| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Welcome To China’s New National Parks System. Will It Offer Real Protections?
First published on ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which was recently named one of Time magazine’s Top 25 blogs of 2010.
In early June, Chinese officials announced plans to set up trial national parks throughout the country for the next three years. Inspired by the U.S. system that came into being more than 140 years ago with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, the effort is the latest push in what amounts to a race against time to protect the country’s remaining pristine regions.
The timing aligns with other developmental priorities of the Communist Party and the increasingly engaged public, according to Carla Freeman, a research professor in the China program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. China has been dealing with an air pollution epidemic, especially in urban centers where power plants and diesel exhaust can combine to create a near-impenetrable smog.
“The decision by China to develop a true national park system should be seen in the context of the growing understanding in China not only by the government and scientific communities but also on the part of an increasingly educated public — and one that is increasingly seeing the effects of the pollution that has gone hand in hand with China’s rapid economic growth in their health — that China’s environment is in crisis,” Freeman told ThinkProgress.
The new parks program is set up as a unique partnership between China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Chicago-based Paulson Institute. Its intention is to elevate some of China’s protected areas — including nature reserves, world heritage sites, forest parks, and geological parks — to the next level of oversight, in an attempt to vastly improve management and oversight practices.
Protected areas currently cover about 18 percent of China’s total landmass, a higher percentage than most countries. However, according to the Paulson Institute, “these protected areas are not sufficiently safeguarding China’s rich and unique biodiversity and ecologically critical ecosystems and effectively preserving diverse natural and cultural resources.”
While China has been designating nature reserves since 1956, according to Freeman, the protected areas across the country suffer from a range of problems, including weak management and under-funding. Freeman said the parks often become income generators rather than means of conservation, as “funding for park management and staff is often dependent on income from tourism.”
As the Financial Times reports, the challenges extend beyond budget crunching, and many local officials may consider national parks to be hindrances that interrupt other important rural economic pursuits such as grazing and farming.
The national parks program aims to address these root problems. Rose Niu, chief conservation officer at the Paulson Institute, told ThinkProgress that their role is to “share the experience and lessons from the U.S and provide technical support.”
She said the key to success depends on the degree of political commitment and financial investment by the central government.
“If central government provides strong enough political incentive to the local officials and sufficient funding and long-term financial investment to the national park system, the goals of the proposal are achievable,” she said.
The Chinese government appears to at least be somewhat on board. Freeman said the new parks program is one of a “range of new policy initiatives” illustrating how Chinese authorities recognize that the “current growth model is unsustainable.” These include low carbon industrialized zones, regional carbon trading schemes, changes in how water and energy are priced, and the integration of environmental goals into how local officials are evaluated.
China currently has two national parks — Pudacuo National Park established in 2006 and Tangwanghe National Park, established in 2009. But according to a report from the Nature Conservancy, “these efforts are the same in name only — they were completed by different agencies in different locales and under different guidance.”
According to that report, national parks offer an important “middle ground” between conservation and financial incentives. They do this by generating income through attractions and tourism while also protecting biodiversity and maintaining the scenic value of the land. In China, there is currently little overlap in these two outcomes, with scenic areas tending to be “tourist magnets” with “limited conservation benefits,” and nature reserves providing much better protection but often acting as a drain on local government budgets.
While the outcome of the parks program remains in question, it is at the very least an honest effort at collaboration between the world’s two biggest economies and two largest greenhouse gas polluters.
“The environment broadly and more recently the area of climate change are positive points of cooperation between the United States and China at a time many other areas of the U.S.-China bilateral relationship are strained,” said Freeman.
The post Welcome To China’s New National Parks System. Will It Offer Real Protections? appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Source: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/15/3669062/national-parks-in-china-get-trial-period/
