Voices from the field: Supporting China's green development

Over 200 Sino-Italian cooperation projects in the field of environmental protection, climate change and sustainable development have been developed in China in the past 17 years and have made remarkable achievements.

Through a wide range of activities, Italy has made positive and sustainable progress in supporting China's promotion of green development. In this light, China Daily recently interviewed and collected feedbacks from officers of both the public and private sector, which have been involved in the Sino-Italian cooperation.

The Chinese capital Beijing has been engaged in the cooperation with the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea since 2002.

"The cooperation has lasted for over 15 years through a series of joint projects and activities able to provide both parties with great added value," told us a senior officer working at the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau.

"During the first years, the cooperation focused particularly on the preparation works for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The Italian support helped the city to build intelligent public transportation, import cleaner gas engines for public buses, build vehicle emissions test laboratories and install solar hot water systems for the Beijing Olympic Village.

"All these projects were successfully implemented and became brilliant steps toward Beijing's 'Green Olympics' fulfillment," he said.

Post-Olympic cooperation between Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea and Beijing has focused more on air quality and brownfields management.

According to the EPB official, Italian experts were deeply involved in supporting Beijing to enhance air quality monitoring, local law development and new technologies.

More recently, a demonstration project for reducing NOx emissions from gas boilers (NOx refers to nitric oxide metabolite, nitrogen oxide and nitrous oxide) was launched in 2016 and it is currently ongoing.

Moreover, the cooperation on environmental protection between the Beijing municipal government and the IMELS helped Beijing to build preliminary technical specifications on brownfield management and develop technologies for the assessment and eradication of pollution.

Finally, such cooperation developed joint projects also on water pollution control, environmental radiation management, ecosystem management and professional training, which are all still very important elements of the Sino-Italian cooperation program.

Another important Sino-Italian cooperation project in the field of environmental protection is the 15-year long Sino-Italian Advanced Training Program.

An official working at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China said a number of 60 trainees from central and local governments as well as private sector took part in three training sessions within Sino-Italian Advanced Training Program, for learning the valuable experience and expertise on industrial energy efficiency management both from the European Union and Italy.

The lecturers of the courses came from public institutions, research institutions and industrial organizations, in order to provide a comprehensive picture of energy efficiency management system of Italy and EU.

In addition, trainees had the opportunity to be involved in tailored site-visits to energy conservation and environmental protection projects, so to gain firsthand knowledge.

"By making comparisons with China's industrial energy conservation, the trainees had the possibility to come back to their daily work in China and utilize their newfound knowledge and experience for promoting China's green development," he said.