The giant panda model with a height of 5 meters lit up in the evening of October 27, 2022, along with the spot connection from 8 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen. "2022 International Panda Day" and its series of activities kicked off, calling on all sectors of society to care about endangered wild species and global biodiversity conservation as well as giant pandas.
Initiated by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), International Panda Day is celebrated on October 27 every year to highlight the protection of global environment. Based on this, One Planet Foundation (OPF) brings "Panda Tour" - "Art + Environmental Protection" series activities, which is acclaimed around the globe, back to China, the hometown of pandas since 2019. It is the 6th International Panda Day this year. As one of its series events, "1864 Panda Tour" will be the world’s first time to gather 1864 pandas' paper sculptures as a public tour. The first stop in China will be located in SM City Xiamen and SM Lifestyle Center, and the exhibition will last for 11 days from October 27 to November 6. This is also the first time for "1864 Panda Tour" to visit Fujian.
The 4th Giant Panda Survey reveals 1864 giant pandas in the wild. "1864 Panda Tour" (Xiamen) has specially customized cartoon inflatable panda models and green ecological spaces to welcome 1864 paper sculptures of giant pandas designed by Han Meilin, a famous Chinese artist. Han created giant panda babies in the image of human babies, the beauty as well as fragility of paper carving symbolizes the ecosystem where all lives live.
The mother earth is rich and colorful, breeding and sheltering diverse wildlife formations and genes. Air we breathe, water we drink, and food we eat are all originated from nature. In the view of 2022 Earth Vitality Report recently released by WWF, the number of wild animal populations within the monitoring has decreased by 69% on average since 1970. It is 60% in 2018. Nature flashed a warning to request human actions.
"Everyone on the earth, is a part of the community of shared future. Paying attention to the health of nature is to care for the development of human. OPF has been exploring innovative methods for natural ecological protection and biodiversity mainstreaming. We hope to tell stories vividly on a scientific basis from the needs and preferences of the public within the exhibition." said Ding Gan, Secretary General of One Planet Foundation.
Until early November, the Tour will feature promotion activities including popular science exhibitions and Panda Class at SM Lifestyle Center. "We try to make the science exhibition a hotspot,” Ding said, “to introduce the survival status of wild giant pandas and the knowledge of endangered wild species such as Amur tiger, Yangtze finless porpoise, snow leopard and pangolin in an artistic and creative way, so that the significance of biodiversity could trickle down to the citizens."
SM China, as a promotion partner of "2022 International Panda Day", sufficiently mobilizes the resource advantages of being reachable online and offline around citiesto help citizens get closer to the ecosystem. As Mr. Ronald Allan D Brosas, Senior Assistant Vice President – Operations of SM China, said: "Diversification helps create better lives. SM Group has explored and implemented sustainable development strategy in various fields with its corporate social responsibility arm SM Cares. We advocated green consumption as well as environment-friendly life, and contributed to achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. Let's take actions together to protect global biodiversity!"
