Moving toward a Greener China: Is China’s National Park Pilot Program a Solution?

Abstract

National parks have been adopted for over a century to enhance the protection of valued natural landscapes in countries worldwide. For decades, China has emphasized the importance of economic growth over ecological health to the detriment of its protected areas. After decades of environmental degradation, dramatic loss of biodiversity, and increasing pressure from the public to improve and protect natural landscapes, China’s central government recently proposed the establishment of a pilot national park system to address these issues. This study provides an overview of the development of selected conventional protected areas (CPAs) and the ten newly established pilot national parks (PNPs). A literature review was conducted to synthesize the significant findings from previous studies, and group workshops were conducted to integrate expert knowledge. A qualitative analysis was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot national park system. The results of this study reveal that the PNP system could be a potential solution to the two outstanding issues facing CPAs, namely the economic prioritization over social and ecological considerations that causes massive ecological degradation, and the conflicting, overlapping, and inconsistent administrative and institutional structures that result in serious inefficiencies and conflicts.

Integration of hotspot identification, gap analysis, and niche modeling supports the conservation of Chinese threatened higher plants

“…Profits that are made by these alternative sustainable economic activities can be used to fund future conservation efforts. Meanwhile, ecological education and other related efforts are therefore highlighted as key approaches to raise people's awareness of biodiversity conservation (Sheng et al, 2020; Zang et al, 2021).…”

Unveiling the Value of Nature: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Ecosystem Services and Ecological Compensation in Wuhan City’s Urban Lake Wetlands

“…The total payoff value was calculated by multiplying the actual number of people WTP by the average total payoff value (Vwtp) of each lake [30]. The correlation analysis of respondents' social characteristics on WTP and WTP value was tested by the p value size [31].…”

Developing Co-management for Conservation and Local Development in China’s National Parks: Findings from Focus Groups in the Sanjiangyuan Region

“…The o cial plan of the national park system clearly stipulates that "national parks will be established to ... combine ecological protection and sustainable development" and that the primary difference between nature reserves and national parks "is that the latter can provide more social and economic bene ts.... Any successful conservation and use of national parks should maintain a balance, so that they can provide both development opportunities and effective protection" (He, M., & Cliquet, A., 2020). The National Park system aims, further, to advance China's vision of "ecological civilization (shengtai wenming ) " that has as goal the "harmonious development of people, nature, and society" (Sheng et al, 2020). The same authors also note that the national park system could help resolve two outstanding challenges from the previous model, namely that "the economic prioritization over social and ecological considerations that causes massive ecological degradation, and the con icting, overlapping, and inconsistent administrative and institutional structures that result in serious ine ciencies and con icts" (Sheng et Initially, each section of the national park was sub-divided into a core conservation area (core zone) where no human activity can take place, ecological conservation and restoration areas (buffer zone) where limited human activity can take place, and areas where traditional forms of natural resource utilization such as pastoralism can still occur (with different priorities or limitations based on ecological characteristics).…”