From Feb. 20-22, SEPA Vice Minister Li Ganjie led Chinese delegation to attend the 10th Special Session of the Governing Council of UNEP and Global Ministerial Environment Forum held in Monaco.

Further discussion was held at the meeting on issues including raising funds for climate change and enhanced international environmental management and promoting reform of UNEP, particularly on how financial market should get prepared for financing and giving play of the roles of enterprises and financial institutions.

Li Ganjie made three suggestions on fund raising for climate change. First, the scale and sources of existing financial mechanisms under international conventions and Kyoto Protocol should be expanded. Developed countries should support developing countries with measurable, reportable and verifiable funds as required in the Bali Island roadmap; second, financial market, carbon market in particular, is growing fast on global scale, which has made positive contributions to the financial mechanism of climate change and harbored broad prospect. However, such markets, especially some major carbon funds now concentrate in developed countries and developing countries lack capacity in this field. As the financial market toward a low-carbon economy has not been fully set up, the international community should give more support to developing countries to build up their capacity so that developing countries will be able to participate in international initiatives on climate change on an equal footing. Third, private sectors of developing countries need to expand their investment in climate change. Finally Li Ganjie called on the international community to make concerted efforts, reform mechanisms and jointly meet climate change and other environmental challenges brought about by economic globalization.

The remarks of Li Ganjie were well received and echoed by other environmental ministers and participants.

During the meeting Li Ganjie met with Mr. Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, EU Chair of Slovenia Environment Ministry and Environment Ministers from Sweden, Switzerland, Russia and Japan. Li exchanged views with his counterparts on the subjects of this meeting and other environmental issues concerning bilateral cooperation and issues of common interest.