On 18 Sept 2020, Dr. Linxiu Zhang, Director of the United Nations Environment Programme-International Ecosystem Management Partnership (UNEP-IEMP), was invited to participate in the Dialogue program held by CGTN to share her understanding and insights on the past, present, and future of United Nations (UN) at its 75th anniversary.
During the discussion, the participants agreed on UN’s relevance and significance to the world today is stronger than ever. A collective commitment to multilateralism needs to be reaffirmed to go through global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the relevance of UN today, Director Zhang mentioned that UN is still very relevant and significant to the world today. It is important to affirm multilateral collaboration and empower the nations with UN’s support to get through the challenges and difficulties because no one can be left out of this pandemic. On China’s role and contribution, she pointed out that as President Xi expressed in the China statement at the 75th anniversary of UN, China would continuously support UN, with North-South Cooperation as the main channel and South-South Cooperation as a supplement. On the impacts of the COVID-19 on SDGs, she said that the pandemic really set back all SDGs, but there is still hope if the nations can work together and form multilateral efforts to make sure negotiations can be changed into collaborations and joint actions can be taken.
To watch the full Dialogue video, please click here.
