CA21 Update - Progress on China's Agenda 21 CA21 Update No.3 December 30, 1995 Brief News Workshop on Local Sustainable Development in China Briefing Session on China's Agenda 21 During the Sixth Session of UNIDO General Conference Senior FAO Officer Visits ACCA21 Asian Training Workshop Held in Beijing Workshop on Local Sustainable Development in China The project to promotion local sustainable development in the implementation of China's Agenda 21 began in July 1995 with the support of UNDP. The objective is to assist China in strengthening its capacity to implement China's Agenda 21 at the national and sub-national levels, and in this way to promote a rapid transition to a more sustainable development path. For this purpose, we selected some pilot provinces, municipalities, counties and towns and helped them summarize and report their best practices in making and implementing local sustainable development strategies. A workshop sponsored by SPC,SSTC and UNDP on best practices of local sustainable development in China was held on 13-15 November 1995 in Shanghai in order to facilitate the exchanging of information and experience among different domestic areas and different countries. More than 100 representatives from SPC, SSTC, ACCA21, UNDP, and pilot areas, as well as France, Sweden and Denmark participated in the workshop. Representatives from 22 pilot provinces, municipalities, counties and towns presented papers focused on sustainable urban development, population and human settlements, natural resources conservation and environmental protection, and sustainable agriculture and rural development. For example, the old industrial city of Benxi,formerly known as "the city which could not be seen from a satellite ", has transformed their strategy of increasing environmental protection inputs into a broader and more effective strategy of adjusting industrial structure and adopting cleaner production methods,which has mitigated the pollution problems. Ten years ago, Nandan county in Guangxi province was one of the poorest counties in China.But, by paying attention to the development of science,technology and education,Nandan has improved the capacity of local people. Participants from France, Sweden and Denmark also introduced the best practices and experiences of local Agenda 21's in their countries. This was an important event in the progress of local implementation of China's Agenda 21. Conference proceedings will be compiled and published in the near future.(Duan Liping) Briefing Session on China's Agenda 21 During the Sixth Session of UNIDO General Conference The Sixth Session of UNIDO General Conference was held from 4 to 8 December 1995 in Vienna with the attendance of governmental delegations from all member countries. During the meeting, participants discussed upcoming UNIDO structure reform, progress made in the past two years, and adopted the fiscal budget for the coming year. Mr. Long Yongtu, head of the Chinese delegation and Assistant Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economy Cooperation (MOFTEC) gave a speech at the general debate on the first day of the Conference, during which he remarked: "We appreciate the active attitude and efforts made by UNIDO in implementing Agenda 21 as one of the follow up activities of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Environmental protection is one of China's basic national policies. Shortly after the Rio Conference, China formulated its national sustainable development strategy -- China's Agenda 21 -- and launched a resource mobilization campaign for the implementation of the Priority Programme of China's Agenda 21 by organizing, jointly with UNDP, a High Level Round Table Conference on China's Agenda 21 in Beijing in July 1994. The Conference was well attended by representatives from UN agencies, foreign governments and companies, who expressed their strong interest in China's initiative. We have developed a set of 16 projects together with UNIDO and provided the project documents to potential bilateral and multilateral donors. We are going to present the package of projects to donor countries during the conference." UNIDO, together with the Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China, organized a Briefing Session on China's Agenda 21 in order to present above-mentioned 16 projects to potential donors on the morning of 5 December 1995 at the Austria Centre. The session was chaired by Mrs. Tcheknavorian, Managing Director of Industrial Sectors and Environment Division. Mr. Long Yongtu was attendance and made a keynote speech at the session. He reaffirmed China's commitment to fulfil its responsibilities as stated at the Rio Conference and to get on the path of sustainable development. Two representatives from the Administrative Centre for China's Agenda 21 (ACCA21) were specially invited by UNIDO to present the highlights of the 16 projects to potential donor representatives and other participants. Mr. Jean-Marc Deroy, Managing Director of Mobilization and Management of Financial Resources Division also emphasised at the session that the division would do its best to mobilize capital to support the implementation of the projects. A series of meetings and interviews made between the interested donors and the ACCA21 representatives after the briefing session generated positive outputs. As the Chinese counterpart to UNDP, UNIDO and several other UN agencies in technical cooperation, the China International Centre for Economic and Technical Exchanges (CICETE) will continue to support the implementation of China's Agenda 21. CICETE is now in the process of formulating the next country programme for implementing the SINO-UNDP cooperation projects. "We will consider selecting relevant China's Agenda 21 priority projects and integrate them into the next country programme," said an official from CICETE at the wrap-up meeting on 8 December.(Huang Jing) Senior FAO Officer Visits ACCA21 Accompanied by Dr. Shwu-Eng H. Webb, Programme Officer of Winrock International Institute for Agriculture Development, and Mr. Li Fan, Programme Officer from the Department of International Co-operation, Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Jeff Tschirley, senior officer of Environment and Sustainable Development Co- ordinating Centre, FAO, visited the Administrative Centre for China's Agenda 21(ACCA21) on November 15, 1995, to discuss issues related to the International Workshop on Promotion of Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development. Mr. Zhang Jiayun, Deputy Director of ACCA21 with Mr. Pan Baozheng, Senior Advisor and Programme Officer Dr. Wu Xiaohua, took part in the meeting. "The workshop, which will be held next March in Beijing, is intended to resolve the issues and areas for action needed to facilitate the implementation of the sustainable agriculture and rural development components of China's Agenda 21", said Mr. J. Tschirley. More specially, he stated that the workshop would do the following: Identify the policies and practices responsible for the current lack of sustainability in China's agricultural and rural development programme. Identify and analyse alternative policies and practices that are sustainable. Identify the constraints to wider adoption of the sustainable alternative policies and practices. Develop strategies for removing the constraints and express these as a policy framework document. Develop a programme of action for implementing the strategies, which is consistent across different levels of development needs and is both economically and socially acceptable. Following the workshop mentioned above, a donor meeting will be held, with participation by representatives from UNDP, FAO, World Bank, ADB, and the Ford Foundation. It is also anticipated that the workshop will lead to the formulation of a Policy Framework and Programme of Action through which China can base its agricultural and rural sector programmes on the principles of China's Agenda 21. These outputs will be used by the Ministry of Agriculture in planning and Programming its implementation of China's Agenda 21, UNDP in developing its Fourth Country Programme(CP IV) for China, and other donors and institutions interested in providing assistance for the implementation of China's Agenda 21 and promoting sustainable agriculture and rural development. Mr. J. Tschirley hoped that ACCA21 could give comments about the workshop and recommend some priority projects on sustainable agriculture and rural development. Mr. Zhang Jiayun, on behalf of ACCA21, expressed that ACCA21 warmly supports the international workshop on sustainable agriculture. Furthermore he recommended that the visitors consider the Comprehensive Experimental Zones for Sustainable Development in China. In these experimental zones,a great deal of work this aspect, has been done in the areas of methane production using the crop stalks and human waste. Other projects on the use of coastal sea resources, agricultural water conservation, and desertification would also serve as good demonstrations of sustainable agriculture. The two sides also discussed a project related to Food Safety Construction. Asian Training Workshop Held in Beijing The Asian Training Workshop on the Industrial Dimension of National Sustainable Development Strategies (NSDSs), sponsored by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and co- organized by ACCA21 and China's Sustainable Development Research Centre of Peking University, was held during 20-24 November, 1995 in Beijing, China. The objectives of the training workshop were to strengthen the knowledge and skills of participants on ways of incorporating an industrial dimension into NSDS progress and to provide a forum for exchange of the experiences among Asian countries in this respect. The trainees came from China, Nepal, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. Most were from agencies responsible for preparing NSDSs, Ministries of Industry, Planning and Finance, Confederation of Industry, and other similar associations, research institutes, or universities. During the Workshop, Dr. Ralph Luken, Senior Environmental Advisor of UNIDO, delivered a speech on the concepts of sustainable development, ecologically sustainable industrial development and its three criteria. Dr. Jeremy Carew-Reid, Director of Conservation Services of IUCN (The World Conservation Union), gave lectures on the concept, history, and trend of NSDSs as well as on integration of NSDS into a country's existing development policies and process. Also, Dr. Suurland and Mr. Herman Sips from the Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment of the Netherlands, introduced to the audiences experiences on formulation and implementation of Dutch NSDS. The one week training workshop was structured around eight hours each the day of lectures, exercises and discussions. Most sessions consisted of country situation reports, lectures on substantive matters with practical short cases to be worked on by the participants in country groups and group presentations and comments. As one part of each session and an integrate part of the training course, each country group gave presentations on their country's industry related economic, environmental and social problems, industrial priorities, environmental and industrial policies. Chinese participants from the State Planning Commission, State Science and Technology Commission, State Economic and Trade Commission, National Environmental Protection Agency as well as ACCA21, commented at the end of the training workshop that in addition to being introduced to a systematic way of integrating an industrial dimension into the NSDS process, they also became acquainted with environmental damage assessment techniques, with economic assessment techniques(cost-effective and cost-benefit) for setting targets and timetables, with techniques for evaluation imperfections in environmental and industrial policies, with modelling, and with participation and negotiation techniques needed to prepare sectoral covenants and regional environmental quality managements agreements. (Wu Xiaohua) Editor's postscript CA21 Update is a bulletin issued by ACCA21 to report progress on CA21 implementation; important initiatives on strategies, policies, measures, and action plans for sustainable development; and international cooperation on the implementation of CA21 to the domestic and international communities. We welcome responses from our readers. If you have proposals, questions, or comments, please contact with the editorial department of ACCA21 by letter or fax. Edited by the Administrative Centre for China's Agenda 21 109 Wanquanhe Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100080, The People's Republic of China Text Browser Utilities: Back ACCA21 Home