Chinese border province steps up biodiversity protection

Southwest China's Yunnan province has taken multiple measures to protect biodiversity in recent years, local authorities said.

The province has continuously carried out species rescue and protection efforts, especially for plant species with extremely small populations (PSESP), said Wang Weibin, deputy director of the provincial forestry and grassland administration.

More than 120 rescue and protection projects targeting such plants have been implemented in the last five years, and 30 protection zones of different sizes have been marked. With these projects and zones, Yunnan is effectively preserving and restoring incredibly rare plants such as pinus squamata, or the Qiaojia pine, he said.

Yunnan was the first province in China to put forward a PSESP protection initiative in 2004. By 2010, it had identified 112 target species, Wang said.

With a 4,060 km border, Yunnan has also enhanced cross-border biodiversity preservation with countries including Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The provincial capital Kunming is making preparations to host the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), scheduled for May 2021.

Themed "Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth," the event will review the post-2020 biodiversity framework and set new global biodiversity targets for 2030.