Graphics: How is China progressing in its scaled-up response to climate change

The 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) gathers in Davos, Switzerland from Monday through Friday. According to WEF, this year's summit will focus on creating and improving long-term, sustainable methods to move one step closer to carbon neutrality by 2050 while maintaining access to affordable, inclusive, and safe resources such as water, energy, and food.

China attaches high importance to addressing climate change. In 2020, China scaled up its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), aiming to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. The goal is to lower CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by over 65 percent from the 2005 level, increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 25 percent, raise the forest stock volume by 6 billion cubic meters from the 2005 level, and bring the total installed capacity of wind and solar power to over 1.2 billion kilowatts by 2030. This aligns China with the Paris Agreement's objectives to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

China has made positive progress, according to the Chinese Ministry of Ecological Environment (MEE).

In 2022, China's carbon emissions intensity decreased more than 51 percent from its 2005 level, and the share of non-fossil energy in China's total energy consumption reached 17.5 percent, as reported in the 2023 report of China's policies and actions to address climate change.

Globally, China has been deeply engaged in South-South cooperation on climate change, providing support and assistance within its capacity to other developing countries.

As of September 2023, China has signed 48 memorandums of understanding on climate change with dozens of developing countries and has helped train more than 2,300 officials and technicians for over 120 developing countries, according to the report.

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