Ladies and gentlemen,

World Lake Conference is an authentic and academic conference initiated by International Lake Environment Committee (ILEC). It had played an important role in promoting the cooperation and exchange with regard to global lake environment protection since its first conference in 1984. The “13th World Lake Conference” will be held through the 1st to the 5th day of November 2009, in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. The focuses of the Conference will be exchanging and discussing hot spots worldwide on lake environment protection and resources management, introducing latest strategies and philosophies of lake protection and sustainable utilization, and sharing best practices. It will be a grant occasion of lake protection attended by researchers, government officials and other peoples from numerous fields. In the name of the President of the Conference, I hereby extend my sincere invitation for you and your organization to attend the Conference as possible.

The lakes on the earth distributed almost everywhere with various appearances and sizes, decorating our planet like bright pearls. It is not only an important container of global water resources and a basic factor in the ecologic environment, but also a natural support for human survival and sustainable development. However, because of environmental contamination and water resources overexploitation, as well as the influence of global climate change, the ecological function of many lakes are decreasing and some lakes even face the threat of extinction. Lake environment and resources protection has become an enormous challenge for governments of various countries and the international community during the promotion of sustainable development strategy. It is imperative to strengthen the global cooperation on lake environmental protection.

China has abundant lake resources with more than 24800 natural lakes. Because of rapid economic and social development, many lakes are contaminated and the ecological system is destroyed to some extent. The issue of eutrophication has become more and more prominent. The Chinese Government attaches great importance to the lake environment protection by adopting series of measures. Especially in recent years, some of the lakes were under severe situations of large-scale contamination by the blue algae. The Chinese Government put forward the strategy of “recovering the rivers, lakes, and seas under extreme stress” and carried out the major technological project on “control and management of water contamination” with enormous capital investment to tackle the issue of water (include the lake) environment contamination management with technological measures.  

China had successfully held “the 4th World Lake Conference” in 1991. We are determined and confident to host the “13th World Lake Conference” again successfully. The sponsor of this Lake Conference, Wuhan City is always famous for its name of “City with Hundred Lakes” and is affiliate to the Hubei Province with the fame of “Province with Thousand Lakes”. Numerous lakes here were derived from “Yun Men Ze” (part of which is the Dongting Lake in nowadays) in ancient time. In that time, local people resided and developed near the lake while forming abundant culture of “Jingchu Lake”; nowadays, they also made tremendous efforts to protect the lake ecological environment. This will definitely provide useful paradigm for the successful of the Conference.

I believe, through active participation of the domestic and oversea experts, this Conference will definitely made enormous contribution to rejuvenate the lakes through the promotion of environment protection and the comprehensive management in China, as well as in other parts of the world.

Your enthusiastic participation is greatly appreciated!

                                                                                                              Zhou Shengxian
                                                                             President of 13th World Lake Conference
                 Minister of The Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China