A UN Symposium Held in Beijing to Discuss Green Economy & Sustainable Development

A high-level symposium on the UN Conference on Sustainable Development has kicked off in Beijing. The two-day session, which serves as the forerunner to the conference that will be held in Rio de Janeiro next June, offers an opportunity for in-depth discussions among experts and UN representatives on two topics—the green economy and a sustainable development institutional framework.

CRI reporter Wei Tong has the details.

The green economy theme focuses on sustainable development with regard to poverty eradication, job creation, energy access, water scarcity, food security and increasing urbanization. The institutional framework for sustainable development will address global governance issues.

Sha Zukang, Secretary General of the Conference, has voiced concerns over developing nations' increasing worries about potential trade barriers, technological gaps, new additional investment costs and new aid conditionality in developing the green economy.

"We should also be looking forward to reducing technological gaps between developed and developing countries. Developing countries need investments in their green sectors. They need support in fulfilling standards that are green enough to compete in international markets. And we need to acquire and implement technologies to build greener infrastructures and industries."

Sha says because countries have to mobilize green economy financing by themselves, a public and private financing initiative, such as a global green economy fund could be considered at next year's Rio conference.

China, the world's largest developing country, is facing many challenges such as the excessive exploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation.

Zhang Ping, China's top economic planner, says the country will become an energy-saving and environmentally friendly one in the near future.

"In the next five years, China will focus on saving energy and reducing emissions and further build its capacity for sustainable development. By 2020, we will try to reduce carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent over the 2005 level and raise the forest area by 40 million hectares and forest stock by 1.3 billion cubic meters."

Zena Nzibo, Kenya's representative at the conference, says she hopes her country can partner with China to achieve joint development goals.

"In Kenya, we have integrated a lot of environmental policies to address chronic issues like drought, climate change. It's a question of balancing human development with environmental sustainability, and we don't think that is a tradeoff between either one. As we develop, we can anticipate some of the challenges but require commitments from developed countries, working with partners like China and the South to learn from lessons, capacity building and investments."

The Rio summit, referred to as Rio+20, is an important global event marking the 20th anniversary of the original Rio Earth Summit in 1992 when an agreement on the Climate Change Convention was reached, which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol.

For CRI, this is Wei Tong.