Nigeria Times

By Zhang Fan, Yang Wenming, Li Maoying, People’s Daily

In September 2021, Chinese researchers collected the seeds of Desideria himalayensis at an altitude of 6,212 meters at the East Rongbuk Glacier on Mount Qomolangma, setting a new record for plant seed collection at the highest altitude in China.

In July this year, seeds of five species of plants collected during the seed-collection mission on Mount Qomolangma successfully germinated after being preserved in cold storage at minus 20 degrees Celsius for nearly a year.

The success of the germination experiment means that China has collected and preserved the seeds of a plant found at the highest altitude globally so far and laid a foundation for relevant research into germplasm resources in the future.

On Sept. 24, 2021, Guo Yongjie, Zhao Yanhui, and the other six members of the team tasked with the seed-collection mission climbed Mount Qomolangma for the second time, following their first trip in August.

Prior to that, only 15 species of plants were publicly known to have been collected at a height of over 6,100 meters.

In the area referred to as the “forbidden zone of life”, where it is windy, extremely cold, and lacks oxygen, researchers must be very careful with every step they take on their way up the mountain.

The team set off from the transition camp at an altitude of 5,800 meters, and reached a height of around 6,200 meters several hours later.

“Desideria himalayensis,” Guo cried at the sight of the plant that wears camouflage colors. After recognizing the plant growing in a crevice, Guo immediately laid on his stomach to take pictures of it from all angles and recorded the altitude and other information about the spot where the plant was found.

The plant that grew at an altitude of 6,212 meters was the first plant they found at altitudes above 6,000 meters. What made Guo more excited was that some of the siliques of the Desideria himalayensis had split, which meant the team had a chance to collect the seeds of the plant.

Just after Guo collected the Desideria himalayensis, Mount Qomolangma in the distance revealed itself. Seeing the tiny, fragile branches of the plant sway in the wind in stark contrast to the snow-capped mountains in the distance, Guo thought to himself, Mount Qomolangma is awe-inspiring, but the tenacity of life is by no means inferior to it.
　
The seeds collected from Mount Qomolangma were quickly sent to the institute which launched the seed-collection mission – the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species in the Kunming Institute of Botany under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Kunming, the capital of southwest China’s Yunnan province.

“Information about the seeds, such as the time when they were collected, the longitude, latitude, and altitude of the spots where they were collected, as well as the species, the initial quality and quantity of the seeds, must all be put into the database in a timely manner, so that it can be useful for future research and ecological restoration efforts,” said Qin Shaofa, head of the seed management team at the seed storage center of the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species.

According to the standards set by the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species, a complete seed sample needs to have at least 2,500 seeds, with around 10,000 seeds being the best case. However, since seeds are scarce at high altitudes of Mount Qomolangma, it is hardly possible to collect 2,500 seeds, so researchers can only try to collect and preserve as many seeds as possible first.

Qin and his team members put the seeds of plants including Desideria himalayensis and Saussurea gnaphalodes in the main drying room after counting and weighing them. After being kept in an environment with a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius and an air humidity of 15 percent for a month, the water content of the seeds were reduced to around 5 percent.

The precious seeds of plants such as Desideria himalayensis and Saussurea gnaphalodes entered a “dormant period” in a low-temperature and dry environment, and were then sealed up and put in cold storage for long-term preservation.

“It’s possible that these seeds will live several decades and even more than a thousand years in an environment with a constant temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius,” Qin said.

In July this year, the seeds of five species of wild plants collected on Mount Qomolangma, namely Desideria himalayensis, Saussurea gnaphalodes, Pedicularis cheilanthifolia, Oxytropis microphylla, and Hippophae tibetana, were taken out of the cold storage by Yang Juan after being kept there for nearly 10 months.

Yang, a staff member of the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species in charge of seed germination, put the seeds in a drying room to raise their temperature before carefully placing a part of them on agar medium.

“In order to make sure that the seeds stored in the germplasm bank are alive, we test the viability of each seed sample once in a while,” Yang said, adding that the seeds of the five species of wild plants were tested for the first time 10 months after they were collected on Mount Qomolangma.

Within merely nine days, all the seeds had germinated. In particular, the germination of Desideria himalayensis has proven that China has successfully collected and preserved the seeds of a plant found at the highest altitude globally so far.
　
In addition to the seeds of plants collected on Mount Qomolangma, valuable germplasm resources from more than 10,000 species are preserved in the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species.

Since it was put into operation, 87,863 samples of seeds from 10,917 wild plant species in China have been stored in the germplasm bank, and seed samples from 36 percent of China’s flowering plant species are also kept in the facility.

A seed carries the hope of life from the moment it comes into being. The seeds preserved in the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species have without doubt brought more hope to biodiversity protection.

By Liu Leyi

Driven by the development of a new generation of information technology, intelligent logistics is speeding up in China, giving a leg up to the country’s development.

According to statistics, the overall market size of China’s intelligent logistics stood at 35.67 billion yuan ($5.11 billion) in 2020, and the figure surged to 128.05 billion yuan as of October this year, with an average annual compound growth of over 70 percent.

With digitalization, modern warehouses are no longer merely “transfer stations,” but key nodes that offer targeted services. Intelligent warehousing systems now play a crucial role in the logistics sector.

In smart warehouses, cargos are sorted and moved by logistics robots, and real-time information about cargo vehicles is shown on big screens. What’s more, the “last kilometer” problem is now solved by unmanned delivery vehicles that are able to carry all types of parcels.

In the warehouse of an industrial park owned by Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com in Yiwu, east China’s Zhejiang province, over 100 automated guided vehicles are employed. Guided by QR codes and an inertial navigation system, these vehicles are able to precisely deliver cargos to staff members of the warehouse.

“Warehousing is becoming smarter and smarter, turning from person-to-goods to goods-to-person,” said Weng Bo, who’s in charge of the warehouse.

Weng told People’s Daily that the warehouse is able to handle 1,500 orders per hour, which is three times more efficient than traditional models, and the whole industrial park can process as many as 70,000 orders on a daily basis.

Resources are integrated for cargo transport, too. For instance, Wellong Etown, a logistics company based in Zhenjiang, east China’s Jiangsu province, has established a smart online cargo dispatching platform that enables shippers and truck drivers to receive freight forwarding solutions on their mobile phones. With a satellite positioning system developed by the company, the departure time, locations, and destinations of delivery vehicles can all be traced.

Automated and intelligent devices are gradually being employed at the delivery end, with contactless delivery becoming “standard configuration.”

In October this year, six smart delivery vehicles of JD Logistics, a supply chain solutions and logistics services provider of JD.com, were put into trial operation in a testing base for autopilot vehicles in Shunyi district, Beijing.

These vehicles, which can recognize traffic lights, detect pedestrians and keep staying in the right lane, have a maximum capacity of 200 kilograms and a range of 100 kilometers. They are able to complete over 200 deliveries per day.

These vehicles can send parcels to service areas that are far from distribution centers and then hand them to couriers for final deliveries.

He Tian, vice president of JD.com and head of JD Logistics AI and Data Science, told People’s Daily that intelligent logistics would enter a new era by 2025, in which artificial intelligence would contribute to the efficient automated development of all logistics links.

“In the future, we’ll keep developing the logistics sector with technologies and constantly improving delivery efficiency and service quality to ensure the safety of all logistics links,” He noted.

By Olubusi Olakayode Nifemi

The United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) ended in Montreal, Canada, on 19 December 2022 with a landmark agreement to guide global action on nature through to 2030. Representatives from 188 governments have been gathered in Montreal for the past two weeks for the important summit.

Chaired by China and hosted by Canada, COP 15 resulted in the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) on the last day of negotiations. The GBF aims to address biodiversity loss, restore ecosystems and protect indigenous rights. The plan includes concrete measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including putting 30 per cent of the planet and 30 per cent of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030. It also contains proposals to increase finance to developing countries – a major sticking point during talks.

The stakes could not be higher: the planet is experiencing a dangerous decline in nature as a result of human activity. It is experiencing its largest loss of life since the dinosaurs. One million plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.

The GBF consists of four overarching global goals to protect nature, including: halting human-induced extinction of threatened species and reducing the rate of extinction of all species tenfold by 2050; sustainable use and management of biodiversity to ensure that nature’s contributions to people are valued, maintained and enhanced; fair sharing of the benefits from the utilization of genetic resources, and digital sequence information on genetic resources; and that adequate means of implementing the GBF be accessible to all Parties, particularly Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States.

United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director, Inger Andersen, emphasized that implementation is now key: “Success will be measured by our rapid and consistent progress in implementing what we have agreed to. The entire UN system is geared to support its implementation so we can truly make peace with nature.”

The GBF also features 23 targets to achieve by 2030, including:
Effective conservation and management of at least 30 per cent of the world’s land, coastal areas and oceans. Currently, 17 percent of land and *8 per cent of marine areas are under protection
Restoration of 30 per cent of terrestrial and marine ecosystems
Reduce to near zero the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance and high ecological integrity
Halving global food waste
Phasing out or reforming subsidies that harm biodiversity by at least $500 billion per year, while scaling up positive incentives for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use
Mobilizing at least $200 billion per year from public and private sources for biodiversity-related funding
Raising international financial flows from developed to developing countries to at least US$ 30 billion per year
Requiring transnational companies and financial institutions to monitor, assess, and transparently disclose risks and impacts on biodiversity through their operations, portfolios, supply and value chains

Finance at the core
Finance played a key role at COP15, with discussions centring on how much money developed countries will send to developing countries to address biodiversity loss. It was requested that the Global Environment Facility set up a Special Trust Fund – the GBF Fund – to support the implementation of the GBF, in order to ensure an adequate, predictable and timely flow of funds.

Countries also approved a series of related agreements to implement the GBF, including on planning, monitoring, reporting and review, which are all vital to ensure progress is made – in the words of the GBF, to ensure that there is not “a further acceleration in the global rate of species extinction, which is already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years.”

By Olubusi Olakayode Nifemi

US President Joe Biden has announced billions of dollars in support and investment for Africa at a summit with the continent’s heads of state.

“The United States is all in on Africa’s future,” President Biden told the 49 African leaders attending the Washington DC meeting.

It is the first such gathering hosted by Washington for eight years.

The summit is seen as a US attempt to re-assert its influence in Africa to counter Chinese involvement.

It also comes after Donald Trump’s four-year tenure in office, during which he alienated numerous African leaders with policy decisions and insulting comments.

Mr Biden struck a very different tone to his predecessor, speaking optimistically of improved links with Africa and telling the gathering that “when Africa succeeds, the United States succeeds. Quite frankly, the whole world succeeds as well.”

US courts Africa as rivals make advances
He said that the crises facing the world today needed African leadership, ideas and innovations, and promised to build on the “vital” investments in Africa made by previous US administrations.

To that end, ahead of the three-day summit which ends on Thursday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the US would commit $55bn (£44bn) to Africa over the next three years.

Discussions at the summit have focussed on building on already existing programmes, including:

Prosper Africa – a US government initiative “to increase two-way trade” between African nations and the US launched in 2018
the Clinton-era Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, Agoa, which provides African apparel manufacturers preferential access to the US market;
the Power Africa initiative launched by President Obama to connect millions of African to the grid among others.
But the success of such programmes has been slow to realise. Africa only accounts for just over 1% of US foreign trade, which is dominated by petroleum imports from Nigeria and Angola.

In his address on Wednesday, the US president spoke about a $500m-investment to reduce transport costs at a key West African port in Benin.

He also mentioned $350m that would be spent on boosting the digital economy and said that $15bn-worth of deals had been struck at the US-Africa Business Forum.

The US is also set to sign a memorandum with the African Continental Free Trade Area – one of the world’s biggest free-trade areas – which Mr Biden said would “unlock new opportunities for trade and investment” between the US and Africa.

On the sidelines of the summit on Wednesday, Mr Biden separately met the six leaders of African nations which are holding elections in 2023 to press for free votes.

On Thursday, the US president said he would back the African Union’s admission as a permanent member of the Group of 20 major economies