Global conference to focus on climate change, carbon reduction

The 4th World Conference on Science Literacy will be held on Nov 30 in Beijing and will be dedicated to climate change and carbon reduction.

The conference, themed "improve scientific literacy, build a green home together", will gather together top scientists, policy makers, scholars and representatives of sci-tech organizations in the fields of carbon reduction, climate change and green development at home and abroad to give keynote presentations.

Organized by the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, the conference will also see a release of the framework of scientific literacy evaluation system and prize-awarding for outstanding science popularization video content creators.

A series of sub-forums will also be held following the conference, focusing on a variety of topics including "cultivation of young sci-tech talents", "development and sharing of science resources on ecological theme", and "the improvement of public scientific literacy and technological innovation".

The Chinese Association for Science and Technology has organized the World Conference on Science Literacy for three consecutive years since 2018. The 2018 conference released Beijing Declaration for Promoting Public Science Literacy which stresses the importance to engage with the public and develop an understanding of science, the 2019 event saw the signing of Memorandum of Understanding on the Roundtable Meeting by 19 sci-tech organizations from 18 countries, and the 2020 conference addressed the challenges of public health amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wang Jingchun, deputy director of China Research Institute for Science Popularization, said the goal of continuously holding such conference is to widely communicate achievements of the development of Chinese public scientific literacy, promote international cooperation, and contribute to China's international communication capacity, the improvement of the world's scientific literacy in the post-pandemic era and the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.