China works to advance UN 2030 SDGs

A Chinese official on Wednesday called on all countries to join China's Global Development Initiative (GDI) to accelerate the implementation of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

"I call on all countries in the world to join China in actively responding to President Xi Jinping's Global Development Initiative to attach great importance to development issues and accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu told reporters after the opening of the ministerial segment of the ongoing High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

In September 2021, President Xi put forward the GDI at the UN General Assembly, calling on the international community to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

In June this year, President Xi chaired a High-Level Dialogue on Global Development during the 14th BRICS Summit in Beijing. The meeting called for the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda and announced China's practical measures to implement the GDI.

In the face of current global crises and challenges, all countries "need to adhere to multilateralism, strengthen international cooperation, coordinate the current and long-term development, closely follow the 2030 Agenda, and achieve coordinated development in economic, social, energy, food, environment, health, climate change and other fields", Huang said in his opening remarks.

"China has always been a firm supporter and active practitioner of the concept of sustainable development," said Huang. "It has continued to advance various tasks of the 2030 Agenda and has made positive progress in various sustainable development goals such as poverty reduction, energy, climate change, ecosystem protection and green development progress.

"We keep the people-oriented principle and firmly promote poverty elimination," said Huang. China has achieved a historic success of eradicating absolute poverty, he said.

Huang said that under the current poverty line, all 98.99 million rural residents in China had been lifted out of poverty, which marks that China has achieved SDG1 "no poverty" of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule.

"We uphold harmony between man and nature and firmly promote green and the low-carbon development," said Huang.

China continuously improves the quality of the ecological environment; a land area of 25 percent of the ecological space is effectively protected. Of all the newly added green leaf areas between 2000 and 2017, about 25 percent was in China, the largest contribution, according to Huang, adding that endangered animals and their habitats are also effectively protected.

"We advocate green and low-carbon development, and we innovate the sustainable development mechanism," Huang said.

China has implemented laws and regulations related to energy conservation, improved the energy structure, developed low-carbon energy and renewable energy and promoted the growth of new energy and energy conservation and environmental protection industries, he said.

"We advocate extensive cooperation and promote the joint building of a community with a shared future for mankind," said Huang.

Huang mentioned that the first part of the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was successfully held in Kunming, China, in October last year. On the meeting, the Kunming Declaration was adopted, and the establishment of the Kunming Biodiversity Fund and other initiatives were announced, which inject a strong political impetus into global biodiversity governance.

The second part of the COP15 will be held in Montreal from Dec 5 to 17. China will continue to play the role of the presidency, preside over the substantive and political affairs of the Conference, and work with all parties to reach the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, said Huang, who is also the president of COP 15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

"We must adhere to pragmatic cooperation and share the mission, adhere to the priority of protection and green development, adhere to the action orientation and make overall plans, insist on increasing investment and strengthening guarantee, and uphold multilateralism and move forward hand in hand," he said.