PLANS: NATIONAL BIODIVERSITY STRATEGY AND ACTION PLANS
China’s NBSAP advocates for a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to biodiversity conservation, emphasizing nationwide action and broad societal participation. However, effective implementation remains crucial. Ensuring that conservation efforts lead to tangible outcomes, rather than just numerical targets, is essential. Additionally, fostering coordination across government departments and promoting cross-sector collaboration are areas where China must explore effective mechanisms to address these challenges.
Canada’s NBSAP does an effective job acknowledging that partnerships, particularly with Indigenous Peoples, will play a crucial role in the country’s ability to meet its Target 3 commitments. However, the more general actions it outlines are vague, lack timelines, and are noncommittal, often framed as something the country may consider doing in the future. For instance, while the NBSAP identifies the need for innovative funding opportunities to advance the development of protected areas, it goes no further in outlining any clear financial pathway.
KEY CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
DESIGNATING PROTECTED AND CONSERVED AREAS BASED ON QUALITY, NOT JUST QUANTITY
To achieve their 30×30 targets, Canada and China must focus on both the quantity and quality of the areas they conserve. While protecting 30 percent of the world’s lands and oceans is a significant step towards maintaining global ecological health, many scientists believe it is not enough. Recent estimates suggest that 44 percent of terrestrial lands must be conserved globally to truly safeguard biodiversity.
Both countries must ensure that high-integrity areas are prioritized for protection, including lands and waters that are important for biodiversity; ecologically representative; well-connected; and effectively conserved and managed. Globally, protected areas tend to be established in locations where conservation costs are low and conflicts with development are minimal. This approach leaves large swaths of key biodiverse regions unprotected. To ensure that high conservation value areas are safeguarded, the distribution of protected and conserved areas across geographies should be regularly evaluated based on the latest available science on biodiversity values, socio-economic changes, and other factors, like the impacts of climate change. Indeed, as global average temperatures rise, approximately half of all species are on the move, with many migrating northwards to higher latitudes. To remain effective in the face of a changing climate, there should be redundancy in the protected areas system.
In China, evidence indicates that protected areas do not necessarily exist where species need it most. For example, the western part of the country is home to the largest concentration of protected areas. However, many threatened mammals and birds are found in the country’s eastern provinces, where fewer areas are protected. To address this as well as other conservation challenges, China’s NBSAP lays out actions for improving the effectiveness of its efforts. This includes improving laws and regulations, as well as enhancing monitoring and supervision systems that assess how effectively endangered species are protected. As part of these efforts, and as a supplement to formal protected areas, China plans to establish 650 protected sites for wild animals and 300 protected sites for wild plants.
In Canada, past approaches to establishing protected areas have focused largely on setting aside areas with little consideration as to how they fit into a larger network or whether they acknowledge Indigenous rights and title. To achieve the greatest benefits for biodiversity, the climate, and Indigenous Peoples, Canada’s processes for identifying new areas and networks for protection must continue to evolve. In addition to Indigenous rights and titles, selection processes should account for factors including at-risk species, representative ecosystems, intact wilderness, ecological connectivity, and climate refugia (i.e., areas currently, or predicted to be, less affected by climate change and extreme weather events).
