At the ongoing United Nations (UN) climate talks in Bonn, global environment organizations and climate experts and officials recognized opportunities and the potential China presented to global climate cooperation and to scaling up various climate actions they are pursuing.
Dylan Murray, policy advisor with the Nature Conservancy, told Xinhua that China can be a "net exporter of opportunities, lessons learned and best practices for countries in Asia or beyond", when participating the side-event in China Pavilion at the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP 23) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
"China has big plans for renewable energy, nationally determined contributions, forest restoration and forest carbon. We see a lot of opportunities with the Chinese government when it comes to policy issues and also opportunities for bottom-up projects," Murray said.
The U.S.-based Nature Conservancy is working on leveraging nature to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. Murray said a recent report of the organization found that up to 2030, or in the next 13 years, 37 percent of opportunities to tackle climate change comes from the nature.
"But we are nowhere near to get the work done. We see China as really a good opportunity for us to scale up quickly," said Murray, eyeing greater presence in China for the organization.
Ottmar Edenhofer, a leading climate expert in Germany and Deputy Director & Chief Economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), sees great opportunities of cooperation between China, Germany and Europe.
In an interview with Xinhua, Edenhofer expected that China and Germany step up cooperation in electric mobility, photovoltaic industry, and city planning to enable electronic mobility as well as to address congestion and local pollution.
"As China is now pushing for electric cars, regulations in China will have strong impact on European and German industry, so in that sense, China is influencing our regulations and pushes us also to invest more in electric mobility because China is an increasing market," said Edenhofer.
Moreover, Edenhofer expected best practices about the carbon emission trading scheme can be shared among China and Europe. "China should not replicate mistakes made by Europe" when implementing the scheme, said the scholar.
For Brad Page, CEO of Global CCS (carbon capture and storage) Institute, he sees great potential in China to boost the global efforts in tackling climate through Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) as China is accelerating very quickly in this field.
Page said the institute published each year a report showing where the CCUS projects are worldwide. "When I started this job six years ago, China had none. This year, in the catalogue we are going to publish next week, China comes the second in terms of the number of CCUS projects, just behind the U.S.," said Page.
"Every time I hear updates when I visit China about what is happening in China, I think China is a very exciting place for climate change actions," Page said.
Developing countries also held high expectations for South-South cooperation with China.
Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh, with the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment, said climate change adaptation is a challenge that must be jointly faced by developing nations, island nations, and least-developed countries. "Both China's financing and development experience are of great significance to us."
