An eight-year biodiversity maintenance project was launched
yesterday in Beijing by the government, the UN Development Program
(UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility.
Sun Zhihui, vice-director of the State Oceanic Administration
(SOA), said that China and the UN have forged the partnership to
preserve marine biodiversity in coastal areas of the South China
Sea.
The project will be implemented by the SOA to help maintain
biodiversity through development of eco-tourism, pollution control,
rebuilding mangroves and coral reefs, and raising local people's
awareness of the need for preservation.
With a total budget of roughly US$13 million, the project has
two phases.
The first, to 2008, will concentrate on building four
demonstration sites, the Nanji Islands in Zhejiang Province, Sanya
marine protection area in Hainan Province, Shankou mangrove reserve
in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and the Dongshan-Nan'ao
migratory species corridor along the provincial boundary between
Fujian and Guangdong.
In the second, from 2008 to 2012, the project will focus on
using experience from the demonstration sites in other marine
areas.
"China is a 'mega-biodiversity' country, hosting an estimated
one-tenth of the total number of species in the world, especially
in the tropics and sub-tropics along the country's South China Sea
coast," Sun said.
However, "the country's coastal and marine biodiversity is under
threat," he said. Sun pointed out that China has experienced
unprecedented economic growth, social change and population growth
in the past decade, provoking many environmental problems in
coastal zones, such as poorly planned development, pollution,
over-fishing, habitat destruction, and the indiscriminate
destruction of mangroves.
The degradation of the earth's marine ecosystem has a huge
impact on the global environment, exemplified by the decline of
coral reefs. That has increased the vulnerability of coastal areas
to such natural disasters as the recent Indian Ocean tsunami, said
Khalid Malik, a UNDP representative in China.
"Although we do not yet know the entire story of why and how the
tsunami happened in the India Ocean, the intimate relationship
between large marine ecosystems and the atmosphere should be
carefully studied," Malik said yesterday.
Globally, 12 percent of all bird species, 23 percent of all
mammal species, 32 per cent of all amphibians and 34 per cent of
all gymnosperms are threatened with extinction, according to the
World Conservation Union.
Unsustainable patterns of production and consumption exacerbated
by poverty and other social and economic factors, continue to
destroy habitats and species at an unprecedented rate, UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a message to the International
Convention on Biological Diversity in Paris late last month.
(China Daily February 3, 2005)