Sustainable Development

China is now the world’s second-largest economy, and the country’s’ emerging political and economic strengths make it a key partner in solving global environmental challenges. The United Nations’ Agenda 2030 and its associated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) constitute a global framework for addressing these issues, and China has incorporated the goals of the Agenda 2030 into its 13th Five Year Plan (FYP),2016–2020. In recent years, China’s leadership has stated with increasing clarity that the country’s rapid economic growth is not sustainable, as it has brought about serious environmental degradation and increasing emissions of hazardous pollutants. This leadership has declared ‘war on environmental pollution'. More recently, President Xi Jinping announced that ‘ecological civilization and beautiful China’ would be the overarching framework for China’s development.Importantly, China is signalling that policies intended to address air pollution, climate change, environmental pollution and biodiversity loss are conceived domestically and reflect China’s own interests. On this basis, and not in response to external pressure, sustainable development has been lifted to the top of China’s political agenda. Nordic countries and China share an interest in addressing global sustainable Development challenges and have long cooperated on different aspects of sustainable development issues. This Chapter introduces selected examples of areas of sustainable development cooperation between the Nordic countries and China.