China looks to Italy for the protection of the environment

(by Giovanni Bozzetti- Pres Ambienthesis) Overcoming the global environmental challenges that await us, more and more foreign countries are looking to ours today. It may sound strange to imagine Italy as a model of sustainable entrepreneurship and environmentally conscious development, when from Turin to Padua, passing through Milan, our cities are saturated with smog and dangerously polluted. And instead Italy is seen today, also thanks to the Italy-China Cooperation relationship launched in 2000 for environmental protection, as a technological excellence both in the sector of sustainable development and renewable energy and in the new forms of circular economy. The profound experience of our companies, and of our country in general, in the sector of environmental protection has allowed in these 15 years to train more than 10 thousand government representatives (including the current Chinese minister of the environment), research institutes and private sectors within SICAB (Sino-Italian Capacity Building), the Higher Education program, promoted by the Italian Ministry of the Environment and launched in collaboration with China, one of the countries that up to a few decades ago it was the world leader in environmental protection. Soil protection and water resources management, air pollution control and reduction, waste management and sustainable urban development, on specific Chinese needs, the advanced training program, from the drafting of the Kyoto protocol to agreements of Paris, have been able to adapt to changes in the weather and new environmental challenges, especially those linked to climate change underway, acting as an effective tool in the new environmental protection policies.

It may surprise some that a giant like China, after years of economic growth without any attention to environmental effects, has decided to invest 360 billion dollars in renewable energy by 2020, and has chosen Italy as a reference point for excellence in training Chinese leaders in the sustainability sector. In May, Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking at a very high level meeting, which gave the line on environmental protection, declared war on pollution by stating that: «China will leadà an exemplary battle against pollution and porterà ecological civilization at a new level ». The China of tomorrow promises, already today, to devote more energy to the promotion of ecological civilization and to the resolution of environmental problems, future objectives that also go beyond Italy and the values ​​and skills that the Chinese government and companies are bringing into their Country thanks to this close collaboration.

The Chinese government is making serious efforts to reduce the environmental impact of the industrial sector (since January, for example, taxes have been imposed on pollutants emitted by chemical companies); Government officials also now have an environmental KPI introduced by the central government, with strong personal incentives to enforce regulations that may have previously been overlooked in favor of growth targets. In recent months, the country has also taken the important decision to stop importing plastic waste due to its too polluting processing, (a choice that will have consequences for many other industrialized countries and which has already generated an incremental demand for non-recycled plastic equal to about 3-4% of global demand). The Chinese government is also making ever greater efforts to tackle air pollution as well, encouraging consumers to move towards higher percentages of gas in the energy mix, still dominated by coal (over 60% of the country's primary energy consumption. ). Just days ago, the Chinese State Council published the so-called "Three-year action plan for winning the battle in defense of the blue sky" with the aim of reducing the total emissions of the main air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions and fine powders with a diameter lower than PM2.5. And the results are starting to arrive today with a city like Beijing, for example, which in 2017 had a better quality of both air and water, a record compared to the last decade with the Chinese capital which experienced 226 days with clean air in 2017, i.e. 28 days more than the previous year, also decreased the number of days with heavy pollution, which went from 39 to 23.

China has thus embarked on a progressive shift towards an economy that is more focused on consumption, but which, compared to the past, at the same time pays greater attention to environmental issues, also with a look at the potential opportunities that this scenario offers.

The Chinese choice to choose Italy as the main partner in this fight against pollution should not surprise at all, in fact, in our country there are many technological excellence in this field, even if, unfortunately, too often they are recognized more widely. abroad than here (an important figure in this regard is precisely that of exports to China which has grown by 30% in recent years). Ambienthesis itself, which represents in Italy, one of the main integrated operators in the sector of environmental remediation and industrial waste management, as well as in environmental engineering activities, was selected by the Chinese government among the main European environmental companies and invited the last year at the "China International Environmental Protection Exhibition and Conference 2017" (CIEPEC 2017 - the Beijing International Fair), to tell and share their experience, values ​​and skills and, moreover, present their cutting-edge technologies in area of ​​"soil washing" before the authorities of the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection. Innovative systems that make it possible to carry out remediation interventions of the "on site" type, ie at specific construction site areas, making it possible to significantly limit the overall environmental impact and reduce disposal "off site", ie off site. After the Expo, the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, the awareness that Italy can offer quality products and technologies that meet sustainable criteria has grown. An excellence that is now recognized all over the world. The new challenge is now represented by training: old and new professions can still grow by facing the new challenges of sustainability and environmental protection. The problem of the Italian system has always been not the absence of know-how, but the inadequate ability to know how to exploit it on a large scale. In my opinion, however, focusing on training could be precisely the best way to have wide-ranging economic results, guaranteeing Italian companies to be able to successfully impose themselves even in a huge market like the Chinese one.

 

China looks to Italy for the protection of the environment

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