Your Excellency Mr. Huang Runqiu,
Your Excellency Mr. Luo Zhaohui,
Honourable Ministers,
My fellow colleagues of the UN system,
Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am very pleased to join you at the Ministerial Roundtable on Biodiversity Beyond 2020.
I thank the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China for organizing this timely event, which has particular importance for the preparations for the upcoming UN Biodiversity Summit in New York next week and the COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming next year.
I would like to take this opportunity to commend China for its strong commitment and remarkable achievement in biodiversity preservation and sustainable development. It is encouraging that China has accomplished designating 17 per cent of its terrestrial areas as protected areas, as set in Aichi Target 11.
As a mega-biodiversity country in the world, China has demonstrated admirable efforts to preserve biodiversity and restore ecosystem services – guided by its vision of “Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth”.
Distinguished participants,
Biodiversity is the most complex and vital feature of our planet. It is what humanity relies on for air, water, food and medicine. It provides us with protection from natural disasters and regulates the earth ecosystem and the climate.
Yet at a global scale, the world is facing a biodiversity crisis.