On October 14th, the inaugural meeting of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) project “Building the Yellow Sea-Bohai Spotted Seal Marine Conservation Area Network” was held in Panjin, Liaoning Province.

CBCGDF representative delivered a speech, shared as the following:

Today, we can gather here precisely because of the project “Building the Yellow Sea-Bohai Spotted Seal Marine Conservation Area Network” launched by CBCGDF and supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) small grants program, the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and the second phase project office of the Yellow Sea Large Marine Ecosystem (YSLME). This is our honor, our opportunity, and our responsibility. Through this project, we will do a better job in the protection of the spotted seal and continue to expand our team and improve our work capacity.

Over the past three years, the CBCGDF has started from scratch and now has established 131 China Conservation Areas (CCAfa) sites. This is the result of the joint efforts of the directors of all the CCAfa, from no one knows it, to be famous in the world, from not having any financial support, to win all kinds of support and awards. Over the past five years, with your support, we have carried out a lot of work, and now we have a better situation. I hope that every CCAfa can make every project actively promoted through every day’s efforts.

Human beings have experienced primitive civilization, agricultural civilization, and industrial civilization. The crisis of biodiversity and climate caused by the industrial era has made industrial civilization unsustainable and made human habitat face loss. Therefore, our biggest goal at present is to protect the human habitat. This is why we should advocate vigorously promoting the construction of ecological civilization.

The large-scale destruction of human habitat needs everyone’s action to achieve. To this end, Dr. Zhou Jinfeng, the Secretary-General of the CBCGDF, proposed the “Human-based Solutions” (HbS) aims to advocate that people’s protection is the most important force; only taking “I” as the center and starting to change ourselves can help solve problems. An individual's own change can also affect other people, enterprises, institutions, governments, and other social units to make changes. The best example is the director of all the CCAfa here.

The core characteristics of CCAfa are also highly consistent with the concept of “HbS”:

1. Not subject to the boundary and approval of the “ecological protection red line” conservation area. The scope of protection will also change according to the migration route and habitat changes;

2. Take human protection as the core idea;

3. It is an effective supplement to the existing national conservation area system at all levels;

4. Its most important characteristics are “community”, “timeliness” and “change”.

Society, community, rapid, beneficial, complementary and changing - these are the significant advantages of our CCAfa.

The project of "Building the Yellow Sea-Bohai Spotted Seal Marine Conservation Area Network" supported by the UN is a start to let us meet more responsibilities, more opportunities, more honors and more trust with outstanding achievements. Starting from this project, our cause of CCAfa will be more extensive and in-depth into the international vision and focus. The CBCGDF will mobilize all kinds of resources and spare no effort to support the development of CCAfa.

Now, we can start from the implementation of the project and take an important step in internationalization.

Thank you.

(Photo credit: CBCGDF)

Original Chinese article:

http://www.cbcgdf.org/NewsShow/4854/10127.html

By / Xue Tongtong