Environment Special: Forum integrates global vision and local ideas

When nature begins taking revenge and starts assaulting us with weapons like earthquakes and floods, and predictions of a dire future grow more creditable, it begins to look as if "green and low-carbon" are the only way human beings can save themselves.

And, that's just the message that the seventh International Green Habitat Forum (IGHF 2000), which ended Nov 3 in Chengdu, Sichuan province, is trying to push.

The forum was hosted by the National Development and Reform Commission's international cooperation center, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development's science and technology committee, the United Nations Environment Program's Sustainable Building and Climate Initiative, and the Chengdu city government. It was the brainchild of the China Merchants Property Development Co Ltd (CMPD).

More than 600 Chinese and foreign scholars, government officials and company representatives took part in the forum. The annual affair actually began back in 2004 with the idea of providing a venue for international cooperation in green and low-carbon development.

The forum's main session this year had theme of "Green Economy and Harmonious Habitat". It was followed by three sub-sessions on "Low-carbon Policies and Public Participation", "Research and Development of Green Building Technology", and "Theory and Practice in an Ecological City". This was an attempt to explore the topic through the three perspectives: policy, technology, and application.

"Green should be the core spirit of urbanization and the prime motive power of sustainable development," Li Bingren, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development's chief economist, said at the main session.

CMPD, the organizer, calls itself a pioneer in promoting green development in China's real estate business and been dedicating itself to green building technology research and applications for 26 years.

Hu Jianxin, its vice-general manager, introduced the concept of comprehensive community development and 22 categories of 47 green technologies, which CMPD has applied to property development.

At the end of the forum, a large number of primary school students from Chengdu's Chenghua district presented a 7-meter-long scroll that they had painted and named the "Harmonious Home" to Nicholas You, senior advisor of UN-Habitat's office of the executive director.

The scroll displays various things like pandas, blue sky, trees and rivers to convey a message of green and sustainable development. The scroll will be taken to the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held in Cancn, Mexico, Nov 29 to Dec 10.

"It is in changing the way we design our cities and our infrastructure that we can begin to create a real green economy and harmonious habitat, one that does not just take resources and turn them into waste, but makes intelligent and sustainable use of those resources for generations to come," You commented.

(China Daily 11/09/2010 page14)