VI. Coordinating Energy and Environment Development
Climate change is a significant global issue of worldwide concern. It is both an environmental and development issue, and intrinsically a development issue. The large-scale exploitation and utilization of energy resources is one of the major causes of environmental pollution and climate change. Appropriate handling of the relationship between the exploitation and utilization of energy resources on the one hand, and environmental protection and climate change on the other, is an urgent issue facing all countries. China is a developing country in the primary stage of industrialization, and with low accumulative emissions. From 1950 to 2002, the aggregate amount of China's fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions accounted for only 9.3 percent of the world's total in the same period. The amount of China's per-capita carbon dioxide emissions ranked 92nd in the world, and the elasticity coefficient of carbon dioxide emissions per-unit GDP was very small.
As a responsible developing country, China attaches great importance to environmental protection and prevention of global climate change. The Chinese government has made environmental protection a fundamental state policy, signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, established the National Coordination Committee for Climate Change, submitted to the UN the Initial National Communication on Climate Change of the People's Republic of China, worked out the Management Measures on the Implementation of Clean Development Mechanism Projects, formulated the National Climate Change Program, and adopted a series of proactive policies
