Take China for instance. Due to its enormous investment opportunities and the growing attractiveness of its ever-expanding domestic market to foreign investors, China has absorbed about 20 percent of the world's total foreign direct investment that has flowed in to developing countries over the past 10 years, according to a World Bank report.

As more and more foreign-funded ventures conduct various kinds of production activities on Chinese soil, CO2 emissions caused by non-Chinese people within its territory have been on the increase.

In an era of economic globalization, economic interlinks among different countries have grown stronger and population flows more common, which has added to cross-national CO2 emissions among different countries.

Against this backdrop, we should actively push for mutual exchange among world members and work harder to promote closer cooperation among them in energy conservation and emission reductions in a bid to save our overburdened globe from collapsing due to the ever-deteriorating environmental crisis.

The clarification between the GNE and the GDE will help the whole world look at all countries' CO2 emissions in an all-round and scientific perspective, and then help them make scientific and reasonable commitments on CO2 emission reductions that comply with their national conditions.

For those China-based foreign enterprises that cause CO2 emissions in local regions, they should become more cooperative and work together with Chinese people toward reducing emissions from the country's soil.

The author is a researcher with the Institute of Finance and Banking under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

(China Daily 08/11/2010 page8)