Efforts to advance biodiversity conservation in China is generally not well understood in the West. But with China set to host the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) this October, China’s conservation initiatives are likely to receive more attention.
One of the most established NGOs in China’s conservation sector is the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), which was founded in 1985 and now operates several programs ranging from public interest litigation to community conservation areas to environmental education.
As secretary general of CBCGDF, Jinfeng Zhou has played a central role in CBCGDF’s work around the CBD and beyond. Zhou says that China has been doing “an impressive amount of work” on conservation domestically in recent years.