NAIROBI, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- China has become an active contributor to the international efforts to address the climate change, which is posing serious threats to mankind, world environment body, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) chief Achim Steiner has said.

    "What is interesting and also encouraging is that in the last few years China has become much more active in international discussions and the search for solutions (to climate change) as a proactive player, as a contributor of ideas and in putting forward proposals," he told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

    "In the past three to five years, China has become very active in looking at the whole issue of greenhouse gas emissions, the impact of climate change and the contribution that China will make to global warming," the executive director of UNEP said. "This is something the international community and the UN welcome very much."

    Steiner said China's release of the National Climate Change Program in June has sent a tremendous signal that China is both willing and interested in playing an active role in international consensus on how to respond to climate change, expressing the hope that the targets set in the program will be achieved.

    "As a responsible developing country, China attaches great importance to the issue of climate change... As it is mandated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Government of China hereby formulates China's National Climate Change Program (CNCCP), outlining objectives, basic principles, key areas of actions, as well as policies and measures to address climate change for the period up to 2010," said the program in its foreword.

    China has pledged to sincerely carry out all the tasks in the CNCCP, striving to build a resource conservative and environmentally friendly society, enhance national capacity to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and make further contribution to the protection of the global climate system.

    The targets set in the program include an estimated 20 percent cut of energy consumption per unit GDP by 2010 and raising the proportion of renewable energy, including large-scale hydropower, in primary energy supply up to 10 percent by 2010.

    "These are very important steps," said Steiner, highlighting greater afforestation programs in China for carbon sinks and the restoration of grasslands as measures that are significant to the global climate change challenge.

    China's efforts

    In the recent years, China has reformed its industrial structure to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. According to statistics, China has saved about 800 million tons of coal between 1991 and 2005, equivalent to reducing the emission of1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

    The proportion of coal in China's primary energy consumption fell to 69.1 percent in 2005 from 76.2 percent in 1990. Renewable energy accounted for 7.5 percent of China's total energy consumption in 2005, equivalent to reducing the emission of 380 million tons of carbon dioxide.

    China has also stepped up its afforestation efforts, which is also helping to reduce carbon emissions.

    It is estimated that between 1980 and 2005, a total of some 3.06 billion tons of carbon dioxide was absorbed as a result of afforestation in China. Another 1.62 billion tons of carbon dioxide was absorbed thanks to forest management, and the emission of 430 million tons of carbon dioxide was prevented due to a reduction in deforestation.

    In response to some reports that say China may become in one ortwo years the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, just after the United States, Steiner said "That is one statistic to look at, the other statistic is the per capita emission of carbon dioxide emission."

    "Then China is much lower than every country in, for example Europe or North America," he said.

    The per capita figure for China and the United States is respectively four tons and 24 tons, according to a UN statistics quoted by the Reuters.

    Steiner also praised in the interview the efforts to tackle climate change by Europe and some states in the United States, calling for cooperation instead of competition among all nations in addressing this issue.

    "The EU has committed itself to a 20 to 30 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, so this is a major commitment with significant economic implications for Europe," he said.

    Steiner said that at the Federal Level, the United States "is still reluctant to make significant commitments" but adding that "a state like California is actually putting self-imposed limits on its emissions of carbon dioxide higher than the European one and let us not forget that California is the sixth largest economy in the world by GDP."

    "When you look at California, Florida and other states and industries, you realize that the United States is also moving and in some case starting to move very fast," he said.