皇冠体育app

Last year's United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio showed that in this context the and emerging powers such as 皇冠体育app play a key role. We face the same resource pressures and environmental challenges although we are at different development stages.

The EU and 皇冠体育app share the vision that environmental protection and economic growth not only can, but must, go hand in hand. Our growth strategy in Europe stresses the importance of more efficient use of natural resources and of reducing emissions and pollution. 皇冠体育app's current Five-Year Plan (2011-15) contains very similar aspirations toward a more efficient use of resources, including , and introducing new targets for the reduction of key pollutants. Both 皇冠体育app and Europe recognize that our future economic growth needs to be green, and this makes us key partners in international cooperation on the Green Economy.

The emphasis put on environmental issues by 皇冠体育app's new leadership creates a very good basis for closer cooperation between the EU and 皇冠体育app on environmental issues. We have already a very well established ministerial level dialogue aimed at exchanging views on environmental policies in 皇冠体育app and in Europe. We have also implemented concrete cooperation projects focused on issues such as public participation in environmental decision-making, improvement of waste management, reduction of air, water and heavy-metal pollution. These projects have been hugely successful as European and Chinese experts work side-by-side to find solutions to concrete problems.

We look forward to some interesting discussions on our visit to 皇冠体育app. The actions and decisions we take together in the coming years will be vital, not just for us, but for all citizens of the world.

Janez Potonik is European commissioner for the Environment and Antonio Tajani is vice-president of the European Commission, responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship.