尊敬的徐麟书记、(Guizhou Provincial Party Secretary, Mr Xu)

李炳军省长，(Guizhou Provincial Governor, Mr. Li)

潘家华院士 (Academician Mr Pan Jiahua)

Erik Solheim, former UN Under-Secretary-General& Executive Director of UNEP,

各位来宾 - 早上好

我很荣幸代表联合国开发计划署来到爽爽的贵阳参加2024年生态文明贵阳国际论坛研讨会

(On behalf of the United Nations Development Programme, it’s my pleasure to join you this morning for today’s Symposium in beautiful Guiyang.)

Our transition towards a green economy is more urgent than ever.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to protect people and planet are far off track - with Goal 13, Climate Action, even regressing.

We only have one earth, and it is not for humans alone.

Yet, our planet is on the brink of collapse, with 200 species disappearing every day. Environmental pollution is worsening, and global carbon emissions are far from safe levels. Consequently, 2024 is on track to be the hottest year in history, as 2023 was.[1] We cannot keep breaking such catastrophic records, as climate disaster risks disproportionately affect fragile ecosystems and communities, fueling instability and volatility[i].

To safeguard our shared future and enable long-term prosperity, we must change gears now and accelerate efforts, to drive low-carbon, nature positive development. Because if we miss the turn-off today, the road to climate chaos becomes irreversible. 

UNDP is committed to helping countries making this shift. 21 years ago, for example, UNDP China began promoting hydrogen-based clean energy solutions as part of mitigation efforts, collaborating closely with the Ministry of Science and Technology, with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF).  What began as a small demonstration pilot, has now been expanded across multiple cities[ii] and levels.

UNDP is working closely with China to support its low-carbon transition, by providing new tools and evidence-based research. Last year, we released the SDG Investor Maps, a market intelligence tool identifying investable opportunities with high development impact in renewable energy and the circular economy.

Here in Guizhou, we have been working with the provincial government and the Foreign Environmental Cooperation Office (FECO) on establish a system for the payment of ecosystem services in the Chishui River basin – promoting market oriented payments and linking service sellers and buyers. This initiative received national acclaim and I would like to congratulate Guizhou on this and many other achievements in advancing green development in the province. 

Going forward, there are four critical areas that China may wish to continue focusing on to further advance and accelerate its ongoing transition from high-speed growth, to high-quality development and a green economy:

1.    First, China has added more renewable energy production capacities than any other country in the world and is a global leader in solar and wind energy. While renewable energy surged to more than half of China’s installed power generation capacity, it only accounts for around 30% of actual power generation, pointing to bottlenecks in grid infrastructure. In addition to continuing to invest in high-power transmission lines and storage capacities, energy markets need adapting, to allow cross-region transmissions.
 
2.    Second, China would also need to continue mobilizing capital from diverse sources, at scale, to support its green transition. China has already become the biggest green bond issuer world-wide following the 2016 release of a comprehensive policy framework for green finance. However, we need finance to not only grow “pure green” initiatives, but also drive the transformation of hard-to-abate sectors across fossil-fuel energy, chemical and construction industries - to name a few. To guide investments along, it is important to formulate sector-specific transition finance standards that ensure targeted action and avoid green-washing. In this regard, UNDP recently launched a report identifying opportunities and challenges in financing the low-carbon transition of China’s agri-food system.

Additionally, further efforts are also needed to mainstream biodiversity into investment decisions. Climate and nature challenges are deeply interconnected – the loss of ecosystems also represent a loss of carbon sinks. UNDP’s Biodiversity Finance (BIOFIN) flagship initiative supports governments in preparing and implementing national biodiversity finance plans.