Xi launches $233m biodiversity fund
President calls on intl community to facilitate global sustainable growth
President Xi Jinping called on Tuesday for international solidarity and cooperation to build a community of all life on Earth, and he announced China's initiative to establish a fund to support developing countries in protecting biodiversity with an initial investment of 1.5 billion yuan ($233 million).
Xi made the statement in a keynote speech at the Leaders' Summit of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP 15, via video link in Beijing.
The phase-one meeting of COP 15 is being held in Kunming, Yunnan province, from Monday to Friday. It will work for the conclusion of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, and identify targets and pathways for global biodiversity protection.
Addressing the summit, Xi called on the international community to make joint efforts to solve the problems brought by industrial development, and build a green, low-carbon and circular economic system to facilitate global sustainable development.
He underlined the need to make the global environmental governance system fairer and more equitable.
"We need to practice true multilateralism, and effectively honor and implement international rules, which are not to be exploited or discarded at one's own will," Xi said.
"The new environmental protection targets we set need to be ambitious on the one hand and pragmatic and balanced on the other."
Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic has cast a shadow over global development and compounded challenges to the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, he said that faced with the dual tasks of economic recovery and environmental protection, developing countries need help and support all the more.
He announced China's initiative to establish a Kunming Biodiversity Fund to support biodiversity protection in developing countries. China is taking the lead in investing 1.5 billion yuan, and is calling for and welcoming contributions from other parties to the fund, Xi said.
