I've had the privilege to be engaged with a number of Chinese institutions, including the RIEL over the years in terms of development and implementation of environmental law. I've been engaged with Chinese judiciary in terms of empowering and exchanging ideas with the judges, and sharing precedents for them to better understand issues related to environmental law, which goes to court.

With the RIEL specifically, I've been for some years in the editorial board in their Chinese Journal of Environmental Law. I've contributed to it, if not me directly, also through our colleagues. And that is served as an exchange of information, particularly on environmental law, on what other countries globally are doing as far as implementation of environmental law, either at country level or at regional level, and of course on developments of environmental law in China which could be shared with other countries globally, particularly in Africa, where under the United Nations Environment Programme, we had a program of Africa-China on environmental law and through that program, a lot of exchange activities have been in place in terms of, again, sharing, exchanging experience and information on environmental law between the two regions. This actually has been very useful, particularly for the countries which have been engaged in the past to also use the knowledge and information in the development of the environmental law in their countries. So RIEL has been instrumental over the years through all these processes, through cooperation and collaboration, and through the journal, which, again, had also been shared through the networks in other regions.

I send my warmest congratulations to 40th Anniversary of the Research Institute of Environmental Law for its great contributions to the environmental rule of law in China and in the world.

Elizabeth Mrema, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity