Chinese Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu said on Tuesday that actions are needed to address the challenges of the global biodiversity crisis. 

Huang made the remarks in Montreal, Canada at a press conference ahead of the opening of the second phase of the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). 

Huang, president of the Conference, said that the Earth's ecosystem is currently facing an unprecedented crisis, and the situation of global biodiversity continues to deteriorate. According to him, Parties to the Convention and stakeholders are eager to take urgent actions to find the right path to address the challenges of the global biodiversity crisis and reverse the situation of biodiversity loss as soon as possible. 

The Chinese minister also pointed out some major difficulties and challenges in the current negotiations: how to find a balance between conservation, sustainable use and benefit sharing to ensure a framework that is both ambitious and pragmatic; how to fill in the significant funding gaps and solve the differences in funding mechanisms.  

He noted that much progress has been made in discussions around access to digital sequence information, the basis for a large amount of current research in the life sciences, enabling efficient and equitable sharing of organismal DNA and RNA data, and benefit sharing, but many technical and policy issues remain to be resolved. 

Huang said that he as president of the conference will work in four areas: hosting high-level meetings and seeking high-level consensus; conducting targeted dialogue and consultation on key issues in a transparent and fair manner; ensuring broad participation of all stakeholders, and continuously optimizing and adjusting the agenda of the meeting.

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