Documentation Brochure - Hamburg Summit

China’s Environmental Situation
Meinhard von Gerkan, Klaus Töpfer, Alfred Th. Ritter and Soledad Blanco (f. l. t. r.) discussed the various environmental challanges China faces
The Rhine,” joked Klaus Töpfer, referring
to the swim he took in the river
as Germany’s federal environment
minister in May 1988, “was not dirty
only after I had bathed in it." All rivers
had been so polluted back then that
there was an urgent need for action.
Töpfer, director of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) until
March 2006, thereby made the point in
his keynote address to the Hamburg
Summit that environmental issues are
by no means shelved only in developing
countries. “Yet environmental protection
is an economic necessity,” he said.
Looking at China, Töpfer who advises
the Chinese government on environmental
issues, said, “financial and
human capital are available in sufficient
quantity. If the country is to maintain
its growth momentum it must reinvest in
its natural capital.” That was where the
crucial bottleneck was to be found.
Twenty of the world’s 30 cities with
the highest levels of atmospheric pollution
were in China. That was why it was
important for the government to invest
in environmental technology. Töpfer
specifically advocated developing
renewable energy resources and
decentralising power production. “The
Chinese leaders know that efficiency in
the use of resources must improve.”
The panel agreed that the Chinese
government today is more keenly aware
of ecological considerations. German
chocolate manufacturer Alfred Th.
Ritter, recipient of the China-Europe
Sustainability Award of the Hamburg
Summit 2006, even said that the two
best solar systems for the production of
regenerative energy were in China. He
now has solar collectors made in China.
“With them we have reduced by a third
the energy costs of our production in
Germany,” he said.
Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yue, recipient
of the China-Europe Sustainability
Award of the Hamburg Summit
2004, said that his country had undertaken
an U-turn in environmental policy.
What had been done in the past six
months was comparable to a revolution.
“The ecological problem will be solved”,
he ascertained. Zhang’s company Broad
Air Conditioning manufactures ecofriendly
air conditioning systems that in
some cases are powerful enough to
supply entire airports. A more critical
note was added by Hamburg based
architect Meinhard von Gerkan, whose
office in China designs cities and has
built, amongst others, the trade fairs and
congress centres in Nanjing and
Shenzhen. There was no logical and
ecological urban planning in China at all,
he said. Cities grew uncontrolled. “The
distance between Shanghai and Nanjing
is 200 kilometres, but you cannot say
where one city ends and the other begins,”
von Gerkan said. In addition, enormous
amounts of heating energy were
wasted in housing. Soledad Blanco of the
EU Commission’s environmental affairs
department also felt that China had major
environmental policy deficits. At the
regional level there were no minister to
implement the government’s environmental
programmes. Yet there was so
much to be done. No country in the
world used as much coal as China. “Every
14 days a new 1,000-megawatt coalfired
power station is built,” Ms Blanco
said. China was also responsible for 40 %
of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
“The consequences for global warming
are immense,” she said.