A CONFERENCE IN BEIJING ON CLIMATE PROTECTION

As "Voices of Europe", how could we ever forget to speak to China !
For our European businessmen and women China is often a daily challenge, sometimes an opportunity.
For everybody China is important in that we should get that country along in protection of our world climate. By persistent negotiation but also by cooperation.
It is therefore appropriate that we should report to readers on a meeting in Beijing where at least for over an hour the undersigned could hear the discussion and meet a few of the speakers. In the future we hope publish other reports on the subject and on other Chinese subjects.
For those interested in details or contacts with the environment people in China, or on carbon trading, a few websites will be mentioned. Direct messages to the author are also welcome

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On Friday November 16th during a presentation of The Climate Group in Beijing, I was afforded the chance to meet with a few of the organizers like Dr Steve Howard the CEO of the organization, Mrs Wu Changhua, Director for Greater China, Mr Lu Jin, Director for China communications. (office in Beijing).

I was placed next to a few of the speakers like Mrs. Kathy Wong Bun, representing the sponsor - HSBC ("the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation" )- and Dr Raymond M H Yau of ARUP (ARUP International Consultants in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen)

From this short but interesting attendance I noted the following points:

==Mrs. Kathy Wong Bun==
Mrs. Wong Bun told the assembled that HSBC takes pride in its commitment in Corporate Social Responsibility as applied to the environment sector. Particular fields of action include:

*Conditioning credits on not only financial but also environmental analysis

*Providing training in the application of environmental policies

*Particular projects financed with a high environmental impact like the water economy of the Yangtze River, reconnected now with more than 90 lakes (a new concept on dealing with water since many lakes had been disconnected in the past, possibly as an impact of farmers extending agricultural land)

*Protecting bird habitats

*City carbon usage reduction in the city of Wuxi

*Helping small and medium enterprises in adapting to new policies

*Fostering responsible purchasing policies

*Applying the so-called "Equator principles" of 2003, also with a voluntary program involving forests and fresh water
(Don't worry, I looked up "Equator Principles" for myself and for you :"A financial industry benchmark for determining, assessing and managing social & environmental risk in project financing"(Source: Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards ("Basel II"), November 2005. http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs118.pdf. See further: http://www.hsbc.com.hk/equipment_finance)

==Dr Raymond Yau==
The other speaker I had a chance to hear was Dr Raymond Yau of the consultancy firm ARUP , on two lines of their activities:

*Their Dongtan Ecocity project on the island of Chongming in the ChangJiang river mouth.

By circumstance I was already somewhat acquainted with the Chongming plans since I had met with a Netherlands delegation which recently signed a MOU on urban agriculture. Called the Shanghai Greenport, the principal idea is to produce agricultural products for the new cities on Chongming island and for Shanghai with the least land possible and keeping the land environmentally and tourist friendly. The area should remain a "green lung" for Shanghai. The project developer SIIC (Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation) is in contact with Greenport Nederland, with Wageningen University and "Know house" as partners.

ARUP is more involved in building the city proper, which is to be developed in the eastern part of the island. Their objectives are by no means modest. Perhaps one should say, rather, that the demands from the local governments are extremely stringent.
For instance in their start-up part of the new city (around 630 ha) they plan to have transportation facilities on the basis of non petrol based energy. A zero carbon emission for transport will be maintained. Mind you, not over a certain time, but from day one ! The petrol based cars will have to stop outside the city !

They want also to create a "compact city" but not a "high density" city. For the moment I can only vaguely guess what that means. The city's "eco footprint" would have to be at 2.9 gh/person. (can anybody help me with a definition of that measure ?) If one compares that with the quoted more conventional gh/p measure of 5.8 it is clear that the government and the project leaders want to impose a lifestyle on the population quite different from what we are accustomed to. No more leaving your television set on "sleeping mode" ! Let us see whether such changes of lifestyle are possible and where they may lead to. We might learn some changes which we may have to apply in the West.

On agriculture they also have ideas like using LED greenhouses rather than the conventional type. Particularly strict is the requirement to use 100% renewable energy for the whole area and its energy needs must be achieved from day one.

Among the renewable sources of energy figures prominently the use of rice waste ("jieganr") for 50%. It may be quite a challenge to develop an integrated shipping system along the Yangtze river for the large volumes of rice straw which would be needed for such an electricity generating project.

I had occasion near WUHU in Anhui province to see preparations for a "jiegarn" electricity generation project which would also get its raw material, the straw, by ship from the rice growing areas along the great river. Another "jieganr" project I saw later in Heilongjiang may lack the easy and cheap river transportation for the large volumes needed.

ARUP thinks that for Chongming Island wind power should be the second source. Biomass could be in third place.

*ARUP had still another idea to present, namely what they call the "Superblock" and "Ecoblock" approach now tried in Qingdao. Here the main idea is to gain a degree of self-sufficiency for energy on a small scale like grouping the houses of ten to fifteen families (a total of about 100 persons). In bigger cities many of such small blocks could be established together.
In this way dependency on centralized infrastructures (which tend to be less energy conserving and more capital costly) could be reduced.
ARUP hopes to foster this idea in other areas of China and even in other countries.

A PERSONAL NOTE ADDED.

Since by necessity I have to remain badly short on a full report on the Beijing meeting, in compensation I may perhaps add a personal remark:

The ARUP thinking on the advantage of self-sufficiency areas may be particularly apt for China in its present situation since the country has to find out where self-sufficiency may be beneficial and therefore be promoted, and on the other hand where self-sufficiency is not the best way,and should be reduced.

The San Guo Yan Yi saga starts with: "From unity comes division and from division follows unity". But that applied to division and unity of the country as a whole. Today the question is more about division of tasks between levels and areas. Self-sufficiency in what aspects, in what tasks, and to what degree? That is a far more complex question and needs a more subtle hand. At the level of entire provinces self-sufficiency has in past decades often led to provincial trade protection. Benefits which the country could have as a single nation and a single market were therefore sometimes lost.

In city neighborhoods the imposition of budgetary self-sufficiency now shows great drawbacks, with city areas having a hard time preserving their sometimes unique heritage. The vast destruction of neighbourhoods in Beijing in past years shows some of that problem. And again when along China's big rivers higher and lower lying areas are treated as self-sufficient and unconnected, the lower areas have not the proper channels or incentives to get the higher areas into the work of forest protection.

In those situations the centre may still have a task in the allocation of resources. Environment surpasses the interest of regions, cultural heritage surpasses the means of city quarters, and national welfare surpasses provincial trade interests.

In Europe the "subsidiarity principle" tries to address similar questions concerning the proper tasks of different layers of public and private action, and there we are still by no means perfect.

ARUP's efforts in experimenting with small self-sufficient city areas as a way to diminish environmental pressures and too great reliance on the centre may add important material to our experience in this field.

It will be worthwhile to look at what the various participants to the Beijing Climate conference will be doing.
Here are a few names of speakers and of websites.

Dr Steve Howard CEO of the Climate Group[http://www.theclimategroup.org]
Mr LI Yongsheng of the International Finance Corporation.(http://www.ifc.org/)
Mr Li Junfeng deputy Director , the Energy Institute of the NDRC China's National Development and Reform Commission.
(http://en.ndrc.gov.cn/newsrelease/P020070604561191006823.pdf)
Mr Lu Hu, Vice-president of Broad Group (http://www.broad.com/)

Some of The Climate Group's corporate members are also members of China Carbon Forum (see http://www.chinacarbon.info). So we will have occasion for further contact.

Author: Dr. Anton Smitsendonk, Chairman of China Carbon Forum.

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