KUNMING, May 22 (Xinhua) -- The 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will be delayed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to its organizer.
The event under the United Nations was originally scheduled to be held from Oct. 15 to 28 in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, with the theme of "Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth."
The venue of the meeting will remain the same, but the time will be determined at a later date, Gao Zhengwen, an official with the Yunnan provincial bureau of the ecology and environment, told a press conference Friday, marking the International Day for Biological Diversity.
Also on Friday, Yunnan released a white paper on the province's biological diversity, the first of its kind in China, said Gao.
Accounting for only 4.1 percent of China's territorial area, Yunnan has more than 50 percent of the country's biological species, according to the white paper.
The province has established 166 nature reserves at different levels, protecting 85 percent of important species, including Asian elephants and Yunnan golden snub-nosed monkeys, it said. Enditem
