Urbanization takes toll on wetlands

Swans fly over a wetland in Jiujiang county, East China's Jiangxi province, Nov 9, 2013. [Photo/Asianewsphoto]

Ten percent of China's wetlands have vanished over the past decade as urban development has advanced, a forestry official said at the launch of a national wetlands conservation project on Wednesday.

Bao Daming, of the State Forestry Administration, said more than 3.3 million hectares of wetlands have disappeared since the first national survey 10 years ago, even though more wetlands are protected by regulations today. Protection has expanded from 30 percent of the country's total wetlands to 43 percent.

The first survey, from 1996 to 2003, showed China's wetlands at 38.5 million hectares, of which natural wetlands made up 36.2 million hectares, nearly 4 percent of the national territory.

"Of all the disappearing land, 99 percent is natural wetland," Bao said. "Threats that lead to its loss are increasing."

In the first survey, he said, the threats included just three categories - pollution, reclamation and illegal hunting. But now the list has expanded to five - pollution, over-fishing, reclamation, invasive species and construction.

"In the past 10 years, China has sped up its pace of urbanization, with the price being environmental problems," Bao said.

According to Ma Chaode, an environmental program manager with the United Nations Development Programme, threats to wetlands form a long list - commercial development, drainage, mineral extraction, peat infiltration, over-fishing, tourism, siltation, pesticide discharge from agriculture, toxic pollutants from industrial waste, and construction of dams and dikes (often aimed at flood protection).

"Construction is a new threat," he said. "The government should set a red line as soon as possible to balance development with the environment."

In October, the government of Anxin county in Hebei province suspended a building complex construction project in Baiyangdian, China's largest freshwater wetland.

The developer, privately owned Hebei Zhuozheng Group, pumped water from more than 200 hectares to make a tourist resort and destroyed all the reeds growing in the area, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Official data show that 18 provinces have instituted wetlands protection regulations, but a State law is still lacking.

Conservationists are attempting to take action on their own.

"China will continue to strictly protect its wetland resources and will increase the wetland area to 53.3 million hectares by 2020," Zhao Shucong, director of the State Forestry Administration, said in October at the opening ceremony of the third China Wetland Cultural Festival in Dongying, Shandong province.

The administration and the Ministry of Finance have launched 325 monitoring and restoration projects since 2009.

China is also bringing in international experience. The Global Environment Fund provided a grant of $2.6 million for six pilot restoration projects to be undertaken in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region with help from the UNDP.

The projects are in the Greater Khingan Mountains in northeastern Heilongjiang province, at Honghu Lake in Hubei province, at the Poyang and Shengjin lakes in Jiangxi and Anhui provinces, and in Hainan province.