Opinion | Ahead of COP15 summit, China cracks whip on environmental corruption in Kunming
- China is due to host a major environmental meeting that it hopes will put Kunming, known as ‘City of Eternal Spring’, on the map
- But this hasn’t stopped the Chinese leadership from exposing a scandal involving local officials and developers to build projects in conservation areas
And the Dianchi Lake, the biggest freshwater lake in the province and the sixth-largest in the country, is a top tourist destination billed as “a pearl on the plateau”, referring to the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, home to a vast diversity of flora and fauna. More than half of China’s plant species and protected wild animals are found here.
This probably explains why the Chinese leadership has chosen the city to host a key United Nations biodiversity summit, officially known as the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention of Biological Diversity.
COP15, the biggest diversity summit in a decade, will be the first time China takes the lead in forging a major international accord for nature, similar to the Paris climate agreement.
So it comes as a surprise that Chinese leaders have decided to expose a scandal involving local officials and property developers in Kunming, who colluded to breach local and national laws to build residential buildings and golf courses in conservation areas along the shorelines of the Dianchi Lake.
Since last weekend, state media have carried extensive reports based on the month-long probe by the central government environmental investigators, who found blatant destruction of the ecosystem around the lake, which covers about 310 square kilometres in the southern suburbs of Kunming.
