COP14 on wetlands conservation opens Saturday

WUHAN - The 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (COP14) kicked off Saturday in China's Wuhan and Switzerland's Geneva.

It is the first time the conference is held in China, as the world's most populous nation highlights the harmony between humanity and nature while pushing for modernization.

The meeting, scheduled to run from Nov 5 to 13, will take place both physically and online, with its main venue in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province, and a parallel session running in Geneva, Switzerland.

More than 1,000 delegates from contracting parties and international organizations will attend the meeting, which will discuss the future development of the convention, said Meng Xianlin, director of the meeting's executive committee office.

The agenda also includes updating the list of wetland cities and establishing the International Mangrove Center in China.

The Ramsar Convention, named after the city of Ramsar in Iran, where the convention was signed in 1971, is an intergovernmental agreement dedicated to the conservation and rational use of wetland ecosystems. To date, it has 172 contracting parties.

Since its accession to the convention in 1992, China has established a legal framework for wetlands protection while actively fulfilling its obligations under the convention. Over the past decade, China has added or restored more than 800,000 hectares of wetlands, according to the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.