Make an Inventory of China's Biodiversity

The Convention on Biological Diversity, which entered into force in 1993, establishes three main goals: the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits from the use of genetic resources. However, the achievement of these objectives depends primarily on background knowledge of these components, including the names, morphological descriptions, origins, and environment and ecological settings of various species. In China, scientists have made enormous efforts at sharpening the understanding in this regard by identifying and cataloguing the species into monographs and databases. The following is a brief introduction to several examples of such magnificent efforts in this country.