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Agi Veres, UNDP China Country Director with the Director General of CAFS and UNDP Pakistan Representatives

Together with Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences (CAFS) affiliated with Ministry of Finance (MOF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched a report entitled Climate Public Expenditure and Institutional Review (CPEIR): A Study of Hebei Province, China. The report represents the second phase in a series of reports that aim to review the status of multi-dimensional support for climate change activities and contribute information on public expenditure related to climate change in China.

Mr. Liu Shangxi, Director General of CAFS, led the UNDP-supported research initiative. During the launch, UNDP’s Country Director, Ms. Agi Veres, once again thanked CAFS for its extensive contribution to the data collection and analysis process.

The report builds on a previous report launched in April of 2015 that conducted a CPEIR in China at the national level. This year’s report does so at the sub-national level by presenting China’s Hebei province as a case study for analysing local government policies, institutions and budget on actions that contribute to tackling climate change. Moreover, the report takes one step further to analyse the costs and benefits of climate spending, choosing over-capacity reduction projects as the focal of analysis given its scale and impact across social-economic and environmental sustainability.

The report finds that the level of Hebei’s climate public expenditure has consistently increased since 2011 to around 10% of its total budget allocated toward highly or moderately relevant climate change activities. The figure is higher compared to 7% spending at the central level. The result is encouraging, indicating positive progress made by China to further supply-side structural reform and facilitate the building of ecological civilization – one of the major approaches to promote green growth.

During her speech at the launch event, Ms. Agi Veres noted that the CPEIR is of particular use to provide a systematic toolkit to help China localize the sustainable development goals (SDGs). “The result”, as she stressed, “can help estimate the scale and scope of climate-related public expenditure, and set up the baseline against which green financing needs, gaps, and barriers are identified for future efforts to delve in”.

Among those who attended the launch included Mr. Liu Shangxi, as well as representatives from the National Development Reform commission, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Information and Technology, Ministry of Finance, Hebei Province and other research institutions.

Source：the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)