Activities to raise environmental issue awareness

Twenty-six activities will be launched on May 22 as part of the government's action plan on biodiversity conservation, International Biodiversity Day, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said at a seminar for environmental journalists in Beijing on Friday.

In China the theme of this year's International Biodiversity Day is "biodiversity and the management of natural reserves".

Six community-based activities have been planned, including biodiversity lectures for college students.

China signed the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992. The convention, which was initiated at the same time as two other international conventions on the environment, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, has three key objectives: the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of biological resources.

The past 20 years have seen the enactment and revision of more than 50 laws and regulations related to biodiversity conservation in China. And in 2010, the government set short-term, mid-term and long-term strategic objectives to conserve biodiversity, aimed at controlling biodiversity losses by 2020 and preventing biodiversity losses by 2030. To this end it has launched investigations into the country's biodiversity, set up monitoring systems and supported scientific studies.