Speech at the the Rapa Niui Pacific Leaders Summit 2024
Niu Qingbao
Respected Vice Minister
Fellow Ambassadors and delegates
Ocean plastic pollutioncauses global concern. Pacific Ocean plastics threatens the maritime ecology, human health and accelerate climate change and is specially alarming. The UNEA-6 calls for addressing the threat of plastic pollution. Today’s summit focuses on these challenges, pools ideas and practices, promotes dialogue and cooperation, and helps to turn consensus into actions that better protect our Pacific.
China attaches great importance to the 2030 SDG, has proposed the Global Development Initiative and advocates green development and harmony between humanity and nature. Although the biggest producer of plastics, the density of micro plastics in China’s offshore surface waters is in the mid-to-low level. Major measures we have taken include:
First, reduction. China has made policies and plans of plastic pollution prevention and reduction, requiring the plastics to be “recylable, easily reusable and biodegradable"".China hass totally banned the production and sale of super-thin plastic shopping bags , single-use foam plastic dinnerware and plastic cotton swabs, daily commodities and cosmetics containing plastic micro-beads, and the import of waste plastics.
Second, substitution. All of our cities have banned non-biodegradable plastic bags and single-use non-biodegradable plastic dinnerware, promote the substitution of plastics with environmentally friendly non-plastic and degradable bio-based alternatives, and call for green consumption. E-commerce and food-delivery companies are required to make and disclose their plastic reduction and substitution plan.
Third, recycling and treatment. We standardize the classification, transportation and treatment of waste plastics, advance its utilization as resource and energy to maximally reduce direct landfill. We mobilize the people to clean plastic wastes from the waters.
Fourth, long-term solution. We have a maritime micro-plastic monitoring and assessment system and its results are published regularly. We ask the coastal localities to set up a long-term mechanism of maritime plastic waste removal and have made its implementation an indicator of local government performance. We prioritize the development of science and technology to study the whole life cycle environmental risks of different types of plastic products; we strengthen the study of the mechanism of plastics in waters, develop technologies and policies to monitor and manage such wastes. Efforts are made to develop core technologies of recyclable and degradable materials to find better substitutes.
Fifth, international cooperation. The marine ecosystem is worsening, and global ocean governance is confronted with myriads of challenges. None of them can be resolved by any individual country. It takes solidarity and cooperation of the entire international community. China has put forward the vision of building a maritime community with a shared future, thus illuminating from a new perspective the relationship of harmonious coexistence between humanity and ocean, and pointing the way forward for global maritime development. China champions for maritime sustainable development and contributes to global ocean governance. When chairing the COP-15, China took the lead in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and in signing the BBNJ. We actively participate in the global ocean protection and plastic pollution prevention through bilateral and multilateral channels. We call for the implementation of the UNEA-5 consensus to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.
Dear colleagues,
It is our common duty to reduce plastic wastes in the ocean. China is willing to work with Pacific rim countries to build consensus, take actions, enhance exchanges of technology and best practice, push forward the prevention and treatment of ocean plastics, and guard our blue ocean and sky together.
Thank you.