BEIJING, March 2 /PRNewswire/ — The importance of biodiversity to human development is illustrated by the fact that more than half of the world’s GDP comes from natural resources and more than 3 billion people depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods . However, the Earth’s ecosystem is under threat, with UN statistics showing that 97% of the ecosystem has been damaged.
Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the international community to jointly respond to climate change and biodiversity loss when delivering a speech via video link on Thursday at the opening of the high-level segment of the second part of the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on the Diversity of Biological Biodiversity (COP15).
Xi said we should work together to complete the post-2020 global framework on biodiversity and set goals and pathways for protecting global biodiversity.
China will do its best to support other developing countries through the Belt and Road Initiative International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) and help them take global biodiversity policy to a new level, Xi said.
In his speech, he also mentioned the Kunming Biodiversity Fund to show that China will do its best to help developing countries protect biodiversity.
At the COP15 leaders’ summit in Kunming, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, in October last year, Xi announced China’s initiative to establish the Kunming Biodiversity Fund, with investments of 1.5 billion yuan (about $215 million) to lead support for biodiversity conservation in developing countries.
Over the years, China has supported international efforts to protect biodiversity. It was one of the first signatories and ratifiers of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and has been the largest contributor to the main budget of the CBD and its protocols since 2019.
According to China’s White Paper on Biodiversity Conservation, China has assisted more than 80 developing countries in biodiversity conservation as part of South-South cooperation.
Domestically, in recent years, China has promoted the development of a nature reserve system based on national parks, established national red lines for ecological protection, and promoted the integrated conservation and systematic restoration of mountains, rivers, forests, farms, lakes, grasslands and deserts.
The first series of national parks, including Hainan Rainforest National Park and Giant Panda National Park, were established last year, and more are planned. The international community has also recognized the ecological protection lines as an innovative model of nature conservation. The lines cover areas that are critical for the functioning of the environment or ecologically sensitive to protect the vast majority of rare and threatened species and their habitats.
As a result, wildlife habitats have expanded and their populations are growing in China, according to the white paper titled “Biodiversity Conservation in China” released by the State Council Information Office in 2021.
For example, the population of giant pandas in the wild has increased from 1,114 to 1,864 over the last 40 years. Meanwhile, the number of crested ibises has increased from just seven to more than 5,000, and the number of Hainanese gibbons, the world’s rarest and most endangered gibbon species, has increased from fewer than 10 in the 1980s to at least 36 now. .
The white paper said that China has established nearly 10,000 nature reserves, accounting for about 18% of the total land area.
In the future, China will continue to improve the diversity and sustainability of its ecosystems.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-12-16/China-injects-vitality-into-global-biodiversity-protection-1fN8y6sz2r6/index.html
See original content: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cgtn-china-boosts-global-biodiversity-conservation-301705508.html
Questions and contact:
jiang simin,
+86-188-2655-3286,
[email protected]