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2 China's biodiversity takes a
beating By Dinah Gardner
definite positive change of
attitude from working groups with ministers over
the past few years.
Cook said: "In many
ways, China is moving in the right direction in
terms of protecting its biodiversity. At the
national level, there's a determination to seek
innovative solutions that balance biodiversity
conservation and development."
So what has
going wrong?
Perhaps the most important
roadblock to developing and enforcing
environmental-protection laws is that
responsibility is split among too many ministries
that simply don't get along, say observers.
For example, one reason China's
protected-species law is still based on an
outdated list drawn up in 1989 is that endangered
animals are the responsibility of both the SFA and
the Ministry of Agriculture, and "these two
departments have a problem getting along with each
other", said Xie.
Meanwhile, noted Cook,
the legal drafting process of a national
protected-areas law - the crux of any plan to
protect biodiversity - has been "plagued by
conflicts between different ministries. And it
will be next year at the earliest before the law
has a chance of passage."
Another problem
is that the section of government responsible for
biodiversity is the State Environmental Protection
Agency (SEPA), a relatively new and weak body
promoted to ministerial level as recently as 1998.
Older and more established ministries are loath to
give up their power, say observers, which in
effect shackles SEPA's authority. It simply does
not have the power to push laws through, unlike,
say, the National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC).
"If the NDRC [were]
given responsibility for saving China's
biodiversity, the protected-areas law would
already be in place," said one NGO source.
Political infighting is a serious hurdle
to tackling the country's environmental issues.
Take for example China's "green GDP" project, an
ambitious plan to publish the environmental cost
of its 2005 economic growth that was put on
"indefinite" hold in July. The official reason for
the delay was the absence of any international
standard for calculating a green GDP - and that's
after all the research was done.
But Wang
Jinnan, team leader of the "green audit", said
SEPA and the National Bureau of Statistics
couldn't agree about the format of the report and
that the project had been pressured by provincial
authorities because they were worried the results
might hurt their regions' economic growth.
"At present, many areas still place GDP
above all else, and when such thinking dominates,
the size of resistance to a green GDP can well be
imagined," media cited Wang as saying at the time.
There is also fragmentation at the
regional level, which means laws are not fully
implemented, staff are not properly educated, and
what funds exist are too widely dispersed. By the
time you reach the management of the park,
whatever political will there was to protect
biodiversity has been filtered out.
"I
think the central government wants to do more, but
when you get down to the provincial level, county
level, and at the level of the nature reserves
themselves, people are more concerned with how
they can have a better life, and how they can make
more money," said Xie. "There's not enough support
from the central government for them to do this
kind of conservation work."
Because of a
lack of money, say observers, many parks are
expected to pay for themselves. That means they
have to bring in tourists - perhaps more than the
park's ecosystem can cope with; authorities may
turn a blind eye to poaching; and some parks even
seek revenue from issuing illegal mining permits.
Although the baiji tun is probably
gone for good, Xie says the fate of another marine
mammal that shares the same river, the Yangtze
finless porpoise, has become a test for whether
China is serious about saving its biodiversity.
The IUCN says there are probably only a few
hundred of these porpoises - the world's only
freshwater porpoise - left. And they face the same
challenges as the ill-fated baiji tun.
"The government needs to make a top-level
decision and put the money in, or else another
dolphin will go extinct in the river," Xie said.
Dinah Gardner is a freelance
journalist based in Beijing.
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