BEIJING (Reuters) – The schedule of the second phase of the COP15 global biodiversity talks in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming in April is “likely to be affected” by new COVID-19 risks, environment ministry spokesman Liu Youbin said on Monday.
The second phase was supposed to see the completion of a new post-2020 global deal on biodiversity protection, following on the first round of talks in Kunming last October.
A follow-up meeting scheduled for January in Geneva had already been cancelled as a result of a new wave of coronavirus infections caused by the Omicron variant.
(Reporting by Muyu Xu and David Stanway; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
