China: COP15 opens in Kunming, an essential meeting for the environment
If the insects disappear due to the abuse of pesticides, the cost to compensate for this destruction approaches more than 200 billion dollars a year, according to the environmental activist Terry Townsheng.
RFI / Elisa Drago
Text by: Stéphane Lagarde Follow
4 min
It is this Monday, October 11 that the COP15 on biodiversity opens in Kunming, in the southwest of the country, where elephants recently walked.
The launch of crucial negotiations to try to repair a nature deeply degraded by man.
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From our correspondent in Beijing,
China has chosen to host the event in its natural reservoir.
Broad-billed parrot, snub-nosed monkey and wild elephant are featured on the posters of this 15th Conference of the Parties to the
United Nations Convention on Biodiversity
which is being held until October 15 in the capital of Yunnan.
This southern province, which represents only 4% of the national territory, shelters in its tropical forests in the south and its cold forests in the mountains of the north ¾ of the protected species of the country.
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To read also
: A herd of stray elephants in southwest China
First virtual phase
The first phase of the conference this week is essentially formal.
This is to ensure the handover of the COP presidency between Egypt and China.
Debates via screens interposed between government representatives are also on the agenda.
The launch of this new round of negotiations should lead to new commitments in the spring of next year, during the second phase of the summit to be held from April 25 to May 8, 2022.
This two-step format was retained after several postponements due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
COP15 intersects with
COP26 on climate in Glasgow
in November, where nature should be put forward to mitigate the effects of increasingly devastating climate change.
For the NGOs who made the trip, it is a question of not reproducing the failure of the previous agreement on biodiversity. “
For the 2020 deadline, no less than twenty objectives had been set and none has actually been achieved,
recalls Terry Townsheng,
reached
via WeChat messaging in Kunming,
what will be played out at COP15 in the coming months is therefore crucial. for the future of our environment.
And for that, we have to get the flora and fauna out of purely environmental issues. "
We must avoid that the issue of biodiversity is confined to the ministries of the environment which have a relatively low weight in government policies,"
continues this environmental activist and member of the Paulson Institute in China.
We expect from this summit an ambitious agreement with deadlines set in stone, but also an inclusion of biodiversity on the agenda of Heads of State, Prime Ministers, Ministries of Finance etc
”.
Biodiversity and health
The protection of life is an economic issue, insists some of the experts gathered in southwest China.
By destroying the services provided by nature, we shoot ourselves in the foot.
Pollination is often cited here as an example: if the insects disappear due to the abuse of pesticides, the cost to compensate for this destruction approaches more than 200 billion dollars per year, still affirms Terry Townsheng.
In addition to the economy, damage to biodiversity has a consequence on public health. A message picked up, including by the Chinese media, in the country where a new SARS was discovered in 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the regulation of the trade in wildlife on the markets in China. The sale of species included in the International Convention on Endangered Flora and Fauna (CITES) is strictly prohibited. The vertebrate population has declined by an average of 68% over the past 15 years, with species elimination 1,000 times greater than the natural death rate, according to
a WWF study
.
"
It is a tragedy not only because these species will not return,
underlines the ecologist of the Paulson Institute,
but also because it poses enormous risks on human development and prosperity.
The way we use nature puts stress on ecosystems.
When we destroy biodiversity, stressed animals are less immune and are potentially virus diffusers, as evidenced by the emergence of a significant number of zoonotic diseases in recent decades -Sras-Cov1, Mers, Ebola, HIV, Sras-Cov2 -.
"
Elements on which the Chinese president could return in a speech scheduled for tomorrow Tuesday.
Then there will be six months left for the negotiators to reach an agreement up to the stakes.
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