China encourages countries to seek compromises at COP15 biodiversity conference

Photo by: Ilyuza Mingazova / Unsplash

The UN Conference on Biodiversity COP15 will be held from 7 to 19 December 2022 in Montreal, Canada. China’s Vice Minister of Ecology and Environment, Zhao Yingming, urged participants in advance to seek compromises on key issues and work towards the adoption of a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. He said this during the UN climate summit COP27, which ended on 20 November 2022.

“Biodiversity reduction and climate change are the two major environmental challenges facing the world today, their causes are closely interlinked and require a coordinated response and systemic control,” Zhao Yingming said.

After four rounds of consultations by the working group, progress has been made in negotiating the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, he said. But there are still significant differences on several important issues.

“As COP15 chairing country, China has spared no effort to play a leading and coordinating role in the negotiations,” stressed Zhao Yingming. The first phase of COP15 was held in 2021 in Kunming, China. It resulted in the Kunming Declaration.

Biodiversity is the diversity of all forms of life on Earth, from the smallest bacteria to the largest mammals. The air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat all depend on functioning biodiversity ecosystems.

Conserving biodiversity is no less important than combating global warming. Unlike climate change, which can be ‘reversed’ even if it takes thousands of years, the extinction of entire species is irreversible.

The five biggest threats to biodiversity are active land and sea use, natural resource exploitation, the climate crisis, pollution and invasive species.

Cover photo: Morgane Perraud / Unsplash