The opening ceremony of the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit was held in San Francisco on September 13. Hosted by the state government of California, the summit lasted for three days. The event included a China pavilion covering multiple areas, including local actions, carbon markets, climate investment and finance, renewable energy and energy efficiency, zero-emission vehicles and the business climate.
On September 12 a “Global action on climate change” proposal was officially launched in the China pavilion. The proposal was jointly sponsored by ten Chinese charities, foundations and research centres, including the SEE Foundation, the Lao Niu Foundation, the Yan Bao Charity Foundation, the Qiaonyu Foundation, the Vanke Foundation, the Institute of Science and Development of the Chinese Academy of Science, the Global Environmental Institute, the China Global Philanthropy Institute, the Institute for Sustainable Development Goals of Tsinghua University and the Tsinghua University Education Foundation.
A few of the main points listed in the proposal are as follows. The signatories pledge to support Chinese State President Xi Jinping’s international commitments to deal with global change and sustainable development, to implement the Paris Agreement and put the “green, low-carbon and circular development” concept into effect, and to strengthen international cooperation, for instance by supporting cooperation and communication among the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), like-minded developing countries, the Group of 77 and China, multilateral and bilateral dialogues, local governments and NGOs. They also commit to involving themselves more deeply in South-South cooperation to assist developing countries in capacity-building.
As important members of the China pavilion, the SEE Foundation, China Champions for Climate Action, the Vanke Foundation and the Energy Foundation also jointly hosted a meeting on climate innovation for enterprises. During the meeting, a group of Chinese enterprises officially launched another proposal, the “Chinese enterprises action on climate change” proposal. The signatories of the proposal commit to various points of action. These include strengthening carbon management and carbon information disclosure, promoting application technologies for renewable energy, increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and decreasing their own energy consumption.
