China's commitments at the Paris negotiations in 2015 are an "international reflection of China's domestic commitments," said Yvo de Boer, former secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

De Boer, who has since became the director general of the Global Green Growth Institute, said to China Daily at the World Economic Forum in Davos that China's commitment in Paris was encouraging, and shows a strong realization that China's current economic model needs to change, for growth to be more sustainable.

"Chinese commitment in Paris is a reflection of where China wants to go, and not a reflection of what China thinks the international community wants China to go. It is more as a Chinese commitment to China, than Chinese commitment to the world," said De Boer, adding that it reflects China is becoming more confident as a global power.

Under the framework of the Paris conference on climate change, China announced it aims to hit the CO2 emissions peak by around 2030 and slash CO2 emissions per unit of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 60-65 percent from the 2005 level.

In addition, China announced in September the establishment of an independent South-South cooperation fund of 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) to help developing countries affected by global warming, which was a significant step forward in China's climate change leadership role in the fight on climate change combat alongside developing countries.

The GGGI, an intergovernmental organization founded in 2010 to promote a new model of development, which combines economic growth and environmental sustainability, has worked on various projects in China at the provincial level, and is now ready to take these experiences to bigger projects at China's national level, said de Boer.

The economic assessments in China include aspects like how to make energy supply greener and more efficient, how to improve building quality, create better public transport systems and create more jobs in the economy simultaneously.

In recent years it has provided technical input to government officers from three bureaus in Xiangyang city and three bureaus in Hubei province as a part of China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development's sustainable consumption project to build capacity and awareness to greener procurement and consumption practices to subnational authorities.

The GGGI also developed a strategic agreement with China's Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy to give policy analysis and recommendations on foundational green growth elements.

"The focus of our China projects are at the provincial level so far, which is working with provinces to understand how you can keep a strong economic growth but also creating jobs in different areas."

"Our work in the future is more at the national level. At the moment, we are working with the Ministry of Environment on the use of green indicators, for example, on how to use a five-year plan not just for economic progress but also to monitor environmental progress," de Boer said.

He said another important question in China is how to improve dialogues with the private sectors, in order to drive changes towards the intended green growth model.

A third issue China faces is how to ensure its foreign investments into other developing economies are green, and this is particularly important as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is now led by and located in China, he said.

De Boer said that the big challenge of taking the provincial projects' experiences that GGGI has accumulated in China to the national level for implementation, because China is a big country and it would be difficult to make policies in the capital and expect them to be implemented easily at the local level across the board.

"The primary concern of local governments is to realize strong economic growth. In addition, the people at city and provincial levels are not experts on climate change, so to bring the perspectives of the national decision makers to the local level would be challenging."

But de Boer is also optimistic about China's future environmental protection efforts. He said China would benefit from shifting its energy sources to greener renewable sources, as the efficiency associated with better sources of energy will bring long term energy bills down and improve air quality.

In addition, as China is a key exporter to the world economy, there would be an expectation for its products to match international standards in energy efficiency, he said.

To contact the reporter: cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com