On Saturday, more than 700 participants, including leading scholars from over 40 countries, gathered in Beijing to find an answer to a pressing question: How can countries work together to minimize the threat of natural disasters? CGTN's Liu Yang tells us more.

LIU YANG BEIJING "The sheer destructive potential and increase in the number of natural disasters is a huge worry for people in many Silk Road countries. Since the majority of these countries are under-developed, such disasters, and the risks associated with them, can greatly hinder sustainable development. So today's conference is looking for a way around these risks. It aims to promote a greener and more resilient Silk Road through joint actions between leading scientists and research institutes. I managed to get the thoughts of some participants on how this could be done."

CUI PENG ACADEMICIAN, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES "The important thing is to establish a mechanism and a platform for international cooperation. There are many ways for China to collaborate with and help Silk Road countries. One way is through international research cooperation to help Silk Road countries prevent disasters and mitigate their effects. Another way is to help them cultivate their own scientific research personnel. Lastly, there's China's Beidou and Gaofen satellite technologies, which can also help prevent and mitigate the impact of disasters."

TIMOTHY WILCOX OFFICER, ASIA-PACIFIC PROGRAM MANAGEMENT UN INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY FOR DISASTER REDUCTION "One of the key challenges of the science and technology community is that lots of scientists do research all the time, and comes up with some key findings, very informative to the sector, but a lot that research goes to professional journals and not goes to public interests and policymakers, we would like to have that information shared with general population, policymakers, government officials, policy maker, business tourism industry, so we can use that information to build more sustainable communities overall."

MOHAMMAD QASIM JAN PRESIDENT, PAKISTAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES "One of the very important aspect of collaboration is land collaboration, the silk road is passing through exceedingly difficult geographic today, therefore it is essential that we are able to monitor them successfully and minimize the impact on our lives and people's lives as well as the collaboration between countries."