CCICED held High-level Seminar on Green Supply Chain Management

　　The High-level Seminar on Green Supply Chain Management was held on May 30th, in Pudong, Shanghai by the CCICED. Mr. Xu Qinghua, CCICED Deputy Secretary General, Chief Engineer on Nuclear Safety of the Ministry of Environment Protection, and Ms. Lena Ek, Sweden's Minister for the Environment, attended the seminar and delivered speeches. About 80 people attended the seminar, including representatives from Swedish Embassy to China, Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau and other related governmental agencies, enterprises, CCICED partners and news agencies, as well as Chinese and foreign scholars.

　　Under the theme of "The Value of Actions: Developing a Management System for Green Supply Chain", the findings of the CCICED's Special Policy Study on Green Supply Chain and valuable experience in improving green supply chain management in Shanghai were shared at the seminar. Good practices in developing green supply chain were also discussed, especially those in Swedish furniture group IKEA and in Shanghai Century Lianhua Supermarket Development Co., Ltd. of Bailian Group.

　　In his speech, Mr. Xu Qinghua pointed out that, as the biggest developing country in the world, China has made remarkable achievements in economic and social development in the past several decades, but the pressure of environmental pollution and ecological degradation is enormous. As an important instrument adopted worldwide to support green economy and, especially, sustainable production and consumption, green supply chain management should be promoted in pilot programs in key industries and sectors, he said, and encourage multinational enterprises and industries' leading players to play demonstrative role in their respective regions and industries. By establishing environmental standards and assessment criteria in different levels and for different grades of products, downstream enterprises would be compelled to improve their technology and apply higher environmental standards to their products, so as to achieve the goal of reducing adverse impact on environment, he said.

　　Ms. Ek appreciated the long time close cooperation between China and Sweden. As one of the major donors and partners of the CCICED, she said, Sweden would like to carry out more extensive cooperation with China, and jointly contribute to China's transition to green development and its ecological progress. At the same time, Swedish enterprises operating in China would be encouraged to play a leading role in promoting green economy and low-carbon development, she said.

　　Some conclusions were arrived at the seminar. The first, green supply chain management is an important instrument to help enterprises increase their environmental management capacity and pilot programs on green supply chain management should be carried out more widely. In the process, lessons and experience can be drawn to formulate industry standards and codes of conduct, so as to encourage good practice of downstream enterprises and regulate their environmental actions. The second, China should make explorations and innovations in formulating environmental policies to accelerate ecological progress. Since the environmental issues confronting China are concentrated and compound, and featured with structural characteristics, China has to make policy innovations continually, improve environment management capacity, so as to guide enterprises as well as the whole society onto the path of environmentally friendly development and low resource consumption. The third, more international exchanges and dialogs should be carried out, since environmental issues have both regional characteristics and common attributes. Valuable concepts, lessons and experience developed by advanced countries during past one hundred years, can be very useful for China to vigorously face up its own environmental challenges in its development process.