The year 2020 will be remembered for a succession of disasters: forest fires, locust invasions, and the deadliest of all, the COVID-19 pandemic, which have disrupted economic and social activities worldwide. And the natural decline in biodiversity continues to get worse around the world. In its latest Living Planet Report 2020 released on September 10, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) states that global vertebrate species populations declined by an average of 68 percent between 1970 and 2016.

People around the globe are now forced to rethink the relationship between mankind and nature. How to restore natural life and conserve biodiversity in order to ensure human wellbeing and long-term development?

In his speech delivered via video on September 30 at the UN Summit on Biodiversity at the 75th Session of the UN General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned that accelerating species extinction, biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation constitute a major risk to human survival and development. According to him, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the simple fact that mankind and nature are a community of common destiny.

Following the concept of ecological civilization, China has made great efforts in recent years to strengthen environmental protection and promote sustainable production and consumption.

The country has fulfilled its obligations under climate change, biodiversity and other treaties related to the environment, achieving excellent results in the area of biodiversity protection, Elizabeth Mrema, Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), told Xinhua News Agency.

An active role

According to Cui Shuhong, Director of the Department of Nature Conservation of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, China is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, and one of the first countries to join the CBD. Its biodiversity protection system operates on three levels: government, businesses and people.

The Central Government has formulated policies, regulations and plans on the protection of biodiversity. At the local level, more than 20 provincial governments, such as Sichuan and Heilongjiang, have also developed their respective strategies and action plans.

China has creatively set up an ecological protection red line system. Currently, this represents about 25 percent of the country's land surface, and most of the important ecosystems are effectively protected in the space delimited by this line. The total area of various nature reserves represents 18 percent of the land area, reaching the Aichi Target of 17 percent earlier than expected.

Businesses are also an important force for sustainable global biodiversity development. Chinese companies have been participating in the prevention and fight against silting up in the Kubuqi Desert, the country's seventh largest desert in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China. Thanks to continuous efforts, the forest and vegetation cover of the desert has increased significantly, and the number of species has gone up from less than 10 to 530. More than 100 species of plants and wild animals that had disappeared for many years have been rehabilitated there.

"Beyond a simple preventive approach, China has created business opportunities in desert areas, such as research, desert vegetation development and tourism, to achieve sustainable development," Nasser Bouchiba, Dean of the Africa-China Development Cooperation Association in Rabat, Morocco, told People's Daily. Morocco and other countries have started to draw inspiration from Chinese experiences in combating desertification, a gold mine of data that China makes available to the whole world, he added.

In 2017, the World Wildlife Fund, TRAFFIC and International Fund for Animal Welfare, along with 11 Chinese Internet-related companies including Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, launched the first business coalition with a plan to combat global cybercrime related to wildlife. Until March 2020, members of this coalition have deleted or blocked around 3 million messages on their platforms concerning the illegal trade in endangered species and related products.

In recent years, Chinese environmental NGOs have gained prominence, and public awareness of environmental protection has increased significantly. They are now playing a major role in this field and represent the group most active in the protection of biodiversity. Ant Forest, an online tree planting program initiated by Alipay, Alibaba Group's mobile payment platform, has protected more than 130 million square meters of forest.

International cooperation

Environmental challenges cannot be addressed by any single country alone, and international cooperation must be strengthened.

Over the years, China has actively promoted international cooperation to build a green "Belt and Road," establishing a platform of cooperation conducive to green development, covering ecosystem assessment and management, partnerships between business and biodiversity, sustainable agriculture, dryland management, and sustainable supply chains, etc.

In 2019, President Xi and visiting French President Emmanuel Macron reached an important consensus on the conservation of biodiversity, and jointly launched the Beijing Appeal on Conservation of Biodiversity and Climate Change. China has also established bilateral cooperation with other countries, including Germany, Norway, the UK and South Africa.

In Africa, China has made environmental protection a major area of cooperation. In addition to the environmental protection equipment made available, it has trained officials and technicians in the protection of flora and fauna.

"The African continent is known for its great biodiversity. Sino-African scientific cooperation helps promote the transfer and development of technologies to protect the African ecosystem," Felix Dakola, Dean of the African Academy of Sciences in Nairobi, Kenya, told People's Daily. African countries wish to deepen cooperation with China in the field of science and technology for the protection of the continent's natural resources, he noted.

In May 2021, CBD stakeholders will meet in Kunming, Yunnan Province in southwest China, to discuss the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which will address the definition of goals and targets for conservation and increased resource mobilization to optimize the effectiveness of CBD implementation.

"China is committed to seeking consensus and promoting the achievement of the COP15 targets," said Cui. 

(Print Edition Title: Protecting Nature)   

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