Wetlands Conservation in China

Wetlands Conservation in China: Action Planning

Daniel A. Viederman

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China is home to East Asia’s most important wetland site (Poyang Lake), Asia’s longest river (the Yangtze) and is the source of two rivers of inestimable importance to hundreds of millions of people in South and Southeast Asia (the Ganges and the Mekong). Flooding each year takes the lives of thousands and incurs economic losses on the order of millions of yuan. Perhaps in no country is sustainable use of wetlands more important than in China, or more complicated by intense utilisation by a massive human population.

Over the past three years, a process has been evolving in China to develop a National Wetland Conservation Action Plan. Sometimes quiet, sometimes vigorous, alternately swift and plodding, development of the Action Plan has involved sixteen different ministries and agencies. Two national conferences and three working meetings have been held and sixteen agencies have submitted reports on their roles in wetland management. Dozens of Chinese and foreign experts have commented and finally two drafts of an Action Plan have been put together by an independent compiling team of wetland specialists. A fourth working meeting is planned for summer 1997. The process remains as much as a year from completion, prior to submission to the State Council for formal approval. Ultimately, the Action Plan will provide a national policy framework which will guide the sustainable use of wetland resources.

The complexity of the undertaking is not surprising, given the intensity of the utilisation of wetland resources in China, their importance to millions of people, and the broad range of agencies with responsibility for some aspect of wetland exploitation or conservation. The process of action planning has involved the participation of all these agencies. Central participants include the Ministry of Forestry, as the government body with responsibility for the "Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance"; the National Environmental Protection Agency, which has responsibility within the government for overall environmental planning; the State Oceanic Administration, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and others with conservation as their main focus. Major wetland users include the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Transport, the State Committee of Light Industry, and the State Petroleum Company.

Wetlands themselves have historically been misunderstood, often derided as wasteland and converted to other uses. Conversion and degradation have prevented wetlands from playing their essential roles in functioning ecosystems and economies. Wetlands are defined as "areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static, flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water, the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres". Though some have jokingly stated that under the above definition a glass of beer is also a wetland, none can deny that the physical locations covered by the definition are exceedingly important to China’s social and economic development, not to mention biological diversity.

All in all, China has 60 million hectares of wetlands. Twenty five million hectares of natural wetlands include peatland, coastal wetlands and riverine and laucstrine areas. Artificial wetlands include thirty-four million hectares of paddy fields and over two million hectares of aquaculture areas. For agriculture and fisheries, drinking water and raw materials for industry and shelter, and for controlling floods they are of vast importance for China’s 1.2 billion people. China’s wetlands support biodiversity of domestic and international importance, including 500 species of freshwater fish and 31 of the 57 endangered waterbird species in Asia. wetland benefits

The benefits that wetlands provide to a society can be broadly classified as follows. These ‘wetland benefits’ include, but are not limited to: water supply; flood control and flow regulation; prevention of saline intrusion to coastal aquifers and coastal water bodies; protection from natural forces, through the provision of shoreline and bank erosion protection and windbreaks; sediment, toxicant and nutrient retention; source of natural products; energy production; water transport; gene banks; conservation and maintenance of biodiversity; recreation and tourism; socio-cultural significance; research and education; and finally maintenance of existing processes and natural systems. It naturally follows that to diminish the above benefits through wetland degradation is to limit the essential social and economic functions that wetlands serve.

As China’s economy has grown since the advent of the People’s Republic, wetland loss and degradation has intensified. The scale of ecosystem change in wetlands is staggering. Fifty percent of China’s coastal wetland area has been lost since the 1950s. Only twenty thousand hectares of mangrove forest remain in southern China, down from about fifty thousand hectares forty years ago. From the 1950s through the 1980s, reclamation decreased the number of natural lakes in China from 2800 to 2350 while the area of lakes showed an overall decrease of 11%. Forty-two lakes in Jiangsu Province alone have disappeared since 1957. In water catchment areas throughout the southern and highland parts of the country deforestation, overgrazing and unsustainable agricultural practices have led to severe soil erosion. Many lakes and rivers are increasingly choked with silt. Dongting Lake in Hunan Province has shrunk to about 43% of its original size due to siltation and reclamation of marginal land. Along the coastline seawater has begun to intrude into surface and groundwater supplies due to excessive extraction of water from rivers. The destruction of 80% of Hainan Province's coral reefs has resulted in coastline erosion. water pollution

Water pollution is another form of wetland degradation that is equally serious in China. Guangming Daily reports that more than half of China’s rivers and lakes are seriously contaminated, with over 25,000 miles of waterways too polluted for fishing. Aquatic life has been decimated along 1500 miles of rivers and streams, according to the Ministry of Water Resources. The pollution, which stems primarily from untreated industrial waste and pesticides from farms, extends into groundwater as well. Lakes in China are generally polluted by nitrogen and phosphorus, and as a result lose potential as fisheries, sources of drinking water, and recreation.

In essence, wetlands are threatened because of their importance and because of insufficient understanding of the benefits they provide. Conflicts between user groups stress wetlands beyond their capacity. An example comes from Lake Chao in Anhui Province. Formerly the source of drinking water for Hefei and other cities and counties around the provincial capital, eutrophication has led to the cessation of the use of lake water for drinking because of the risk to public health. The nutrients causing the eutrophication have been shown to come from the urban and industrial areas around Hefei and from chemical fertilisers used in agriculture. The problem is exacerbated by the destruction of lake shore vegetation by poorly-considered development, though that vegetation could have removed some of the excess nutrients. Badly-planned hydraulic engineering has affected the fish stocks in the lake and reduced its value as a tourist destination as well as reducing the contribution of fishing to the local economy.

Co-ordinating the management and wise use of wetlands for maximum social benefit is made difficult by the wide range of ministries and agencies with responsibility for some aspect of wetlands management. The environmental impacts of economic growth are inadequately controlled by legislation that may be inappropriately formulated, may conflict with other laws, or be unenforced.

China National Wetland Conservation Action Plan

The China National Wetland Conservation Action Plan seeks to use the filter of wetland benefits to provide policy guidance to address these massive problems of wetland degradation. This is envisioned to be "a first step in a continuing process of national-level policy development and decision-making". As no single policy document or plan could possibly provide enough detail to resolve all use / conservation conflicts in China's wetlands, the National Wetland Conservation Action Plan will instead serve the following functions: identify and analyse the administrative and institutional factors which contribute to wetland degradation or destruction; prioritise activities to strengthen wetland benefits at the policy level; provide an administrative framework for policy making which facilitates sustainable use of wetlands. The process of action plan development began almost three years ago with a National Wetland Conservation Workshop held on the banks of one of China’s designated "wetlands of international importance", Dongting Lake in Hunan Province. About 120 delegates from national ministries, provincial and municipal governments, and scientific and media institutions gathered to discuss wetland problems and agency responsibilities. A Leading Group was established, led by the Vice-Minister of Forestry, and a Working Group nominated which includes representatives of all involved institutions.

A seminar on wetland benefits for senior leaders was held in 1995 as part of the first official Working Group meeting. That meeting also approved an Action Plan outline and formally approved the inter-agency process by which the Action Plan would be developed. Subsequently, thirteen agencies submitted detailed statements of their responsibilities for wetland management. These were discussed by the Working Group at another meeting, revised, and then resubmitted. An independent Compiling Team hired as consultants to the project took these agency reports and formed them into a draft Action Plan. Follow up meetings have discussed that draft, and a subsequent one.

Agency participation

In general, the process has facilitated the broad participation of the agencies with greatest responsibility for wetland management. Of particular importance has been the involvement of the Ministry of Forestry (MOF). In its role as lead agency for the Ramsar Convention in China, MOF has showed leadership in bringing the issue of sustainable use of wetlands to national attention. In the six years since China acceded to the Ramsar Convention, the Ministry has identified six Ramsar sites, or wetlands of international importance, and has participated enthusiastically in Ramsar Convention meetings. The Ministry has included the development of a National Wetland Conservation Action Plan in its sectoral implementation plan for China’s national Agenda 21, thus committing itself to completion of the plan in a high-profile forum.

However Forestry’s leadership is not without complications. The agency whose involvement in wetland conservation is arguably as important as that of MOF, namely the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), struggles with Forestry over leadership in the wetland conservation sector. Forestry has responsibility for the Ramsar Convention, while NEPA has responsibility for overall co-ordination of environmental conservation, including wetlands conservation. Staff of the two agencies frequently cooperate with effectiveness, but the perceived lack of clarity in institutional roles has caused difficulties.

Agency participation in the Action Plan process has been broad but uneven. Some ministries, for example the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), have expended significant time and resources to develop role statements and internal analyses of wetland conservation problems. The MOA has three divisions involved in wetland issues and all three have been represented in action plan meetings. In other instances, ministries have hired consultants to represent them in working group meetings. Under these conditions, the outcome of working group deliberations is rarely accorded much status within the agency’s internal planning process. The Ministry of Transport provides an additional example: an agency whose environmental office is using the opportunities provided by the Action Plan process to mobilise commitment from an otherwise uninterested body. These circumstances are to be expected given the relative newness of wetland work in China, but must be dealt with by the action plan process in order for the resulting Plan to have maximum impact.

Two other issues have come to the fore during working group deliberations. First is the temptation for wetland specialists involved in the Action Plan, particularly those from scientific research institutions, to focus their efforts on wetland classification and on developing a definition of wetlands "appropriate for China’s national conditions". The Plan intends to de-emphasise such "academic" questions in favour of practical policy-oriented ones.

In addition, there has been some difficulty turning the discussion from protection of wetlands to sustainable use. Nature reserves are the preferred method of wetland protection. As in most countries, resource conservation is more difficult to undertake outside nature reserves or protected areas. It is outside reserves, however, where changes in wetland use must be made to insure their continuing economic and social function.

The first step towards more sustainable use is underway, characterised by increasing understanding among government officials of the importance of wetland benefits and increased communication among agencies on wetland issues. The policy framework which is contained within the Action Plan will identify priority steps to be taken to move to a more sustainable system of wetland utilisation. Far more work will remain to be done after the Plan is approved by the Chinese government. This will include simple steps that agencies can undertake within their own institutional structure, for example increasing the capacity of the Ministry of Transport to undertake comprehensive environmental impact assessments in the construction of roads. Other recommendations will no doubt be more complex, involving increased co-ordination among agencies. Investment will be needed, and will be sought from international as well as domestic sources. Through the slow and careful process of developing the Wetland Conservation Action Plan, a framework will emerge to insure that the benefits of China’s wetlands remain to be enjoyed well into the 21st century.

Daniel A. Viederman, "The Wetland Management Situation in China" unpublished report prepared for World Wildlife Fund China Programme, August 1994. He is also the author of "The World Bank and the Environment", 1993.