Beijing, 29 January 2017: The United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment)– National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) bilateral cooperation meeting was held recently. It was attended by delegates from both sides.

Shigang Zhang, Coordinator of UN Environment’s China Office and Feng Feng, Director General, NSFC expressed deep recognition on the bilateral work done by both partners in recent years in the area of climate change, ecosystem and chemicals. They expressed hope for more joint project applications in the future. Both partners stressed on the need to adjust the key cooperation areas from climate change, ecosystem and chemicals to climate change, ecosystem, resource efficiency and environmental governance.

They also showed willingness to hold a ‘Workshop on Ecological Protection and Livelihood Under Climate Change in Africa’ this year, which is being proposed by UNEP-IEMP. It will highlight the achievements of the bilateral projects done so far.

During the meeting, Yongtao Zhang, Division Chief, NSFC, introduced the organization’s responses to and plans on the national strategy for the ‘Belt and Road‘ Initiative. In terms of NSFC’s work related to B&R, Shigang Zhang, Dr Jian Liu (Director of UNEP-IEMP) and Prof Linxiu Zhang (Co-Director of UNEP-IEMP) put forward their respective suggestions including making a good top-down design, making full use of international collaboration networks (including United Nations), communicating in commonly-used international languages, paying attention to the livelihoods in partner countries and winning people’s support from these countries.

Important Notice:
UN Environment- NSFC project application in four key areas is open from February 16 – April 21, 2017. The information is available at: http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/publish/portal0/tab38/info53892.htm