The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has hailed China's contribution to the promotion of bio-diversity and green economic development.

"China has been an active participant in the 'billion tree' campaign that UNEP together with Wangari Maathai and IQRAF the World Agro Forestry Centre located in Nairobi launched a few years ago, and China itself planted 2.6 billion trees to contribute to that in recent time," Angela Cropper, UNEP Deputy Executive Director told Xinhua in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.

"That contribution allowed the program to achieve the objective of at least one tree for every living person on earth before the Copenhagen meeting began," Cropper said.

Meanwhile, China is committed to a very high percentage of renewable energy in its energy mix. "It is a leader in the development of technology for the wind turbine industry, for example, so it has a lot of technological opportunities because of its vast scale," she said.

The year 2010 is the international year for bio-diversity designated by the United Nations, and UNEP is determined to take the opportunity to conduct a large program to promote bio- diversity and arouse global awareness, Cropper said.

"As a part of that program, we are also trying to work with governments and communities to see how we can manage our ecosystems better, so that they can be sustained and we can get the range of services we get from them indefinitely into the future," she said. UNEP will also call on more countries to gradually transform to green economic development paths and provide them with relevant supports.

"We have been doing a lot of work on that, assessing the potential for jobs, for income, for livelihoods and so on within an approached economic development that does not degrade the environment as much as the present approach does, and we will be trying to expand them to more countries," she said.