China pledges $230 million for biodiversity fund at UN meet
Media staff members watch a live image of China's President Xi Jinping speaking at the media center of the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming, in China's southwestern Yunnan province on Tuesday. AFP-Yonhap
China on Tuesday pledged about $230 million to establish a fund to protect biodiversity in developing countries.
President Xi Jinping, speaking by video to a U.N. conference in the southwest Chinese city of Kunming, said that China would put in 1.5 billion yuan and called on other countries to contribute to the Kunming Biodiversity Fund.
The weeklong meeting marks the formal start of a new round of global talks on protecting the world's plants and animals from extinction and preserving the ecosystems they depend on. A second and final session that will try to agree on targets for the next 10 years is scheduled to be held in Kunming from April 25 to May 8 next year.
The world has failed to reach most of the current 10-year goals, the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, set in Japan in 2010. Greenpeace, the environmental group, said countries need to focus on not just setting new targets but also financing and meeting them.
“The Kunming Biodiversity Fund launched today should jump-start an urgently needed conversation on biodiversity finance,” it said in a statement. “Our planet needs not just another set of targets on paper, but their actual fulfillment.” (AP)