Animal Conservation Act in 1988. Both laws called for the establishment of
nature reserves. During this period, China also joined international conven-
tions related to biodiversity conservation such as the Convention on the
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the Ramsar Convention
on Wetlands (Ramsar), and the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD); and it
participated in the International Man and Biosphere network. At the start of
this period, several ministries jointly released the ‘Notice of Strengthening
Management, Planning and Scientific Investigations in Nature Reserves’,
followed in 1992 by the Environmental Ministry’s formation of an evaluation
committee for national nature reserves. In 1994, the State Council issued
regulations on protected areas.^7 By the close of the period, China had
approximately 1000 protected areas (PAs).
The fourth stage (1995–96 to 2005), is a period of continued expansion in
number of PAs, with attempts at rationalization of the overall system.
Protected areas were included within China’s Biodiversity Action Plan, and in
1995 the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) pledged US$18 million to
improve management of nature reserves. Two other factors led to an
exponential increase in protected areas: natural disasters and regional
economic development projects. Large-scale droughts and floods in 1997 and
1998 alerted elites to the significant rate of ecological deterioration, which
prompted Premier Zhu Rongji’s ban on logging in the upper reaches of the
Yangtze River in 1998. An ecology professor described the effect of these
disasters: ‘This aroused the interest of the people. Environmental problems are
the most important of factors affecting decision-making, especially crises’.^88
Second, the ‘Great Opening of the West’ campaign in 1999 stimulated the
establishment or expansion of protected areas, such as the Lop Nur Wild
Camel Nature Reserve in Xinjiang, Sanjiangyuan in Qinghai, Genhe Cold-
water Fish Reserve in Inner Mongolia, and Zadatulin in Tibet. Professor Xie
Yan reports that nature reserves increased at an average of 160 sub-national
and 16 national-level reserves every year after 1997, with a peak of 320 in
2000 and another peak in 2003.^9
By mid-2005, China had more than 2000 nature reserves covering
approximately 15 percent of its total land area.^10 In addition, there are about
1400 forest parks, 800 scenic landscape and historical sites, 50 geological
parks, 50 water conservation scenic areas, and at least 1000 small conservation
and agricultural reserves.^11 Although the term ‘protected area’ is sufficiently
broad to cover all of these conservation units, we use it throughout this chapter
as interchangeable with nature reserve.
The explosion in numbers of protected areas, as well as problems of law,
finance, staffing, management, and reconciliation of biodiversity conservation
and local economic development objectives in the vicinity of protected areas,
spurred focused study. In 2003, the China Council for International
102 Governance of biodiversity conservation in China and Taiwan