Eco Forum to focus on low-carbon transition

An ecological protection forum in Guiyang, Guizhou province, on Monday and Tuesday will focus on low-carbon transition.

With the theme "Low-carbon Transition, Eco-Development－Building A Life Community of Human and the Natural World Together", the forum will revolve around topics including the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, China's goals of achieving peak carbon before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060, and the national development strategy for the Yangtze River Economic Belt, according to its website.

The Eco Forum Global Guiyang, first held in 2009, will highlight the green economy, trade and products this year to encourage investment in related industry, it added.

This year's forum will be jointly hosted by the ministries of foreign affairs, natural resources, and ecology and environment, and Guizhou's provincial government. Twenty-two subforums will include topics on the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), green and clean energy, the development of new energy and the lithium battery industry, Sino-Swiss Dialogue 2021, green finance and low-carbon transition.

In 2015, President Xi Jinping said the forum should deepen international exchanges and cooperation on environmental protection, the response to climate change and other areas.

During a visit to Guizhou in February, Xi emphasized the forum's status as a State-level international forum on ecological civilization.

Lu Yongzheng, head of the Publicity Department of the Guizhou Committee of the Communist Party of China, told a news conference on Wednesday that Guizhou recognizes deeply that its greatest competitive advantage lies in its excellent environment.

"We have elevated big ecology as one of three major strategic actions," he said, with the other two being rural vitalization and big data.

In 2016, the central government made Guizhou one of the country's first ecological civilization experimental zones.

Lu said that the province has been transforming energy structures, with clean energy accounting for 52.9 percent of energy production, 8.1 percentage points above the national average.

Energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped by 24.3 percent during the past five years, among the best performances in the country, he said.

By 2025, Guizhou plans to increase its forest coverage rate from 61 percent to 63 percent, Lu said.

"More efforts will be made to restore the ecology of the Chishui and Wujiang rivers and other important river basins as well as concentrated zones with mineral resources," he said.

"We will try our best to create demonstration areas of green barriers in the upper reaches of the Yangtze and the Pearl rivers, green development in the west, ecological poverty alleviation, legal construction of ecological civilization, and international exchanges and cooperation for ecological civilization."