China: Designing Policies to Enhance Ecosystem Services

Abstract

Decades of double-digit economic growth make China the fastest expanding major economy in history while saddling the country with likely the most severe environmental crisis faced by any civilization. China’s ecosystems are quite fragile due to severe land degradation, erosion, desertification, water scarcity, and pollution. Ecological threats continue to grow in scale and severity across China because of rapid urbanization and increased consumption of natural resources (Bryan et al. 2018). Wildlife habitat has declined, causing substantial losses in biodiversity, and poor air and water quality are causing human health problems. Political recognition of China’s crisis started in 1998 when deforestation and erosion caused massive flooding along the Yangtze River. The floods killed thousands of people, made over 13.2 million people homeless, and cost US$36 billion in property damage.

To address the severe environmental crisis, policymakers in China are constructing a new governance strategy with major reforms across all social sectors to better balance development with ecological protection. It seeks to promote environmental quality and human livelihoods by enhancing and sustaining ecosystem services. The first step is the national ecosystem survey and assessment. The second step maps the services, identifying the crucial areas for ecosystem service provision. The third step addresses how best to secure ecosystem services and evaluate the effectiveness of their provision. And the last step is how to translate this into practical and effective policies, such as ecological functional zoning, ecological compensation, ecological restoration, and Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) accounting. There are four key lessons that can be drawn from China’s efforts to enhance green growth: match the ecological problem orientation with ecosystem service science, establish the sustainable supply of ecosystem services as a national goal, mainstream ecosystem services through policy innovation and financial mechanisms, and require new policy mechanisms to engage local residents and other stakeholders in conservation policymaking and implementation.