The environment's unlikely champion

China, the world’s biggest polluter, has embraced the challenge of becoming more sustainable.

electricity by source

It’s impossible to miss the gloomy statistics and news stories on the environment. And yet we continue to pollute oceans, waste food and eat a lot of meat. The message is just not getting through. 

Peggy Liu, co-founder of the Joint US-China Collaboration for Clean Energy (JUCCCE), argues that for the fight against climate change to succeed, sustainability experts need to master a different language.

“Environmentalists have tried to figure out how to get people to live a sustainable lifestyle for at least 30 years, and they’ve basically failed,” she says.  

“Environmentalists need to change the language from white papers and statistics that speak to heads, to the language of hearts and human connection. We need a new language of sustainability. The best channel to change social norms is episodic media because it carries human stories that touch people's hearts and reaches people repeatedly.” 

Liu has been putting this into practice in China, which over the past decade has, to everyone’s surprise, emerged as the poster child for sustainability successes. The country’s green drive has included mass publicity, from a slew of environmental programmes on state television to JUCCCE’s prominent, flowery billboards promoting the “China dream” of sustainable consumerism. 

The strong backing of president Xi Jinping has been another major factor in putting the environment top of the agenda – the topic was mentioned more than 100 times in his October address to the nation.

Although it remains by far the biggest producer of carbon emissions in the world, pollution levels peaked in 2014 and are now edging lower. China is now also the top investor in renewables and coal’s relative importance as a fuel is declining. Crucially, overall energy consumption is now growing at a slower pace than the economy.

air pollution map

One city at a time

The Chinese leadership’s backing and the country’s sheer size have enabled it to develop a unique approach to nurturing new environmental technologies and ideas: selected cities have been turned into independent innovation hubs, with most successful practices embraced on a national level.

Each city is essentially a laboratory for sustainability solutions, and together it’s a bit like throwing darts at a target: at least one or two of them are going to hit the bull’s eye,” Liu says. “When you have 1.3 billion people and you are willing to look 50 or 100 years into the future, it doesn’t matter if a lot of these trials don’t work."

China may be the only country in a position to experiment one city at a time, but there are lessons other nations can learn from its environmental crusade. A mandatory education programme for top government officials is one. Another is the importance of firm goals and time frames, as enshrined in China’s system of five year plans.

"You have to have measurable targets. Companies have accountability through business plans, so why not countries? China is able to execute large scale infrastructure and economic changes like a multinational corporation,” Liu says.

Getting individual citizens on board, and changing their daily habits, is also key. Project Drawdown, the first comparative list of solutions to reverse climate change, lists reducing food waste as the number three solution, with eating a plant-rich diet as number four. China has made steps to tackle waste with a nationwide “Empty Plate” campaign. Its meat consumption, however, has been skyrocketing with growing GDP per capita. To help combat this trend, Liu has launched a Food Heroes education programme in Chinese kindergartens that teaches children how to eat in a way that is good for their health and for the planet.

Liu is optimistic that China will continue to battle climate change aggressively – and will succeed: "It will take some time but it will happen."