At 8 am on October 27th, Beijing time, the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 16) was held in Cali, Colombia. The official parallel event of the conference, the 8th Global Local Governments and Cities Summit, officially announced the list of the second “Charming Biodiversity City”, and 9 Chinese cities including Shaoxing were successfully selected.
It is reported that the “Charming Biodiversity City” selection aims to showcase and commend cities and regions that have made outstanding achievements in the field of biodiversity conservation, and jointly promote the implementation of global biodiversity governance goals. “This honor is the highest praise and affirmation of the achievements made by our city in biodiversity conservation over the years.” A relevant person in charge of the Shaoxing Municipal Ecological Environment Bureau said.
In recent years, based on the actual needs of balancing biodiversity conservation and high-quality economic and social development, Shaoxing has taken the creation of a charming biodiversity city as a carrier, and has made comprehensive efforts in promoting the overall governance of the ecological environment, continuous improvement of environmental quality, and implementation of co-construction and sharing by the whole society, and has systematically built a biodiversity conservation work model with overall linkage and efficient operation.
According to the biodiversity baseline survey and assessment, Shaoxing has a total of 4,781 species, mainly including 2,249 higher plants, 298 birds, 685 insects, 31 amphibians, 54 reptiles, 60 mammals, 322 phytoplankton, 225 zooplankton, 178 fungi, 381 algae, 298 benthic animals, etc. Among them, 102 species of wild animals and plants are under national key protection. In addition, new species such as narrow-leaved loosestrife and Mengwen Qin frog were discovered.
Nature reserves are ecological protection barriers for maintaining biodiversity. Shaoxing has successively reserved (developed and built) 29 nature reserves such as nature reserves, forest parks, wetland parks, and scenic spots; formulated and issued the overall plans for various nature reserves such as Shaoxing Shunjiangyuan, Zhuji Dongbaishan, and Jianhu Wetland; actively built 61 biodiversity monitoring plots in key areas, and established a biodiversity observation network covering the entire city.
Everyone’s participation is the social foundation for maintaining biodiversity. Shaoxing actively cultivates and builds 18 provincial and municipal biodiversity experience sites and 8 biodiversity-friendly enterprises. At the same time, it carefully builds a digital platform of “One Map of Ecological Footprint” that integrates ecological display, species protection experience, and popular science education to guide the public to participate in biodiversity protection.
The relevant person in charge of the Shaoxing Municipal Ecological Environment Bureau said that in the future, it will actively build five “friendly” brands of management-friendly, protection-friendly, safety-friendly, utilization-friendly, and public-friendly, constantly innovate the system and mechanism, improve the governance capacity and level, and strive to create a new model of Jiangnan water town with beautiful mountains and rivers, flourishing things, and harmonious coexistence between man and nature, and contribute more Shaoxing wisdom and strength to global biodiversity protection.