About 1,000 representatives from 181 countries or organizations gathered at a meeting in Beijing on November 29 to discuss ozone protection issues.

The five-day meeting, known as the 11th Meeting of the Partiesto the Montreal Protocol on substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, is the biggest International environmental protection conference China has ever hosted.

At the meeting, China's top environmental protection official called for continuous global cooperation to protect the ozone layer that shields the Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays.

Xie Zhenhua, director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, said global cooperation is the only way the world community can successfully solve the problem of ozone depletion.

In a speech to nearly 1,000 representatives from some 180 countries and organizations at the 11th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete Ozone, the director described ozone depletion as one of the global environmental issues which affect human existence.

Despite "encouraging progress" the world community has made in the past decade, it remains a challenge to realize the goal of halving the output and consumption levels of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) in developing countries within the next six years, Xie said.

China, a major ODS producer and consumer in the world, fulfilled its international obligation by having reduced its ODS output and consumption to 1995-1997 levels by July 1 this year, and by having slashed its ODS output and consumption by 50,000 tons over the past nine years.

"Without international cooperation and assistance from developed countries, this achievement could not have been made in China," the minister said.