China Calls For Further Cooperation In Environment Among Asia-Pacific CountriesChina Tuesday called for exchange of experiences and enhance of cooperation among Asia-Pacific countries in launching environmental publicity and education, raising the public environmental ethics and awareness in the light of their own characteristics of ecological environment protection.Addressing the opening session of the 8th Asia-Pacific Parliamentarians' Conference on Environment and Development (APPCED) in Hyderabad, 1,500 kilometers south of here, Wang Tao, head of China National People's Congress delegation, urged the Asia-Pacific countries to expand scientific and technological cooperation on environment. The two-day conference, attended by some 115 parliamentarians and presiding officers from 20 countries in the region, would focus on the theme "environmental ethics and public education" and is scheduled to come out with the "Hyderabad Declaration" on measures to protect the environment while addressing the developmental needs. In his address to the meeting, Wang Tao said "Social Forestry, an undertaking originated from India in 1960s, had now become an important strategic measure in many Asia-Pacific countries to achieve a balanced development of forest, environment, economy and society. In the coming 21st century, Wang said, countries in the Asia-Pacific region should further enhance cooperation, exchange their experiences and intensify environmental education efforts so as to raise the environmental ethic standard of the public. Wang briefed the delegates of China's environmental policy and principles in the process of economic development especially since its economic reform in mid 1980s. China adhered to the principle of synchronized development of environment and economy, avoiding the wrong way of "pollution first and treatment later", or development at the expense of environment. China adopted a policy of promoting environmental protection by developing economy and facilitating economic development by strengthening environmental protection, so as to realize a win-win situation of environment and economy, Wang added. He told the meeting that China also adhered to the principles of protecting environment in accordance with laws and of mobilizing all nationalities and encouraging the public participation. Opening the conference, Indian Vice President Crishan Kant called for integration environmental concerns into public policies, adopt clean technologies and effective environmental legislations for sustainable growth, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI). "An open, equitable and non-discriminatory trading system under the aegis of the World Trade Organization can go a long way in protecting the environment and for this there should be a greater complementarity between international environmental and trade rules," Kant said. Kant appealed for a healthy balance between imperatives of environmental protection and development, saying "it is no more possible to argue that development in the Third World is such an imperative that ecological degradation is to be accepted as an inescapable concomitant of development". |
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