endangered and rare wildlife species.^18 As recent high-level reviews indicate,
however, the overall system of nature reserves is unlikely to attain the
objectives sought by the State without reform. Drawing from the Task
Force Report, the critical literature, and our interviews, we examine five
specific challenges: 1) the architecture of nature reserves, 2) horizontal
and vertical administration, 3) financial resources and incentives, 4) human
resources and training, and 5) community-level conflicts. These challenges
encompass national and local politics as well as issues of administra-
tion.
The Architecture of Protected Areas
The structural framework of the protected area system has three deficiencies.
It is based on regulations, not law, and is not integrated with other legislation
concerning land use. Second, there are gaps of coverage in the system. Third,
the system is inflexible and does not accommodate multiple uses. We discuss
each in turn.
First, although national leaders have adopted a relatively large number of
regulations concerning nature reserves, legislation is only now in the process
of being developed. The PATF recommends a ‘comprehensive legal frame-
work for an advanced system of protected areas based on the full range of
protected area objectives’.^19 The justification for this recommendation is the
fact that PAs throughout China have been superimposed upon ‘a mosaic of
land uses that are often in severe conflict’ with PA regulations.^20 This suggests
a need to integrate law and planning:
‘The PA system is not directly connected with the government plans for overall land
use and development programs at national, provincial and county levels. So large
development projects often take precedence over the interests of PAs. However,
China’s new “Scientific Development Perspective” calls for a higher level of
recognition for PAs.’^21This leads to situations where laws and regulations concerning biodiversity
conservation cannot be enforced, particularly when they conflict with priority
development projects:
‘The oil fields of Shengli, for example, are fed by large amounts of water pumped
out from the Yellow River Delta NNR at the expense of NR objectives. Many NR
managers have no control over development activities within the reserve
boundaries, even if they are forbidden under the 1994 Nature Reserve
Regulations.’^22In other cases, the boundaries of the nature reserve overlap areas of traditional
community use, which is often the case in poor ethnic minority areas:
Protected areas and biodiversity conservation 107