BEIJING: A senior United Nations official has spoken highly of China’s contribution as COP15 president, saying the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, reached by the parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity under China’s leadership, is comparable to the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement in the climate realm.
China assumed the presidency of COP15 — the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity — in 2018 and was supposed to relinquish it in 2020, said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
However, China has had the presidency for six years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“No one else has ever had the presidency for a COP for so long,” she said. “Usually, it’s one year or two years. “So this six years was a heavy burden for China to carry for the world, I am sure. But China has served with distinction.”
Under China’s presidency, parties agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022, which Andersen said is like “the Paris Agreement of biodiversity”.
“I mean, China has always played a big role in global environmental governance, I would say,” she said. “And there is no bigger role in taking the presidency for a conference of parties at this very critical time, 2018 to 2024.” She especially highlighted the decision of parties under the Chinese presidency to revisit subsidies and to make sure they are not nature-negative.
“Today, we estimate that we need about $700 billion a year to keep nature in a good balance,” she said. “But today about $200 billion goes into biodiversity on an annual basis… so we can say maybe $500 billion is missing.”
She said negative subsidies — encouraging actions like the overuse of chemicals and fertilizers, as well as over-deforestation and overfishing — are still seen in many countries, resulting in harm to the world’s biodiversity resources. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
