Background

At the World Cultural Forum in Hangzhou in May 2013, Chinese officials expressed the necessity to pursue the transformation from industrial business as usual to an ecological civilization and a willingness to trade reduced economic growth for ecological improvement. The goal of the China International Working Groups (CIWG) is making economic growth mean ecological improvement. The price system and new mandated market rules that we suggest will send signals for both sustainability and economic growth.

The CIWG will conduct research and design policy that will assist China in implementing aspects of the program agenda that we lay out here. This will, of course, with appropriate variations be applicable to other nations. If China leads, the rest of the world may follow. The focus of the agenda that Roy Morrison presented in Hangzhou with his Plenary Speech was on efficient renewable energy, a necessary, but not sufficient part of an ecological transformation.