Pollution issues, including air quality, have been an important aspect of the partnership between ADB and the People's Republic of China.

In the ADB report Toward an Environmentally Sustainable Future: Country Environmental Analysis of the People's Republic of China, PRC policy makers were urged to initiate comprehensive fiscal, economic, and legal measures to achieve the country's ambitious ecological progress objectives.

Watch a video (in English or Chinese) of ADB's environment expert Qingfeng Zhang, discussing the cost of pollution to the Chinese economy, the need for more effective environment tax and greater public awareness about the scale of the pollution problem.

Also, view a photo essay illustrating ADB's support for environmentally sustainable growth in the PRC.

ADB is supporting a project in the PRC that is helping to deploy public buses with lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on the roads of major cities.

With the assistance of an ADB loan, methane gas is being captured in the western city of Jincheng, bringing cleaner air, cleaner homes, and more profits to its people.

Meanwhile, in Guangdong Province, in the south of the PRC, ADB is backing an energy efficiency program for environmentally friendly power alternatives to the fossil fuels behind the country's extraordinary economic growth, grim pollution, and increasingly severe energy shortages.

ADB supported the construction of a 250 megawatt integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant that has started commercial operation in Tianjin. This is the first such plant in the PRC. IGCC is the most efficient and least polluting technology to produce electricity from coal.

In addition, ADB is assisting PRC in the development of a road map for carbon capture and storage (CCS) to help achieve the country's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction goals.

Environmental sustainability is a prerequisite for economic growth and poverty reduction in Asia and the Pacific. ADB's long-term strategic framework for 2008-2020 (or Strategy 2020) identifies environmentally sustainable growth as a key strategic development agenda, and environment as a core area for support.

Through its office in Beijing, ADB is implementing a country strategy that includes environmentally sustainable growth as one of its basic pillars.

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