China says protecting nature a 'priority' ahead of UN biodiversity talks
Gulf Times
A red-crowned crane spreads its wings in Zhalong Nature Reserve, in Heilongjiang province.
China will make the protection of nature a priority and crack down on damage to habitats, the government said in a policy paper days before it hosts talks aimed at drawing up a new global biodiversity treaty.
China has acknowledged that decades of industrial development and rapid urbanisation have devastated ecosystems, put dozens of species on the brink of extinction and raised the risk of spreading lethal zoonotic diseases like Covid-19.
Beijing has been trying to reverse the damage by putting areas off-limits to development, cracking down on wildlife trafficking and demolishing thousands of construction projects that encroached on nature reserves.
A new biodiversity ‘white paper’ published on Friday acknowledged China "has a long way to go" but said it had identified 2.763 million square kilometres of "priority conservation" areas - 28.8% of its total territory.