World Lake Conference in Wuhan, China
Lake Ecosystem Restoration: Global Challenges and the Chinese Initiative

The World Lake Conference is a series of academic conferences held every 2 years. It was first initiated by International Lake Environment Committee (ILEC) in 1984. The following countries have hosted the World Lake Conference before: Japan, United States, Hungary, China, Italy, Argentina, Denmark, Kenya and India.

The 13th World Lake Conference will take place from the November 1 to November 5, 2009, in Wuhan (Hubei, China). This year, the conference is jointly organized by Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences (CSES), Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) and Wuhan Municipality. Minister Zhou Shengxian of the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection is the president of the 13th World Lake Conference.

The conference is a large-scale event pegged at the international level, and attended by officials, researchers, scientists, industrialists, and professionals from a variety of fields. The conference calls for a gathering of internationally renowned experts on lake environment, providing a platform for academic exchange and discussion on lake environment protection and management. The conference presents the latest strategies on lake protection and the sustainable application of these strategies, facilitating the sharing of best practices within the field.

The rapid economic and social development of China has left the 24,800 natural lakes in severely damaged condition. The issue of eutrophication is increasingly prominent, particularly in Taihu, Dianchi and Chaohu Lake. The Chinese government attaches great importance to the lake environment protection and adopts a series of measures to improve lake environments in China. In 2007, the Chinese Government put forth the strategy of “recovering the rivers, lakes, and seas under extreme stress” and carried out a major technological project for the “control and management of water contamination”, investing heavily in technological measures to rectify the issue of water and lake environment contamination.

The theme of the conference this year is “Lake Ecosystem Restoration: Global Challenges and the Chinese Initiative”. The conference highlights lake conservation and management as a global agenda that requires international cooperation and partnership. Its objectives are, to promote national and global efforts targeted at managing lake environments, create opportunities for collaboration and teamwork on the international level, and, inspire evidence-based best practices through the sharing of notable research and technological developments in the field.