China View: Has Beijing’s Endorsement Of Ecotourism Enhanced Conservation Efforts?
China has one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world, but faces extreme environmental losses due to the country’s huge population and its rapid industrial development. To address this decline, the government has instituted a series of environmental and conservation policies. This has included establishing ecotourism sites and protected habitats, such as nature reserves and forest parks.
Ecotourism is a form of tourism focused on observing, learning about, and conserving the environment. The popularity of ecotourism in the country has surged in recent years as the number of tourists who visited these sites in 2021 surpassed 2 billion. This industry has also helped stimulate economic growth in local communities. Forest parks, for example, had 795 million visitors in 2015, which created more than 800,000 job opportunities.
While this industry has become increasingly lucrative, there are concerns that continued growth in popularity will have adverse effects on the environment. There are also concerns that these natural sites do not help to conserve and protect ecosystems. Although government officials have claimed significant success in addressing land degradation and promoting ecological restoration, some argue that there is little evidence to support these claims. How does the government monitor ecological changes in these protected sites?
Since the People Republic of China was established in 1949, the government has conducted intensive exploitation of natural resources to increase economic production. The government’s view of the environment began to change following its involvement in the UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. Following this conference, the Temporary Regulations on Nature Reserve Management was announced, which provided the first legal requirement for the management of nature reserves in the country.
"The primary purpose of establishing nature reserves is to protect fragile ecosystems, which have been under constant attack from human activities,"
-Tang Xiaoping, deputy director of the National Parks Management Office at the National Forestry and Grassland Administration
Since the 1970s, the government has increased its environmental protection efforts by establishing nature reserves and finalizing laws to promote environmental conservation. In the 1980s, the National Forest Park (NFP) system was established and aimed to promote forest-based tourism and economic development while protecting forest resources. NFPs have also helped to boost ecotourism and promote economic development. Since the 1990s, ecotourism in China has developed rapidly and became an integral part of the tourism sector. In 2000, the number of visitors reached 72 million with revenue of 1.3 billion yuan (approximately 190 million USD). This rising popularity and interest also led to increased public awareness of ecological protection of forests.
President Xi Jinping has long emphasized environmental protection and since 2012, Xi has promoted his goals of reducing emissions and achieving carbon neutrality. During his tenure, the National Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan was announced to “undertake effective measures expeditiously to avoid further damage to the natural environment and resources in China and mitigate or reverse this serious situation”. In September, 2015, the Central Committee and the State Council released the Integrated Reform Plan for Promoting Ecological Progress which aimed to enhance the protection of important ecosystems by establishing a national forest system with a unified management structure. By the end of 2015, the number of tourists totaled 450 million people and revenue reached 53.97 billion yuan ($7.99 billion) accounting for 19.5% of the total domestic tourists.
‘the purpose of establishing national park system is to maintain the authenticity and integrity of natural ecosystem, protect biodiversity and ecological security barrier, and leave precious natural assets for future generations’ - Xi Jinping
The expansion of the national forest system has also established more employment opportunities, creating 172,300 jobs in 2015. The government’s investment in the growth of the industry was further emphasized in 2016 with the 13th Five-Year Plan of China's National Economic and Social Development, which stated that the development of ecotourism should be encouraged and supported. That same year the National Ecotourism Development Plan (2016–2025) was announced to provide guidance for ecotourism development in the country until 2025. In 2021, the government formally announced its first five national parks, covering “a total land area of more than 230,000 square kilometers and conserving nearly 30 percent of the country's key wildlife species”.
Ecotourism has continued to receive considerable attention from the government as it aims to maintain sustainable growth and encourage further development. With the development of China’s tourism industry, an increasing number of visitors are attracted to protected areas, which has boosted economic activity in local communities. However, this increased traffic also adversely impacts on the environment. While these parks were initially established to protect ecosystems, these environments have continued to suffer from overexploitation, pollution, and ecological degradation. “Tourism, even ecotourism, can produce negative impacts on the natural environment through a wide variety of mechanisms at a range of scales”. There are also issues with the monitoring and management procedures used to oversee these parks.
While the government has been able to implement large environmental and conservation projects, “these programs have relied excessively on an overly simplistic centralized command and control structure, which encourages an inflexible, top-down approach that has undermined the effectiveness of China’s environmental management”. Local communities are also adversely affected by the expansion of the national parks system. While they are given more job opportunities, for the local residents who own land in the parks, their access is limited.
Despite these issues, the national park system has been successful in conserving wildlife and promoting economic growth. It is reported that the population of Hainan gibbons, a rare primate that lives in Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, had risen from 13 in 2003 to 37 in 2022. The population of Tibetan antelopes, who had become an endangered species due to illegal poaching, living within Sanjiangyuan National Park also rose from 20,000 in the 1990s to over 70,000 in 2022.
"The construction of the national park system greatly improves the protection of biodiversity and safeguards the authenticity and integrity of the ecosystem. National parks are becoming ideal homes for many rare wild animals,"
-He Xingyuan, researcher at the Institute of Applied Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In Qilianshan National Park, for example, a no-grazing policy was implemented to preserve parts of the park. This, however, reduced the local community’s access to pastureland, which they primarily rely on for income. To address this, the ecological guard policy was implemented to provide conservation-related jobs for villagers who were impacted by the grazing restrictions. “Employing local villagers to be ecological guards is not only beneficial to them but helps to earn their support for park conservation as well”. Additionally, the government has made efforts to improve the monitoring of national parks to promote biodiversity and ecosystem conservation.
