Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
versity in these areas might well have been worse had nothing at all been done. Second,
some reserves, particularly in forested sections of southern and central China where key
species are located, are improving their management capability greatly. Often aided by
international and domestic NGOs and provided with outside funding, reserves in Sichuan,
Shaanxi, Yunnan, and Hainan are beginning to investigate problems honestly, engage in
dialogue with local people affected by land management policies, and view their mandates
more holistically.
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Third, hobbled as forestry and environmental protection officials are
by fundamental problems of authority and funding, designating a nature reserve gives
them some standing to at least speak on behalf of biodiversity. Although they lack clout
to affect land management, absent nature reserve designation such officials are not em-
powered even to enter the policy arena. Fourth, Chinese academics and agency personnel
are becoming increasingly aware of and outspoken about the problems besieging China's
nature reserves. There are currently efforts under way to develop a more firm legal foot-
ing for nature reserves (although the process of drafting laws in China remains lengthy
and mysterious). Finally, “paper” reserves are hardly a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.
They can be found in almost all developing countries, and reflect both genuine sincer-
ity about protecting biodiversity (at a time when countries have neither institutions nor
trained personnel that can do so), and unresolved conflicts between such noble intentions
and the ever-present imperative to support short-term development. The world's first
national park—and perhaps even today its most famous, Yellowstone—was a paper park
for roughly its first twenty years of existence. Yet Yellowstone was ultimately provided
not only with effective protection, but also with an enormous buffer area (in the form of
the first of many U.S. national forests) in which natural resources were to be used in a
managed and sustainable way.
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Clearly, from the perspective of conserving native flora and fauna, nature reserves on
balance represent steps in a positive direction. My analysis and critique should not be
interpreted as suggesting that China's nature reserves should be abolished, or that the
concept of retaining areas essentially free from human disturbance is anything but noble.
Rather, my argument is twofold. First, by oversimplifying the problem, the Chinese policy
of equating nature reserve designation with conservation has shown itself to be ineffective.
In decreeing that huge swaths of the landscape should henceforth become entirely free
from natural resource use (lacking either legal authority to implement such a change or
feasible alternatives for people thereby deprived of their livelihoods), the policy set itself
up for failure. Second, by virtue of the confusing and wooly terminology and direction
provided by high-level leaders, in which protection from human use and furthering lo-
cal economic development were melded into an incomprehensible mash, nature reserve
staff have been encouraged to promote money-making schemes that, comforting words
notwithstanding, inevitably compromised the reserves' conservation function. Promises of
one-off funding from higher levels have encouraged planners to propose nature reserves
not in order to limit economic development, but to encourage it.
As I have emphasized throughout, China's west differs so markedly from its more
populated regions that the one-size-fits-all approach toward nature conservation embodied
in the current Chinese nature reserve system is particularly ill-suited here. The huge areas
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