On September 19th, 2017, with the theme of “UNESCO Global Geopark for Promoting Sustainable Development of Local Economy”, the 5th Asia Pacific Geoparks Network Symposium was held in Zhijin County, Guizhou Province. Over 900 representatives from 27 countries, UNESCO, the Global Geoparks Network, the UNESCO Global Geopark Council, and the Asia Pacific Geopark Network took part in the symposium. Ye Wuqing, deputy director of Sanqingshan UNESCO Global Geopark and other three colleagues participated in the symposium. Deputy Director Zhao Wenjing gave an oral presentation titled “Community Participation: Promoting the Sustainable Development of Sanqingshan UNESCO Global Geopark’s Social Economy”. At the same time, Sanqingshan Geopark attended the Geopark Fair which gave a good opportunity to present Sanqingshan to the participants, experts, scholars and local residents, and communicate with other representatives.

　　The five-day conference consisted of 5 keynote speeches and 6 special presentations, which fucused on the development of geoparks, boosting the sustainable development of local socio-economic, public education of popular science knowledge, promoting the preparation as aspring geoparks, establishing a karst global geoparks network and strengthening of regional cooperation to promote the development of UNESCO Global Geopark in Asia-Pacific region. During the conference, participants had a field trip to the Zhijindong Cave UNESCO Global Geopark.

　　On the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Geoparks Network Coordinators, Dr. He Qingcheng, vice president of Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, executive director of the Chinese Geoparks Network, as well as the head of the Global Geoparks Network Office, was elected as the chief coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Geoparks Network. This is the first time that a Chinese had been elected as the head of the Asia-Pacific Geoparks Network.