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Michael Heiner1, Li Xinhai1, Wu Ruidong1, Jonathan Higgins2
1 The Nature Conservancy, China Program, Beijing, P.R. China.
2 The Nature Conservancy, Conservation Science Group,
Chicago, IL, USA
Fir forest at Hailuogou, west Sichuan
Photo by Li Xinhai
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The first goal under the CBD 2010 commitment is
to protect the components of biodiversity by promoting
the conservation of the biological diversity of ecosystems,
habitats and biomes. The two targets for achieving this
are: (1.1) At least 10% of each of the world's ecological
regions effectively conserved; and (1.2) Areas of particular
importance to biodiversity protected. China has devoted
attention to ensuring 10% of its land area is under legal
protection in many provinces, and to giving highest
protection to areas of recognised biodiversity importance.
There are a variety of approaches and practical challenges
to defining both ecological regions and important areas in
a way that ensures adequate representation of biodiversity.
Meanwhile implementing the protection and sustainable
management of ecosystems can be compromised by
competing economic values. Effective conservation, and
meeting the 2010 commitment in particular, requires a
unifying vision of conservation priorities based on a peer-reviewed,
scientific methodology, on the best available
information and on an information system that allows
easy integration of biodiversity information into other
assessments of socio-economic cost and benefits, including
the evaluation and mapping of ecosystem services.
Headwaters of the
Yangtze in Qinghai
Photo by Li Baomin
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The China Biodiversity Conservation Blueprint Project
(see Map 1) was conceived to support the design of
this unifying vision. Through regional assessments
of biodiversity distribution and status, the project
is developing information to support development
decisions by several agencies and levels of government. In
partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),
government agencies including the State Environmental
Protection Administration (SEPA) and conservation
NGOs including Conservation International, the Wildlife
Conservation Society and WWF, the Nature Conservancy
(TNC) is conducting an assessment of freshwater and
terrestrial biodiversity in the Upper Yangtze River Basin
(UYRB) using ecoregional assessment methods developed
in the Americas and in Northwest Yunnan. These methods
were developed to provide a systematic approach to
define a vision for success and to identify conservation
priorities across broad geographic areas that makes best use
of available information and knowledge. This assessment
process is an effective mechanism to develop information,
set objectives and build the partnerships necessary to
define and implement a regional conservation vision1, 2.
Ecoregions have been used as regional biodiversity
conservation planning units globally for over a decade.
They are defined and mapped using a variety of
approaches that partition terrestrial, freshwater and marine
realms into ecologically meaningful biophysical units based
on dominant environmental factors that shape biodiversity
patterns2. In China, terrestrial and freshwater ecoregions
have been delineated by WWF. The WWF terrestrial
ecoregions of China emphasize the distribution of distinct
biotas based on historic, natural conditions, adapted from
the systems developed by the Chinese Vegetation Map
Compilation Committee3 and the Changchun Institute of
Geography and Chinese Academy of Sciences4, 5.
The Upper Yangtze River Basin (UYRB) assessment is a
pilot study that will adapt ecoregional planning practices to
this large geography, in order to adapt technical approaches
and build capacity to produce a replicable model of a
regional conservation planning process that can be applied
throughout China. This area was chosen for the pilot study
because it is rich in globally-significant biodiversity and
the focus of a SEPA-led, United Nations Environment
Programme/Global Environment Fund (UNEP/GEF)
funded project that will identify and legislate protection
of Ecosystem Function Conservation Areas (EFCAs)
that provide ecosystem services in the form of flood
mitigation, erosion control, carbon storage and biodiversity
conservation6. The UYRB ecoregional assessment will
explore the options and challenges presented, by:
- adapting ecoregional planning practices to function
at the broad, regional scale of a large river basin, given
the familiar constraints of limited time and data;
- packaging the planning process, results and source
data in a functional decision-making support system
that will improve the capacity of agencies to manage
and use biodiversity information in their planning and
management;
- incorporating ecosystem functions into conservation
planning and management; and
- incorporating climate change scenarios into
conservation planning and management.
Map 1 China Conservation Blueprint Project
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