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KUNMING. – World leaders yesterday called for global awareness, broad consensus and concrete actions to preserve biodiversity at a United Nations conference held in China.
The 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, known as COP15, kicked off a day earlier in Kunming, the capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province. It attracts over 5 000 representatives from governments, international organisations, research institutes and enterprises.
The leaders, in their speeches via video, pledged to make bold efforts at a time when the world is facing a worsening crisis of biodiversity loss.
“Our two-century-long experiment with burning fossil fuels, destroying forests, wilderness and oceans, and degrading the land, has caused a biosphere catastrophe,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
The UN chief described humanity’s interference with nature as a “suicidal war” and stressed that “we are losing” it.
To reverse biodiversity loss, the leaders participating in COP15 urge a nature-based approach to develop the global economy.
The development of ecological civilization should be taken as a guide to coordinate the relationship between humans and nature, Chinese President Xi Jinping said, adding that human activities need to be kept within the limits of the ecology and environment.
Themed “Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth,” the meeting is the first global conference convened by the UN to highlight ecological civilization, a philosophy proposed by China.
Stressing that more than half of global gross domestic product depends on high-functioning biodiversity and ecosystem services, President of Costa Rica Carlos Alvarado Quesada said the economic benefits of protecting biodiversity outweigh the costs.
If the international community wants a successful economy and future and to create jobs, “restoring and conserving our land and ocean is critical,” he added.
Britain’s Prince Charles urged taking bold decisions in this regard. He said the decisions “can regenerate hundreds of millions — if not billions — of hectares of degraded land throughout the world, thus protecting and restoring our planet’s biodiversity and making nature the engine of our economies.”
COP15 will take place in two parts. The first part will last until Friday, with parallel activities featuring forums on topics including climate change and ecological conservation. The second part of the meeting, which is expected to be held next year, will review and make a decision on the “post-2020 global biodiversity framework,” a blueprint for biodiversity conservation for the decade to come. – Xinhua
Online Reporter