Art Shows for COP15 by Selva Ozelli
- October 01, 2021 02:00
Between the 11th and the 15th of October, Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, will host the Conference of the Parties of the United Nation Convention on Biological Diversity.
This will the 15th occasion that the parties to the Convention - the nations that ratified it, meet, and for this reason the Kunming event is known as the Conference of the Parties 15 (COP15).
The United Nation Convention on Biological Diversity was born in 1992 at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, when world's nations agreed that a global plan is needed to save the world's biodiversity. The ultimate goal of the Convention is to achieve harmony with nature by the year 2050.
Why is biodiversity – the number of species, so important? Biodiversity is key to the stability of the ecosystems such as forests, rivers, grasslands and coral reefs, that we rely on for ecosystem services - food, arable land, clean air and water. Losing species is the same as taking bricks out of wall, one by one - eventually, the wall will collapse, the ecosystem will die. To humanity, the collapse of ecosystems means loss of fisheries, fertile land and drinkable water.
In Kunming, during the COP15, the countries will make decisions for future action, identify new problems and review the progress that has been made in protecting the world's biodiversity. Most importantly, the framework for the global cooperation for the next 20 years will be agreed on.
The host nation – the People' Republic of China, has as its goal becoming the world leader in environmental protection. The vision, and the blueprint, of China's future is called Ecological Civilization – the society and the economy co-existing in harmony with the environment.
For this event I have prepared 14 digital art shows for the general public with the themes of a green recovery from the pandemic:
https://www.cbd.int/action-agenda/contributions/action/?action-id=603271df4c8dc20001adb640
These art shows were selected in UN Art Contests and published in the 2021 United Nations Guide: https://virt.com/search/?term=selva+ozelli&when=past
