STORY: Former UNEP chief praises China's achievements in environmental protection
DATELINE: June 24, 2023
LENGTH: 00:02:28
LOCATION: Oslo
CATEGORY: ENVIRONMENT

SHOTLIST:
1. SOUNDBITE (English): ERIK SOLHEIM, Former UN Under-Secretary-General and executive director of UNEP
2. various of China

STORYLINE:

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Erik Solheim, former under-secretary-general of the United Nations and former executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), praised China's achievements in environmental protection.

Solheim noted that east China's Zhejiang Province is a shining example of how China has "waged war" on pollution in the last ten years.

The Green Rural Revival Program in Zhejiang, which aims to transform the once heavily polluted waterways and improve the environment of villages, won the UN's highest environmental honor in 2018.

SOUNDBITE (English): ERIK SOLHEIM, Former UN Under-Secretary-General and executive director of UNEP
"There has been a complete turnaround in China from a very polluting growth path, into today, we see China is leading the world basically on green technology.
And the rural rectification in Zhejiang is a great example of that.
Europe has done a lot of the same along the Rhine or along the Danube or some of the Seine in Europe, but it had taken much, much longer time. So, the speed here was absolutely remarkable.
I think everyone in the world knows that China is now in the lead on technologies like solar power or electric trains or whatever it may be. But people are not so much aware of the enormous progress in Chinese protection of nature.
China is now embarked upon one of the biggest national park programs in the world.
China has a tenure fishing ban on the Yangtze (River). That's a huge effort with short-term pain, but enormous long-term gain. You see now dolphins coming back to the Yangtze because of the fishing ban. China is by far the No. 1 tree planter in the world. It's not my observation, it's NASA, the American space agency who said that the No. 1 reason why the world is going, the surface of the planet is greener, is tree-planting in China, in places like the Kubuqi (Desert) in Inner Mongolia, Saihanba in Hebei Province and many others.
And China also has first-class experience to show care from the protection of the giant pandas in Sichuan and the snow leopards in the western part of China to their borders of central Asia."

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Oslo.
(XHTV)