describing the move as "remarkable".

"What makes the society move forward is when its people and its leadership both acknowledge there is a problem and start doing something," he said.

Answering the same question, Steiner also lauded several African countries for having enacted policies promoting low carbon economic growth in the past decade, and a number of European countries for their renewable energy development.

Steiner is to step down in June after a decade at the helm of the Nairobi-based organization. Former Norwegian environment minister, Erik Solheim, has been nominated as the new UNEP chief. Endit