The General Annual Meeting of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) will be held in Tucson, Arizona, from November 8th to 9th. Every year, members of the International Dark-Sky Association gather at the Annual General Meeting and Conference where they share lessons learned around influencing policy, advocacy, general education about dark skies, exchange ideas, and explore strategies for protecting our dark and natural nights. The Annual General Meeting and Conference is an opportunity to network with other IDA members and help strengthen the protection of the dark sky in the future. At this IDA Annual General Meeting, the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) will send two young representatives to participate in the meeting and will share the good stories and good cases of the CBCGDF in participating in the construction of China’s ecological civilization and green development.

In recent years, China has officially written ecological civilization into its Constitution. In the 19th National Congress report, energy conservation has also been proposed - "Promoting the revolution of energy production and consumption and building a clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient energy system. Promoting the comprehensive conservation and recycling of resources, implement national water-saving actions, reduce energy and material consumption, and realize the circular links between production and living systems. Advocate a simple and moderate, green and low-carbon lifestyle, oppose extravagant waste and unreasonable consumption, and carry out actions such as creating conservation-oriented organs, green families, green schools, green communities as well as green travel."

The protection of the dark sky is a cause of great social significance for the benefit of future generations. As a leading non-governmental organization devoted to biodiversity conservation and green development in China, the CBCGDF has done a lot of work to promote the protection of the dark sky in recent years: the CBCGDF Dark Sky Work Committee prepared the “China Dark and Starry Sky Conservation Area Conference”; promoted the establishment of 5 Dark and Starry Sky Conservation Areas, including Geyuan Town (Jiangxi Province) and Qinshui County (Shanxi Province) and so on; launched a series of university science popularization activities of “Light Pollution and Dark Sky Protection” in 2019, to introduce and popularize the relevant knowledge of the protection of the dark sky for college students, and encourage young people to participate more in the work of the protection of the dark sky; formulated and published the Project Standards for Dark and Starry Sky Conservation Areas. Through various aspects of work, the CBCGDF hopes to guide the public to have a deeper understanding of the concept of ecological civilization, strive for more social attention, thinking and action, and put into practice the idea of jointly building a community of human destiny, and act as a guardian and practitioner of building a better future.

This year, the IDA’s General Annual Meeting theme is “Shooting for the Stars”. The meeting will focus on peer-to-peer learning by the network of defenders working to protect the natural nighttime environment, and the steps we can take, big and small, to combat light pollution in our communities and protect natural darkness globally. At that time, representatives of the CBCGDF will preach China’s good story and spread China’s good voice to all the guests, so that the world can understand a more real and beautiful China.

(Photo credit: IDA)

Original Chinese article:

http://www.cbcgdf.org/NewsShow/4937/10079.html

By / Xue Tongtong