A Systematic Understanding of the Highlights, Difficulties …
153
National Plan on Climate Change (2014–2010), and promoting the Paris Agreement. It also launched the Belt and Road Initiative International Green Development
Coalition, calling for global efforts to lay solid foundation for an ecological civilization, and pursue green development. Third, China has made greater contributions to
green development. At present, China has emerged as the biggest contributor to the
protection of the ozone layer as it phased out more than 50% of the total discharge of
ozone-depleting substances by developing countries. It has actively launched global
cooperation and established the China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to
support developing countries in dealing with climate change. Besides, China has
shared its experience and technologies widely to help developing countries effectively
improve their ecological environment.
2 Difficulties
On the whole, China’s ecological civilization development has been moving forward
steadily with a positive trend. However, the poor environmental foundation, a late
start in overall environmental protection, and the unbalanced regional and industrial
development, among other factors, resulted in outstanding challenges and problems
that still need to be tackled. With a view to help deal with such challenges, we hereby
point out the following five difficulties.
1. Difficulty in matching words with actions
In recent years, the concept of ecological civilization has been increasingly recognized, which has led to a general consensus on the importance of building an ecological civilization. Nevertheless, the mismatch between words and actions has been
constantly observed since to achieve conspicuous results in this regard, deep-rooted
problems must be addressed, especially problems related to vested interests and
existing conducts. For example, some government officials paid only lip service to
ecological civilization, not making sufficient efforts in reality; some leaders dared
not hold accountable those who have been gaining profits from polluting the environment; and some local poor-performing local government officials acted against
the natural law to build ecological civilization in undue haste, which would definitely
bring harms rather than benefits. In addition, some enterprises and individuals still
went their own way to make profits at the cost of the environment. For example,
among the typical cases reported by the central environmental protection inspection
work groups, some enterprises were two-faced, making but not truly implementing
rectification plans when they were required to redress what they had been doing.
Besides, the public also rarely took the initiative to participate in environmental
endeavors despite their attention to environmental issues.
2. Difficulty in balancing between development and environmental protection
On the one hand, some government leaders lacked a clear understanding of the relationship between development and environmental protection and tended to take them
153
National Plan on Climate Change (2014–2010), and promoting the Paris Agreement. It also launched the Belt and Road Initiative International Green Development
Coalition, calling for global efforts to lay solid foundation for an ecological civilization, and pursue green development. Third, China has made greater contributions to
green development. At present, China has emerged as the biggest contributor to the
protection of the ozone layer as it phased out more than 50% of the total discharge of
ozone-depleting substances by developing countries. It has actively launched global
cooperation and established the China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to
support developing countries in dealing with climate change. Besides, China has
shared its experience and technologies widely to help developing countries effectively
improve their ecological environment.
2 Difficulties
On the whole, China’s ecological civilization development has been moving forward
steadily with a positive trend. However, the poor environmental foundation, a late
start in overall environmental protection, and the unbalanced regional and industrial
development, among other factors, resulted in outstanding challenges and problems
that still need to be tackled. With a view to help deal with such challenges, we hereby
point out the following five difficulties.
1. Difficulty in matching words with actions
In recent years, the concept of ecological civilization has been increasingly recognized, which has led to a general consensus on the importance of building an ecological civilization. Nevertheless, the mismatch between words and actions has been
constantly observed since to achieve conspicuous results in this regard, deep-rooted
problems must be addressed, especially problems related to vested interests and
existing conducts. For example, some government officials paid only lip service to
ecological civilization, not making sufficient efforts in reality; some leaders dared
not hold accountable those who have been gaining profits from polluting the environment; and some local poor-performing local government officials acted against
the natural law to build ecological civilization in undue haste, which would definitely
bring harms rather than benefits. In addition, some enterprises and individuals still
went their own way to make profits at the cost of the environment. For example,
among the typical cases reported by the central environmental protection inspection
work groups, some enterprises were two-faced, making but not truly implementing
rectification plans when they were required to redress what they had been doing.
Besides, the public also rarely took the initiative to participate in environmental
endeavors despite their attention to environmental issues.
2. Difficulty in balancing between development and environmental protection
On the one hand, some government leaders lacked a clear understanding of the relationship between development and environmental protection and tended to take them