China on Thursday published its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) under the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), confirming its 30% nature protection target while eyeing far-reaching regulatory reforms and a broad range of funding options for ecosystem conservation and restoration.
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) published the plan after it was approved by the State Council, placing China in a small group of countries to finish its strategy well ahead of biodiversity COP15 in Colombia in October, when all nations must submit to the UN an outline for how they intend to meet their GBF targets.
“[By 2030], at least 30% of the degraded ecosystems on land, inland waters, coasts, and oceans will be effectively restored, at least 30% of the land inland waters, coasts, and oceans will be effectively protected and managed,” the Chinese plan said.
The East Asian country is one of 17 in the world classified as “megadiverse” in terms of biodiversity, with 135,000 known species, However, 22% of all vertebrates and over 10% of all plant species in the country are threatened.
As well, large swathes of land have been degraded over the past four decades of rapid economic growth – China has 231 million hectares of forest coverage, but only 1.4% of it is natural forest.
MARKET FOCUS
China’s NBSAP outlined 27 priority actions it intends to take in order to meet its biodiversity targets for 2030 and beyond, one of which involves designing mechanisms to drive funding for conservation and restoration projects.
“By 2030, a diversified investment and financing mechanism for biodiversity will be established, and the level of investment, efficiency, and transparency of funds will be significantly improved,” the plan said.
Among the ambitions listed were to deepen China’s payment for ecosystem services mechanism and explore the establishment of a market-oriented compensation mechanism for biodiversity conservation and restoration.
While not offering further detail, the latter suggested regulators have in mind a potential biodiversity offsetting scheme.
As well, the plan said China will “give full play” to the role of government-guided funds to go towards nature funding, while it will also actively seek international financial support, though it did not specify in which way.
“[We will] explore the consideration of biodiversity factors in the green financial system, incorporate biodiversity protection into the catalogue of projects supported by green bonds, and mobilise more social funds to support biodiversity protection,” it said.
It also mentioned plans to explore a “green credit” scheme through which people and organisations can be credited for participating in projects or arrangements that benefit biodiversity.
A similar small-scale crediting mechanism has been established in many regions across China on carbon for activities such as biking, using public transport, or avoiding waste.
CORPORATE ACTION
The NBSAP also contained a number of planned initiatives to involve businesses, industries, and financials in the work to meet the GBF targets, underpinned by strengthened regulations around biodiversity impact assessments for major project developments in construction and resource development and utilisation.
That will include encouragement for companies to report their impact on and dependence of nature, similar to what has been rolled out by the international Taskforce of Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).
China will design its own reporting framework and select representative enterprises in the most relevant sectors to start reporting, the NBSAP said.
Additionally, China plans the “pilot and demonstration of corporate biodiversity impact assessment in the food, energy and extractive industries, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, culture and tourism, Internet technology, and other industries, and [to] explore the construction of a biodiversity impact index for corporations in key industries”.
BIG JOB
National parks will play a central role in China’s efforts to meet its terrestrial protection target, and the government expects such parks to add up to 18% of its land area being conserved by the end of the decade.
For that to happen it vowed in the plan to speed up the process of drawing up legislation for national parks.
As well, China said it will develop a domestically appropriate system for Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs), which will also be deployed in a bid to meet the target.
The country will also make use of its framework for terrestrial and marine carbon sinks – for which developers can earn carbon credits – to meet its goals, even though critics have argued many such projects in China incentivise monoculture landscapes that don’t benefit biodiversity.
China is planning to carry out significant work to “build a system of biodiversity-related laws and regulations”, though the document admitted the job ahead is massive.
It noted that there are still massive contradictions between local economic and social development targets and biodiversity conservation priorities, human-wildlife conflicts are on the rise, and main drivers of biodiversity loss such as land-use change, climate change, pollution, and invasive species are yet to be dealt with.
As well, the institutional challenges facing China are huge.
“The legal and policy system for biodiversity conservation still needs to be improved, the protection and supervision in accordance with the law is not strong, the scientific and systematic nature of biodiversity conservation and restoration needs to be strengthened, the multi-departmental collaboration in biodiversity management and the central-local linkage mechanism needs to be deepened urgently,” said the plan.
“There is insufficient support for scientific and technological innovation and technical equipment, the monitoring system for biodiversity is not sound, the monitoring and evaluation methods are not uniform, and a mechanism for realising biodiversity value has not yet been established.”
Even so, China did commit to work with developing nations to help them meet their GBF targets, both through its Belt and Road Initiative, direct funding, and sharing of data and best practices.
By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com
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