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Reconciling China's domestic marine conservation agenda with the global 30 × 30 initiative
Abstract
The 15th UN Biodiversity Conference (COP-15) offers a critical and timely opportunity for world leaders to set out transformative actions to halt biodiversity loss for the coming decade and beyond. One prominent agreement coming from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is protecting 30% of global oceans by 2030 (Ocean 30 ×30). With the presidential role of COP-15 and its vast ocean uses, the leadership and commitment of China is instrumental to achieving a global target on marine conservation. However, the pathways to China’s realization of the 30 × 30 goal remain unclear. Here, we use the country’s newest domestic agenda on marine conservation, which was released between the first and second half of COP-15, to shed light on (1) how its domestic policy may reflect China’s next steps on the global initiative and (2) how the Ocean 30 × 30 goal could advance the country’s plan to tackle its own marine conservation challenges. The policy analysis helps delineate the connections and gaps between the global and domestic goals, and provides recommendations for China to advance its ongoing marine protected area reform within the context of the 30 × 30 target.
... As the host of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the CBD [34], China played a key role in promoting the adoption of the KM-GBF. Nevertheless, China's MPAs account for only 4.1% of its total jurisdictional sea area by the end of 2019 [35], falling short of the target set by the KM-GBF, which emphasizes the importance of MPAs and Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures in meeting Target 3 criteria [36]. This disparity highlights the need for China to strengthen its planning and implementation of MPAs. ...
As a key element of spatial governance, marine protected areas (MPAs) have been increasingly established in various countries, with lessons learned from terrestrial environmental protection. Nevertheless, the development of MPAs in China continues to trail behind that of their land-based counterparts. Here, following the leverage points perspective of sustainability interventions, this article presents a systematic analysis of the governance and evolution of China’s MPAs, identifying key areas for improvement. The analysis encompasses the number, effectiveness, legal framework, governance structure, value, and paradigm of MPAs, and highlights the associated governance challenges facing China. Drawing on relevant experiences from the United States, Australia, and the European Union, the article offers valuable insights for informing China’s future MPA strategies. The study concludes that while China has made significant progress in the development of MPAs, further efforts are needed, including paradigm shifts, refinement of the legal system, optimization of governance structures, and enhancement of MPA effectiveness.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are globally underfunded. We present a five-step framework that can help practitioners prioritize actions that may improve financial sustainability, which was applied to six MPAs in Colombia, Bonaire, and Belize. Limited funds were found to directly undermine effectiveness towards conservation goals for five sites, with these impacts particularly significant for four. Annual budgets required increases from 6 % to 141 % to meet financial needs. Two sites had significant underlying weaknesses in their financial strategies that could lead to direct impacts if not addressed, with an additional three sites having more minor, but still observable, weaknesses in this manner. Staff salaries were the largest expense for all MPAs examined and also most frequently in need of additional funds. Opportunities to potentially eliminate these funding gaps were identified for all six MPAs through reallocating existing resources (n = 2), improving in-place mechanisms (n = 6), or implementing one or more alternative mechanisms (n = 6). Among several findings, some MPAs had the potential to increase tourism-based income by several million dollars per year, which would well exceed local financial requirements and could have substantial financial benefits on a network-wide scale. Some MPAs, including those with lower budgets, effectively leveraged partnerships and inter-institutional coordination to expand management capacity. Among alternative mechanisms that could be implemented, opportunities to leverage private-sector investments were especially common. Other MPAs around the world could likewise improve financial sustainability through analysis, evaluation, and execution of the full suite of options described herein.
The quest for cleaner energy has caused governments to expand renewable energy infrastructure, including wind turbine farms. However, wind turbines (WTs) can also pose a risk to certain wildlife species, with wildlife-related research predominantly focusing on the potential harm caused to birds and bats from impact injuries. New evidence suggests that WT noise (WTN) impacts on wildlife can also be detrimental to wildlife, but rarely receive attention from planners. Potential types of WTN impact, including damage to wildlife physical wellbeing, vital survival mechanisms, social and reproductive processes, and habitat continuity. This article reviews the current literature on WTN effects on wildlife, and analyzes the planning guidelines relating to WTN and wildlife in three selected locales where WT infrastructure is being expanded: California, Germany, and Israel. Findings indicate that none of them have clear zoning limitations or obligatory environmental impact assessment (EIA) guidelines that require addressing the WTN effects on wildlife. However, some steps taken by planning authorities suggest potential for improvement. These include language in California planning recommendations addressing the potential effects of WTN on wildlife; a German survey of local bird species' sensitivity to noise (including a WTN section); and increasing non-obligatory recommendations that encourage distancing WTs from protected areas. The study concludes that WTN effects on wildlife could be mitigated by gathering additional scientific data on WTN impacts, mapping species presence and auditory sensitivity to provide information for planners and ad-visors, and mandating the use of better science-informed practices and technologies for WTN reduction, such as long-term monitoring, zoning, and micro-siting.
Social equity is imperative both morally and instrumentally in the governance of protected areas, as neglecting this consideration can result in feelings of injustice and thus jeopardize conservation objectives. Despite the progressive attention paid to conservation equity, few have linked it with co-management arrangements, especially in the context of terrestrial protected areas. This study assesses the fairness perceptions in China’s Giant Panda National Park from recognitional, procedural, and distributional dimensions, to further disclose their correlations with individuals’ characteristics and participation in co-management activities. The regression analysis shows that all co-management types (instruction, consultation, agreement, and cooperation) are significantly linked with certain directions of perceived social equity. One novel finding here is that alternative types of co-management activities are influencing social equity in different ways. In addition, our research discloses the effects of education across all equity categories, and location is merely significantly related to recognitional equity. These findings suggest more inclusive and empowered co-management endeavors to strive for more equitably managed protected areas. Crucial steps to advance this include extending participative channels, co-producing better compensation plans, strengthening locals’ conservation capabilities, etc. Herein, this study appeals to a greater focus on social equity issues in co-management regimes, and tailored actions should be taken to tackle specific local problems.
Designating protected and conserved areas is a critical component of biodiversity conservation. The 10th Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010 set global targets for the areal extent of protected areas (PAs) that were met partially in 2020, yet a new, more ambitious target is needed to halt ongoing global biodiversity loss. China recently introduced a national Ecological Conservation Redline policy, which aims to ensure no net change in land cover and no net loss of biodiversity or degradation of ecosystem services within areas that are critical for maintaining ecological safety and functions. Enacting this policy could achieve ancillary conservation outcomes even where conservation is not the primary objective, thus meeting CBD's definition of “other effective area‐based conservation measures” (OECM). By comparing the Ecological Conservation Redline boundaries with important coastal waterbird sites in China, we found that three times more sites could be conserved under the new redline policy compared to the national nature reserve system alone. This indicates that considering the redline policy approach as a form of OECM is a promising pathway to expand the areal coverage of PAs and conserve biodiversity outside currently designated PAs, providing a model that could be adopted around the world.
China’s stature as the world’s major producer and consumer of seafood is legendary, but its long-standing tradition of protecting marine life domestically is virtually unknown. We present the most comprehensive database on area-based marine conservation in China including 326 sites that conserve 12.98% of China’s seas and address 142 conservation objectives. Twenty-two percent of shallow habitats (<10 meters) were fully or highly protected and 20% of waters 10 to 50 meters deep were conserved to some degree. Ecosystems in deeper waters (>50 meters) are critical to protect, yet <5% of these waters in China were conserved, primarily in areas with the highest chlorophyll-α concentrations. Habitats such as underwater canyons and seamounts beyond the continental shelf had no area-based protection. While China has made progress in marine protection within its boundaries, there is more work to be done to ensure that the full suite of marine life is safeguarded.
p>Changes to fisheries that result from offshore wind farm (OWF) installations may be considered good or bad depending on various stakeholders’ perspectives. OWFs can act as artificial reefs that may benefit secondary fish production, but such effects may also have ecological consequences. The fisheries exclusion effect that turns some OWFs into no-go areas, hence effectively no-take zones, could provide resource enhancements or redistribution. However, the displacement of fishing effort may have consequences to fisheries elsewhere. Changes in the sensory environment related to sound, as well as electromagnetic fields and physical alterations of current and wind wakes, may have as yet unknown impacts on fisheries resources. Understanding the interactions among effect type, OWF development phase, and spatiotemporal population dynamics of commercial and recreational species remains chal-lenging, exemplified by the commercial fishery lobster genus Homarus in European and North American waters. While knowledge of the interactions between resource species and OWFs is improving, there remain questions on the wider interaction between and consequences of OWFs and fisheries. Studies of this wider relevance should aim to improve understanding of the economic and societal impacts of OWFs linked to ecosystem services that support fisheries. Furthermore, assisting fisheries management and providing advice requires monitoring and survey data collection at appropriate spatiotemporal scales. This information will help to determine whether OWFs have any meaningful impact on regional fisheries, and increased investments will be needed to target scientifically appropriate monitoring of OWFs and fisheries, which is supported by better integrated policy and regulation.</p
China needs to balance between current population pressures and a vulnerable marine environment, creating a national, political outline or management strategy dubbed an ecological civilization construction. The nation's effort to protect and maintain a sustainable ocean and address the relevant economic, resource and environmental issues relies on Marine Ecological Civilization (MEC) construction. The quantification of MEC progress is essential to track the management performance and guide the subsequent development and implementation. This study evaluates the performance of China's MEC from 2006 to 2016 based on a comprehensive index system. Our findings are as follows: During 2006–2016, the overall MEC performance score increased from 0.3426 to 0.4850 nationwide. Large space-time variations exist among the eleven coastal regions. The Shandong and Guangdong regions showed relatively good performances, whereas the Jiangsu, Guangxi and Shanghai regions had low scores. A decade long change in MEC scores showed that Hebei achieved the largest increase ratio. Marine management was improved by implementing various conservation strategies by China's government. Marine education and human talent introduction deserve more attention in less developed areas such as Hainan and Guangxi, and poor marine environmental quality was an urgent issue of the Yangtze river estuary economic zone. More accessible marine monitoring dataset are needed to track future space-time progress dynamics towards MEC construction. Our results provide a decade long retrospect of China's MEC achievements, and the quantified evaluation for each coastal region can provide valuable insight to policy-makers.
Effective designation of Protected Areas (PAs) requires the careful consideration of their social impacts as these are perceived by people. These refer to a variety of issues such as the distribution of power, social equity, social relations and more importantly the impact of PAs on human wellbeing. A number of studies have emerged in the past decade aiming to capture social impacts of PAs across the world through non-monetary assessments taking into consideration people’s perceptions. Although Europe is the region with the largest in proportion number of Protected Areas across the world it is also a region with very limited scientific evidence on this topic. As the European Union is preparing to implement its new Biodiversity Strategyto ipkmplement this paper aims to provide the first comprehensive review of the literature regarding social impacts of European PAs and highlight new directions for current policy frameworks in the region. The paper focuses on the perceived non-economic social costs and benefits of PAs and identifies 7 key categories of social impacts. We propose that policy planning for biodiversity conservation in Europe should incorporate subjective assessments of social costs and benefits with the aim to achieve an increase of benefits for people and their equal distribution across social groups.
This paper proposes public-private partnerships (PPPs) as a governance response to achieve sustainable urbanization. We first articulate an analytical framework on sustainable PPPs from three perspectives-resources, institutional roles, and institutional rules-in-use-and then apply it to examining China's PPP experience and identifying the ways to steer China's PPP development toward sustainability. Our analyses show that an off-balance-sheet treatment is critical for PPPs to function as a sustainable financing approach; the selection of PPP governance structures is a tradeoff between safeguarding public values and improving efficiency; and PPP policy design should shift from a finance-oriented or an efficiency-oriented to a sustainability-oriented approach. An examination of China's PPP developmental trajectory yields some significant policy implications for achieving sustainable urbanization through PPPs: achieving off-balance-treatment, differentiating private-finance initiatives and concessions, supporting underdeveloped areas, actively involving private enterprises, using joint ventures extensively, enabling public participation, and adopting value-for-people tests. 2 As China has become the world's biggest laboratory for PPP development, the upgrade of China's PPP policies can have significantly impacts on sustainable urbanization.
Due to the development of the social economy and population density pressure, coastal reclamation activities have rapidly increased throughout coastal regions in China and have had a significant negative impact on fish habitat fragmentation (especially on the habitat of the early life history stage of fish, ELHSF). However, few studies have focused on the negative ecological impacts of reclamation patches on ELHSF habitats (such as spawning, nursery, and feeding grounds). Data on marine reclamation were extracted from 49 Landsat remote sensing images from 7 different periods from 1985 to 2015, and ichthyoplankton data from 1982 to 2014 were compiled. The trend of fragmentation showed that the number of artificial heterogeneous patches significantly increased, and the isolation of habitat landscape became more intense. As a result, the spatial patterns of ichthyoplankton habitat rapidly transformed from a continuous and integral distribution to a divided and fragmented distribution, which drastically changed numerous environmental factors and deeply reshaped normal fish recruitment activities by impacting the number and abundance of ELHSF.
Coastal water eutrophication and resource depletion have become serious issues in many coastal regions of the world. Seaweed aquaculture in Chinese coastal waters is a very important industry. This work assessed the major environmental benefits of seaweed cultivation, mapped the spatial distributions of various species and analyzed their environmental impacts during 2015 in China. This study found that seaweed aquaculture had brought in considerable environmental benefits, including the removal of about 75,563 t of nitrogen and 9592 t of phosphate from coastal waters, the sequestration of about 539,555 t of carbon, the absorption of 1,980,167 t of CO2, the release of 1,440,612 t of O2 into coastal waters, and the production of 5809 t of Iodine. In addition, seaweed cultivation saved approximately 29,313 t of chemical fertilizers, 1873 t of pesticide and 62,492 ha of farmland compared with terrestrial vegetable cultivation. These results demonstrate that Chinese seaweed aquaculture has turned the pollutants that cause eutrophication into nutrients, which generates considerable environmental benefits as well as socio-economic values. However, seaweed species, as well as coastal water qualities, vary by regions, spatial management of seaweed farms related to the coastal water quality is necessary. In the eutrophic coastal waters, more seaweed species that are highly capable of removing nitrogen and phosphate should be cultivated. Besides, the potentially negative effects of seaweed farming should also be considered before performing spatial management to ensure the healthy development of seaweed industry. As Chinese seaweed production continues to boom, it is a unique opportunity to strengthen the seaweed industry and to reach a win–win situation that both gains considerable environmental benefits and generates substantial socio-economic returns. This is also a promising way for other coastal developing nations/regions to follow.
Ecosystems services (ES) assessment is a significant scientific topic recognized for its potential to address sustainability issues. However, there is an absence of science-policy frameworks in land use planning that lead to the ES science being used in policy. China's Ecological Redline Policy (ERP) is one of the first national policies utilizing multiple ES, but there is no standardized approach for working across the science-policy interface. We propose a transdisciplinary framework to determine ecological redline areas (ERAs) in Shanghai using: ES, biodiversity and ecologically fragile hotspots, landscape structure, and stakeholder opinions. We determine the five criteria to identify ERAs for Shanghai using multi-temporal, high resolution images (0.5 m) and biophysical models. We examine ERP effectiveness by comparing land use scenarios for 2040. Compared to alternative land uses, ES increase significantly under the ERP. The inclusion of ES in spatial planning led stakeholders to increase terrestrial habitat protection by 174% in Shanghai. Our analysis suggests that strategic planning for ES could reduce tradeoffs between environmental quality and development.
China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, launched in March 2016, provides a sound policy platform for the protection of marine ecosystems and the restoration of capture fisheries within China’s exclusive economic zone. What distinguishes China among many other countries striving for marine fisheries reform is its size—accounting for almost one-fifth of global catch volume—and the unique cultural context of its economic and resource management. In this paper, we trace the history of Chinese government priorities, policies, and outcomes related to marine fisheries since the 1978 Economic Reform, and examine how the current leadership’s agenda for “ecological civilization” could successfully transform marine resource management in the coming years. We show how China, like many other countries, has experienced a decline in the average trophic level of its capture fisheries during the past few decades, and how its policy design, implementation, and enforcement have influenced the status of its wild fish stocks. To reverse the trend in declining fish stocks, the government is introducing a series of new programs for sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, with greater traceability and accountability in marine resource management and area controls on coastal development. As impressive as these new plans are on paper, we conclude that serious institutional reforms will be needed to achieve a true paradigm shift in marine fisheries management in China. In particular, we recommend new institutions for science-based fisheries management, secure fishing access, policy consistency across provinces, educational programs for fisheries managers, and increasing public access to scientific data.
Consistency in conservation
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are now well established globally as tools for conservation, for enhancing marine biodiversity, and for promoting sustainable fisheries. That said, which regions are labeled as MPAs varies substantially, from those that full protect marine species and prohibit human extraction to those that permit everything from intensive fishing to mining. This inconsistency can in some cases inhibit both conservation and quantifying the proportion of the marine environment that is truly protected. Grorud-Colvert et al . review the consistency of MPAs and propose a framework by which levels of protection can be evaluated and improved. —SNV
Fisheries monitoring is instrumental to effective fisheries management. Stimulated by technology development and management objective evolution, fisheries monitoring faces a transition into a more timely and accurate data reporting scheme. This transition features the replacement of traditional paper logbooks with electronic logbooks (e-logbooks). In 2017, China launched its first total allowable catch (TAC) pilot in Zhejiang Province, with an aim to develop and implement an e-logbook scheme in fisheries monitoring and management. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of e-logbook-based monitoring system against traditional paper logbooks and summarized the important lessons learned from the pilot. We compared the data reported by paper and e-logbooks, examined the role of observers and transshipment vessels in fisheries monitoring, and interviewed stakeholders for their reflections. We found that e-logbooks could improve data quality and report timeliness. However, significant differences were observed between data reported from paper and e-logbooks. These findings matched with the mixed opinions from different users. Fishermen rated e-logbooks poorly due to difficulties in use and frequent malfunctions, while managers, observers and scientists preferred e-logbooks to paper logbooks. Based on quantitative and qualitative analysis, we identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for future implementation of e-logbooks. We also noted that inadequate legislations, fishermen’s low literacy, high training and running cost, and unregulated transshipment could hinder the implementation of e-logbooks. The refined lessons fill the gaps of the evaluation of TAC pilots in China and can contribute to the future application of e-logbooks in China and elsewhere.
Ecological civilization (shengtai wenming ) has been written into China’s constitution as the ideological framework for the country’s environmental policies, laws and education. It is also increasingly presented not only as a response to environmental degradation in China, but as a vision for our global future. In this article, scholars from the disciplines of media science, anthropology and sinology analyse media representations of eco-civilization in order to explore which values and visions this highly profiled state project actually entails. The article argues that eco-civilization is best understood as a sociotechnical imaginary in which cultural and moral virtues constitute key components that are inseparable from the more well-known technological, judicial, and political goals. The imaginary of eco-civilization seeks to construct a sense of cultural and national continuity, and to place China at the center of the world by invoking its civilization’s more than 2000 years of traditional philosophical heritage as a part of the solution for the planet’s future. It is constructed as a new kind of Communist Party led utopia in which market economy and consumption continue to grow, and where technology and science have solved the basic problems of pollution and environmental degradation.
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With over 30 years’ experience of managing Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), China has established more than 250 MPAs in its coastal and marine areas, but the overall management effectiveness is unimpressive [46]. Recently, China has made commitments to expand the MPA coverage in its waters ([7,52,53]) and develop an “ecological barrier” along the coast by connecting MPAs and islands by 2020 (The State Council 2015). In this context, this study reviews major challenges in current MPA practices in China, including the lack of systematic and scientific approaches, inadequate laws and regulations, ineffective governance mechanisms, conflicts between conservation and exploitation, limited funding, and inadequate monitoring programs. Four scenarios for developing China's MPA networks are developed and analyzed based on a literature review of experience in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and the Philippines, as well as a set of interviews with Chinese MPA experts. These scenarios include: 1) creating a national system with an inventory of MPAs, 2) developing social networks, 3) developing regional ecological networks, and 4) developing a national representative network. The first two scenarios focus on the enhancement of the governance system through connecting individual MPAs as a social, institutional, and learning network, which could provide opportunities for creating an ecologically coherent network, while the latter two emphasized ecological connectivity and representativeness. Given different focuses, they can be applied at different stages of implementation and combinations of scenarios can be used depending on China's needs.
As the world's largest producer of wild catch, China's fishing activities have a significant impact on the sustainability of not only domestic but also global fish stocks. China also provides substantial subsidies to its fishing operations. In 2013, the Chinese central government spent RMB 40.383 billion (or $6.5 billion) on fisheries subsidies. Most of this amount—94 percent—was in the form of fuel subsidies. This study asked whether China's subsidies policies align with the country's stated goals in fisheries management by examining China's fisheries policy coherence, and found that about 95 percent of Chinese fisheries subsidies were harmful to sustainability.
It is internationally recognized that conservation policies should respect indigenous cultures and consider the livelihoods of people affected by conservation restrictions. Countering this are concerns that human occupation and use of natural reserves is incompatible with conservation aims. But in China today the continued use and management of natural areas by local communities is likely to deliver better conservation outcomes than the current drive to establish public protected areas. The effectiveness of many protected areas in China is compromised by institutional conflicts, lack of ongoing financial and technical support, confusion between the objectives of generating revenue and conservation, dubious scientific definitions, lack of community trust in policies, and obscure user rights and land tenures. Southwestern China-one of the most biologically and ethnologically diverse areas on Earth-is a good illustration of a place where culture and biological diversity are closely linked. The indigenous people in this area have shown that local livelihood practices can be advantageous for the long-term maintenance of conservation goals. Rather than creating new protected areas, we argue that China is better advised to support ongoing sustainable use of natural areas by the people who have lived and nurtured these environments for generations.
As well as serving valuable biodiversity conservation roles, functioning no-take fishery reserves protect a portion of the fishery stock as insurance against future over-fishing. So long as there is adequate compliance by the fishing community, it is likely that they will also sustain and even enhance fishery yields in the surrounding area. However, there are significant gaps in scientific knowledge that must be filled if no-take reserves are to be used effectively as fishery management tools. Unfortunately, these gaps are being glossed over by some uncritical advocacy. Here, we review the science, identify the most crucial gaps, and suggest ways to fill them, so that a promising management tool can help meet the growing challenges faced by coastal marine fisheries.
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