"Connecting the World" at Eco Expo Asia 2026: China, Hong Kong, and the UN Agree No Country Can Face the Environmental Crisis Alone

This summer, Europe endured its most severe heat wave in nearly 80 years, while a glacier collapse in Nepal set off a mudslide that crossed national borders and damaged lives, property, and infrastructure downstream. For Huang Runqiu, Minister of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China, disasters like these prove a simple point: humanity shares a common future, and no country can shield itself from the environmental and climate crisis on its own.

Huang Runqiu delivered that message on October 27, 2026, at the welcome ceremony of the 21st Eco Expo Asia, held from October 26 to 29 at AsiaWorld-Expo in Hong Kong under the theme "Connecting the World for a Sustainable Future." Linking green policies, industries, technologies, and markets across borders, Huang Runqiu argued, is the key to meeting this crisis.

Other speakers took up the same challenge from different angles that day. Dr. Samuel Chui, Director of Environmental Protection of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, explained how Hong Kong plans to serve as a connector. Later, in the government session of the Eco Asia Conference, Luo Xiaoli, Deputy Director General of the Department of Energy Conservation and Comprehensive Utilization at China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), and Ariesta Ningrum, Director of the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), spoke in turn.

Disasters That Cross Borders Have Made Cooperation a Necessity

Huang Runqiu framed the challenge as a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, whose impacts keep growing more severe. Because these threats ignore national borders, calls for global cooperation are getting louder, and Huang Runqiu sees deep integration of green policies, industries, technologies, and markets between countries as essential.

That is where Eco Expo Asia comes in. By bringing together government representatives, businesses, exhibitors, and professional buyers from many countries, the event serves both as a showcase for cutting-edge solutions and as a channel for dialogue among partners across the industrial chain.

China Points to Its Record to Show That Cleanup and Growth Can Go Together

Before inviting other countries to cooperate, Huang Runqiu walked through China's achievements under Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, which calls for cutting carbon, reducing pollution, expanding green space, and pursuing growth at the same time. These achievements fall into four areas.

First, environmental quality has improved steadily through campaigns to keep skies blue, waters clear, and land clean. In 2025, China's average concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) fell to 28 micrograms per cubic meter, and the share of surface water monitoring sites rated good quality reached 91.4%, up 8 percentage points in five years. The main stream of the Yangtze River has maintained Class II water quality for six consecutive years, and the Yellow River for four. Rural wastewater treatment rates have also doubled compared with 2020.

On ecological restoration, Huang Runqiu said that nearly 500 species of wild plants and animals now face lower threat levels and that more than 300 rare wild species have seen their populations grow. Forests cover more than 25% of China's land, which means China has contributed a quarter of the world's new green area. China has also achieved the largest and fastest growth in forest resources of any country, and it has the largest area of planted forest in the world.

Second, China is moving toward a low-carbon economy. It has built the world's largest clean power supply system and clean steel production system, along with the largest and fastest-growing renewable energy system. In the first half of 2026, renewables accounted for 60.7% of the country's installed power capacity. At the end of July, solar capacity overtook coal for the first time, making solar the country's largest source of power by installed capacity. Green electricity now makes up nearly 40% of total power consumption, and in 2025 China produced and sold more than 16 million new energy vehicles, ranking first in the world for the 11th consecutive year. As a result, green industries have become a new engine for both economic growth and foreign trade.

Third, China has pursued institutional reform that combines legal tools with market mechanisms. It has enacted the Ecological and Environmental Code, which Huang Runqiu described as the world's first legal code named after ecology and the environment. Alongside the code, China has built the world's largest carbon emissions trading system, launched a national voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction trading market, reformed its environmental impact assessment (EIA) and pollutant discharge permit systems, and digitized its environmental monitoring network.

Fourth, China has expanded its role on the world stage. Huang Runqiu pointed to the 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) announced by Xi Jinping, which marks the first time China has set an absolute emissions reduction target that covers its entire economy and all greenhouse gases. Huang Runqiu also highlighted the Kunming Biodiversity Fund, which has approved 31 projects in 45 developing countries. A third round of nine projects from nine countries was announced during the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Yerevan, Armenia, and nearly 20 more projects are due to be considered by the end of the year.

Hong Kong Serves as China's Gateway to the World

From the national picture, Huang Runqiu turned to Hong Kong, a city that enjoys "the strong support of the motherland and close connections with the world" and is therefore a key gateway for China's opening up. Hong Kong's carbon emissions have fallen by about a quarter from their 2014 peak, its electric vehicle adoption rate ranks among the highest in the world, and it has led Asia in green and sustainable bond issuance for eight consecutive years.

China's expectations for Hong Kong are also reflected in policy. In late 2025, seven Chinese government agencies led by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly issued an action plan to build a "Beautiful China" pilot zone in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The plan aims for initial completion by 2035 and allows Hong Kong to pilot new policies ahead of other regions.

Building on this foundation, Huang Runqiu put forward three proposals. The first is to make innovation the engine, since science and technology underpin every environmental policy and solution. China's environmental industry generates more than 2.2 trillion yuan in revenue and invests 2.9% of that revenue in research and development. Huang Runqiu therefore hopes to see cooperation that moves technology out of the lab and into production in fields such as new energy, green manufacturing, and the circular economy, with Hong Kong serving as a global hub for green technology services.

The second proposal is to use openness as a bond for jointly building a Green Silk Road. Here, Huang Runqiu cited the Belt and Road Green Innovation Conference 2026, held in Hong Kong the day before, which focused on green finance, green innovation, and green infrastructure. The third is to use coordination as a driving force for building a world-class "beautiful bay." Because Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao "drink from the same river and live under the same sky," aligning policies and standards across the three is work they must do together.

Hong Kong Aims to Connect and Add Value Along the Green Silk Road

If Huang Runqiu cast Hong Kong as a gateway, Dr. Samuel Chui explained how that gateway is opening. Dr. Samuel Chui began with the five-year plan recently announced by Hong Kong's Chief Executive, which names the development of the Greater Bay Area and the Belt and Road Initiative among its key themes. As Dr. Samuel Chui put it, green transformation lies at the heart of high-quality development under the Belt and Road Initiative, and Hong Kong intends to act as a "super-connector and super value-adder."

Accordingly, the Environmental Protection Department that Dr. Samuel Chui leads is working in four directions: a green development platform for industry, a training center for professionals from Belt and Road countries, Eco Expo Asia as a venue for exchanging ideas and technologies, and research partnerships with institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Over the past three years, Hong Kong has signed a memorandum of understanding with Sri Lanka, adapting its air pollution model to Sri Lankan conditions and transferring its water quality model. Hong Kong has also signed an agreement with the Global Sanitation Graduate School, becoming its East Asia center and one of six international hubs worldwide.

Over the same period, Hong Kong has organized study tours for 16 countries, trained more than 200 participants, and exchanged knowledge with 28 countries. This year, it also set up a new training center for sustainable green development under the Belt and Road and recently held a master class for 60 participants from industries in Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland, and about four Belt and Road countries. About 20 of them then joined a study tour to Hunan Province as part of the second Green Silk Road International Training Programme.

Beyond training people, Dr. Samuel Chui introduced the Hong Kong Green Technology Innovation Centre (HKGTi), a new center set up to turn research into real-world applications. HKGTi will do so through the Green Technology Bridgehead Programme, which starts in 2027, and through a Green Accelerator run with several funding organizations, offering support from the proof-of-concept stage all the way to unicorn status.

Another tool Dr. Samuel Chui highlighted is the Hong Kong Environmental Database, which brings together more than 200 layers of environmental data with 3D views and geographic referencing. The database will move onto HKGTi so that Belt and Road countries can use it online. EIAs used to be both expensive and time-consuming, Dr. Samuel Chui explained, but online AI-powered tools, new monitoring equipment, and smart models can speed up the process. On one past project, using the database from the outset to identify the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly option cut construction costs by about 40%.

Cross-border cooperation also took shape on the same stage. Hong Kong's Environmental Protection Department and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) exchanged a cooperation agreement on environmental science and technology innovation that covers talent development, the commercialization of research, and joint standard-setting. Liu Chunyan, Deputy Director of CRAES, and Dr. Samuel Chui exchanged the documents, with Huang Runqiu and Tse Chin-wan, Hong Kong's Secretary for Environment and Ecology, as witnesses.

Chinese Industry Shifts from Cutting Pollution to Supplying Green Technology

With Hong Kong preparing to act as an intermediary, the next question is where the technology it passes on will come from. Luo Xiaoli addressed this question in a talk titled "Act on the Concept of Green Development to Fully Advance the Green and Low-Carbon Development of the Industrial Sector." In Luo Xiaoli's view, industry sits at the center of the transition because it must reduce the impact of its own production while also supplying green technologies and products to the market.

Luo Xiaoli cited progress on four fronts. Wider use of green energy has steadily lowered energy consumption and carbon emissions per unit of value added among large industrial enterprises. Utilization rates for industrial solid waste and recyclable resources rise every year. China's green manufacturing system now includes more than 8,000 national-level green factories and more than 600 green industrial parks. Meanwhile, the environmental equipment industry produces more than 900 billion yuan in output each year.

Building on this base, MIIT recently issued its green and low-carbon industrial development plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period, which places greater weight on industry's role in supplying technology, equipment, and products to society as a whole. The next steps fall into three areas. The first is to accelerate innovation by using AI and the Industrial Internet to make the production and use of green equipment more digital and intelligent. The second is to expand supply capacity by opening up new application scenarios, so that businesses can grow from manufacturing alone into selling products bundled with services. The third is to improve the business environment, from setting standards for each category of equipment to matching sources of finance with the needs of companies.

Luo Xiaoli concluded that technology and equipment are a key safeguard for China's green transition and that Hong Kong has unique strengths in this field, expressing hope that Eco Expo Asia would mark the start of concrete cooperation.

The UN Warns That 1.5°C Will Be Exceeded, but How Long Is Still a Choice

While China and Hong Kong described the tools already in hand, Ariesta Ningrum showed how far the world still has to go. Speaking on "Protecting People and Planet Through Transformative Action," Ariesta Ningrum cited UNEP's latest Global Environment Outlook, which warns that the world has entered uncharted territory. Climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and desertification, and pollution and waste all stem from unsustainable systems of production and consumption. Because these crises reinforce one another, they must be tackled together.

According to the figures Ariesta Ningrum presented, about 1 million of the world's roughly 8 million species are at risk of extinction, and 20% to 40% of the world's land was degraded as of 2022. Municipal solid waste, which already exceeds 2 billion metric tons a year, is on track to reach 3.8 billion metric tons by 2050 under current policies. Most internationally agreed environmental goals are therefore unlikely to be met.

On climate, UNEP has just released two reports, Limiting Overshoot and the Emissions Gap Report 2026, which conclude that the world can no longer avoid exceeding the 1.5°C limit in the near future. The task has therefore shifted to keeping the peak as low and as brief as possible. In the lowest-overshoot scenario, the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035, and 69% by 2040, relative to 2025 levels. Ariesta Ningrum stressed that every fraction of a degree and every year above 1.5°C adds to the risk, but the size and duration of the overshoot still depend on political and policy decisions.

For this reason, Ariesta Ningrum called not for incremental adjustments but for a transformation in how the world produces energy, builds infrastructure, and manages resources, driven by a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach. The case is economic as well: UNEP estimates that net macroeconomic benefits will begin to emerge around 2050 and grow to US$20 trillion a year by 2070.

Transforming economic and financial systems, however, must come first. That means phasing out harmful subsidies, pricing in social and environmental costs, and aligning financial flows with international environmental goals. These changes would then make it possible to reform three other systems: energy; materials and waste, through a global circular economy; and food, by reducing food loss. At the same time, rapid cuts in methane and other super pollutants would slow warming in the near term. Countries must also prepare for impacts that are already occurring, pursuing mitigation and adaptation together.

Real Connection Starts with What Each Country Needs

CTCN, which Ariesta Ningrum leads, connects developing countries in the Global South with the expertise, technologies, and partners they need. Its country-driven approach lets each country define its own challenges, so that national priorities can become solutions that are adapted locally and scaled up.

In Ariesta Ningrum's view, the exchange of green technologies, equipment, services, and finance can build infrastructure that brings people together while cutting emissions and strengthening resilience. The key, however, is that cooperation must start from the needs of the countries that will put it to use, as the Belt and Road has already shown. Ariesta Ningrum closed with a simple line: "Science gives us a warning and a path forward."

From Huang Runqiu's warning that no country can make it alone to Ariesta Ningrum's call for cooperation built around the countries that use it, "Connecting the World" on this stage meant linking each country's challenges with tools that work in practice.