First part of COP15 meeting to open in China's Kunming

The first part of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) will kick off on Monday in Kunming, capital of China's Yunnan province.

The meeting will last until Friday, with parallel activities featuring forums on topics including climate change and ecological conservation to be held from Thursday to Friday, reports Xinhua news agency.

More than 1,800 representatives will gather online and offline for the event.

For improving global biodiversity conservation during the 2011-2020 period, the international community outlined 20 action targets in 2010, Liu Sijia, a communication associate from the secretariat of Convention on Biological Diversity said.

None of the goals have been fully realized so far, the officer noted.

The second part of the meeting, which is expected to be held next year, will review and make a decision on the "post-2020 global biodiversity framework" that the international society pins great hopes on, Liu added.

China was among the first countries to become a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity that entered into force in 1993.

So far, the Convention has 196 parties and the Conference of the Parties is the highest mechanism for discussing and making decisions on the Convention - IANS