China says it will follow Paris climate agreement despite COVID-19 pandemic

China on June 2 said that it will fully adhere to the Paris Climate Change agreement and its commitment towards the reduction of greenhouse gasses despite the coronavirus outbreak. Chinese environment ministry on Tuesday said that it will implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that requires countries to follow nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for greenhouse emissions. 

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Liu Youbin, spokesman for the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said during a monthly press conference that the coronavirus outbreak will not change China's priority towards the reduction in carbon emission, adding that Beijing would 100 per cent fulfill its NDC commitment. China will not relax its ecological and environmental protection in the next five years, Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu said on the sidelines of the annual session of the national legislature.

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However, experts say that it is not possible for China to fulfill its Paris Agreement commitment as due to coronavirus outbreak and the slowdown that followed, it has turned to heavy industries for kickstarting the economy. Those heavy industries are bound to emit carbon and other greenhouse gasses. 

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China's environment

According to Chinese environment ministry data, the share of good air quality days in China's 337 cities at or above the prefecture-level hit 82 per cent in 2019, with 157 cities nationwide meeting the air quality standards. The proportion of major rivers with good water quality increased by 4.8 percentage points in 2019. China's forest coverage rate grew from about 8 percent in the early days of the modern country to nearly 23 percent in 2019.

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