Pan'an county, Jinhua, East China's Zhejiang province, was invited to share its biodiversity protection and development experience through video during the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15, which kicked off in Montreal, Canada, on Dec 7.
Pan'an county was one of six Chinese examples and the only one to be recommended in Zhejiang province.
In the video, Jin Yan, Party secretary of Pan'an county, gave a speech sharing the path to sustainable utilization of traditional Chinese medicinal materials in the "millennium medicine county".
Dapan Mountain, located in Pan'an county, is China's only national nature reserve that protects wild medicinal germplasm. The mountain develops 1,219 kinds of medicinal plants, accounting for 68 percent of the total in Zhejiang province, among which 154 kinds are recorded in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, accounting for 25 percent of all recorded medicinal plants.
In May 2003, Pan'an set up the National Nature Reserve Administration to coordinate the protection of the natural environment and natural resources, scientific research, investigation and punishment of illegal activities such as digging and poaching in the nature resource. A comprehensive network of conservationists was also established to minimize the impact of human activities on the reserve’s ecosystems.
Pan'an is currently home to 1,612 species of wild plants, 281 species of wild animals, and more than 300 species of terrestrial vertebrates, among which there are 1,092 species of medicinal plants in the reserve.
In 2021, through digital standardized and structured governance, Pan'an reduced the consumption of pesticides and chemical fertilizers by 60 percent and increased the effective TCM ingredients by 15.6 percent.
