BEIJING: While promoting climate adaptation at home, China will continue to support other developing nations to adapt to the climate crisis, said Zhao Yingmin, vice-minister of ecology and environment.
Zhao, also head of the Chinese delegation to the COP28 United Nations climate change conference, made the remarks during a sideline event held at the China pavilion at the annual UN gathering on Wednesday.
The frequent extreme weather events caused by climate change have resulted in increasingly greater damage in China and around the world, he stressed.
Roughly 3 billion people across the globe are now in a highly fragile environment because of global warming, the vice-minister said, quoting a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body that assesses the science related to climate change.
The annual economic loss caused by climate change has reached roughly $380 million, compared with $49 million half a century ago, he said.
In China, about 283 million people were affected by meteorological disasters every year from 2004 to 2022, he said. On average, these disasters annually resulted in a direct economic loss of 310 billion yuan ($43.3 billion).
In an effort to cope with the problem, China made public the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy 2035 in June last year, making arrangements for climate adaptation in key sectors, he said. Since then, many regions have hammered out regional climate adaptation plans, with some of them already published, he noted. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
