China vows to protect biodiversity at UN meet
KUNMING/BEIJING: China will incorporate biodiversity protection in the development plans of all of its regions and sectors and draw up a national conservation strategy, vice-premier Han Zheng said at the opening of UN biodiversity talks on Monday.
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Protection (CBD), told the opening of the meeting in the city of Kunming, that the world had reached “a moment of truth” when it comes to protecting its ecosystems.
China has vowed to make protecting nature a priority after decades of rapid development and urbanisation devastated ecosystems, put dozens of species on the brink of extinction and raised the risk of lethal zoonotic diseases like Covid-19.
The biodiversity talks, known as COP15, are aimed at building momentum for the signing of a new global biodiversity treaty on reversing massive species loss after countries failed to achieve any of the targets set in Aichi, Japan, in 2010.
After an opening ceremony featuring an ethnic minority musical performance and a film lauding the safe migration of 15 Asian elephants across southwest China this year, Han said China would “make sure its important species and ecological resources were fully protected”.
Han said countries had to look for new funding channels for conservation and had to give full priority to biodiversity protection in infrastructure and land use.
Mrema said the world had not achieved the necessary breakthroughs from 2011-2020 and was not yet able to safeguard ecosystems key to human wellbeing. The ongoing round of the COP15 talks will last until Friday. A post-2020 biodiversity pact is expected to be finalised during the second round in April-May next year.
Up for debate are the “30 by 30 plan” to give 30% of land and oceans protected status by 2030 - a measure supported by a broad coalition of nations, as well as a goal to halve the use of chemicals in agriculture and stop creating plastic waste.
China has not yet committed to the “30 by 30 plan”, despite implementing an “ecological protection red line” system that already puts 25% of its territory out of the reach of developers.
This year’s COP15 gathering was originally set for 2020 and postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to address the conference remotely on Tuesday.
The CBD has been ratified by 195 countries and the European Union - although not the United States, the world’s biggest historical polluter - with parties meeting every two years.