Global Environmental Government and US-China Cooperation

Scholars and experts from both China and US gathered in Washington, DC today to share and reflect the journey travelled in the last three decades when China and US worked very closely together to protect the environment. Reflections brought us back to the 1990s when many of us started our professional journey in the US and when US was so willing to share with and support China to accelerate its environmental movement. Looking back, numerous laws, regulations, policies and instruments were learned from the US and applied in China, from institutions and governance to emissions trading, from permit to pollution charges, from information disclosure to public interest litigation, you name it! US played a rather significant role in building up Chinese capacity in policy making, cultivating expertise in environmental NGO sector development and renewable energy development.

Today, what a contrast! When China continues its commitment and efforts to accelerate a clean revolution and even leading efforts for improved global environmental governance, US, on the other hand, under the Trump Administration, withdrew from Paris Agreement and took many steps to disrupt the global order and bring the global environmental governance backward.

The PACE Workshop, organized by Professional Association for China's Environment (PACE) and hosted by Environmental Law Institute, focused on global environmental governance and US-China Cooperation. A timely effort, the PACE Workshop demonstrated a well of knowledge and expertise, as well as the common ground shared by professionals from both countries in joining up efforts to accelerate solutions and actions to achieve the SDGs.

I shared my view from five aspects:

1. Journey travelled: When I was working at World Resources Institute, I had the honor to be on the 16-member delegation led by Carol Browner, in 1998 when then USEPA Administrator made her first such level official list in 15 years. Three city visit, 12 projects, field visits, that reflected a starting point of the old, good time when the two countries decided to enhance bilateral collaboration on climate change and environmental protection. Back then, China was being "persuaded" by the US to join the Kyoto Protocol. A key piece of the work is co-benefit assessment that looked into climate change policy from not only carbon emissions perspective, but also public health benefits. When finally China and many other countries all signed up to the KP, US Senate, 97-0, blocked US to be part of the KP.
2. The Narratives: When I took the position of Greater China Director of The Climate Group, one key advocacy focus was China's Clean Revolution, That was an exciting time when low carbon economy and technology revolution started to attract financial capital flow towards innovation and shift the economy towards a different paradigm that is to be defined by low carbon. I had the honor to be part of the team of Breaking the Deadlock, working with a team of global expertise to support former UK PM Tony Blair for a successful Copenhagen climate outcome. The result is well-known and even though we did not manage to break it, the intellectual work, the political engagement process, as well as the business engagement played an important role to redefine the narrative among major economies - together they can lead the transformation of a global economy that is aligned to support a global climate change agenda. China and US were important, but back then my focus was major economies, beyond just China and US.
3. The Expectations: Between Copenhagen and Paris, the global climate change process underwent a fast track transition, from abysmal to peak of success. What had happened? In just seven years, global renewable energy doubled installations, with costs dramatically reduced. EVs, LED lighting, energy efficiency in buildings, all started to embark on a track to scale. This shed light on opportunities enabled by emerging technologies. China literally led the way and contributed in its own unique capability of industrialization of clean technologies with a fast downward trend of costs. Such contributions became more and more recognized globally. This dramatically shifted the mindset of political leaders in major economies. When the Trump Administration announced its withdrawal from Paris Agreement, the world carried on, but in the meantime, China is overwhelmingly expected to lead. On one side, such expectations are matched by Chinese political leaders' ambition to lead global governance, as President Xi Jinping said at UNGA a few years ago; on the other, the country has demonstrated its alignment of domestic development agenda with UN SDGs, in particular the ecological civilization.
4. The Challenges: Sometimes you have to doubt the fairness of such expectations of China to lead global environmental governance. But more importantly, I see two major challenges to be tackled. The deeper issue is deficiency of trust and respect. This is a worldwide challenge today, exacerbated by politicians who often tell lies and take no responsibility. The consequences are dire. Lack of trust and respect has been witnessed among government, business, and the public. As a consequence, it becomes very difficult to rebuild trust and respect, let alone when you had a track record or cases not trustworthy. To lead, China has to gain trust and respect of others, which often takes much longer time and efforts. The other challenge is inadequacy in expertise and talents. When the expectation of China's leadership rises, it requires China to contribute intellectually, diplomatically, as well as skills and expertise, not just financially. Talents upbringing, upskills and resells, have all become among top priority tasks for China to become a more influential leader in global environmental governance.
5. The Future: Enabled by the 4IR, global community are more than ever equipped with capability to deliver SDGs. China's ecological civilization sets a vision of a shared human destiny as species on the Planetary Earth. It offers ecological security that is the biospheric foundation to human development. The perfect alignment between China's ecological civilization and UN SDGs empowers and incentives China to champion a global sustainability agenda. While making steadfast and accelerated progress to address domestic environmental challenges, China shall take solid and consistent steps to advance global SDGs agenda. The Green BRI presents a huge opportunity for China to demonstrate its determination and commitment to deliver its vision of a shared, sustainable future of human development.

PACE shoulders a mission today more urgently than ever to contribute to the enhancement of US-China cooperation on global environmental governance. But the bi-lateral focus cannot be over-emphasized by neglecting others. While we often say that the relationship between China and US is the most important international relations, it is difficult to deal with a counterpart who lies often, speaks in vulgar languages sometimes, behaves childish, and very importantly who deniers climate change science. I know for sure that China will continue to honor its commitments while learning by doing to step up the progress around environmental governance, but I have lost confidence in current US Administration and even part of the Congress that they will turn the corner and be back to table to constructively discuss how to advance sustainability.

We all talk about our common future. Trump does not think this way. He is making all the disruptions he could to make everyone else lose, while he thinks that US could bear the consequences by being a winner. We have only One Planet, which we call our homeland. If we lose, we all lose. Think a second time, Mr Trump.