‘China and all other nations have to find their places in the world, and to cooperate very fully with one another, in order to solve our general environmental problems. The amount of accumulating knowledge we can get will help us enormously in dealing with the problems, but only connections will help us to solve them.’ At the Conservation of China’s Tropical Biodiversity conference, Peter Raven, president emeritus of the Missouri Botanic Garden, was joined by renowned scientists from around the world in making this appeal to conserve China and the world’s biodiversity.
Peter Raven
May 7 and 8, scientists, social scientists and policy experts from leading research institutions world-wide gathered on Duke Kunshan campus for a two-day conference titled ‘Conservation of China’s Tropical Biodiversity’. Designed to facilitate discussions on the challenges of and advances in conserving tropical biodiversity, the event also provided a wide range of academic and professional advices for researchers, scientists, policy makers and other stakeholders in China’s future environment.
China holds 15% of the world’s vertebrates and 12% of its plant species, according to the most recent scientific data. However, rapid economic development in recent years and increased natural resource exploitation ‘ particularly the expansion of tree crops such as rubber ‘ have significantly reduced or degraded the ecosystems vital to the survival of these species, many of which are concentrated in tropical areas. Despite China’s ongoing stride to conserve its tropical biodiversity over the past 35 years, challenges are still many and varied.
Zhou Jinfeng
‘The international team of experts at the Conservation of China’s Tropical Biodiversity conference provided a thorough discussion about the ongoing research in conservation biology, which would positively influence the government’s opinion as well as public opinion on conservation of biodiversity,’ said Zhou Jinfeng, secretary general of China Conservation and Biodiversity Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), a partner organization of the conference. ‘We hope this conference could raise awareness on the importance of driving GEP (Gross Ecosystem Product) growth as well as growth in GDP (Gross Domestic Product).’
Conference speakers presented recent advances in conservation science and reviewed a broad array of emerging technologies, management practices, and economic and social frameworks that may hold promise for addressing these challenges. They also discussed recent research about the role biodiversity conservation can play in human health, especially its impact on the spread of infectious diseases.
How is China Faring at Tropical Biodiversity Conservation?
The current biodiversity extinction crisis facing China and our globe is unprecedented in human history, and major drivers of the accelerating extinction rate include pollution, overconsumption and damage to tropical forests. This is a common conclusion reached by leading botanists, zoologists and environmental scientists at the two-day conference.
Peter Raven
‘Plants are now disappearing very rapidly. Over the last 10,000 years, humans have converted about 40% of the earth’s land surface into lands for crop agriculture and 12% into grazing. You can imagine the loss of biodiversity that went along with it,’ said Professor Raven in his keynote speech. He attributed this dire threat of extinction facing plants worldwide to global warming, pollution and overconsumption. ‘The economic growth in China has exerted a heavy toll on the environment, while the quality of the future of China, the United States and the world depends on our attainment of sustainability.’
Professor Raven’s warning of an increasing rate of extinctions was echoed by Professor Stuart Pimm from Duke University. ‘We are suffering from an extinction crisis with a background rate of extinction that is now exceeded by a thousand times. We found that species extinction rate is increasing, which is irreversible, and geographically-concentrated tropical deforestation is the main driver for species extinctions.’
Stuart Pimm
Meanwhile, Dr. Luke Gibson from the University of Hong Kong shared his research findings on rainforest mammals in Southeast Asia, which further confirmed the devastating impact of tropical forest loss on biodiversity. He pointed out that development of hydropower would lead to fragmentation and loss of mammals’ natural habitats, which in turn would pose a severe threat to biodiversity. ‘In the rapidly changing landscape of tropical forests, extinction debt can be collected rapidly with the entire native guilds lost.’
Luke Gibson
Emerging Technologies in Conservation Science
Technology explosion has opened up numerous possibilities for biodiversity conservation. To provide guidance for reproduction and conservation of rare species in China, speakers shared their insights on how technologies in biology, medicine and remote sensing can be applied to conserve biodiversity.
Pierre Comizzoli
Dr. Pierre Comizzoli from Smithsonian Institution focused his speech on a series of reproductive technologies that can help conserve rare species, including genome resource banking, vesicle desiccation and epigenomics. His research interests include wildlife and tropical veterinary medicine as well as reproductive biology in various animal species.
Ouyang Zhiyun, deputy director at Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences of Chinese Academy of Sciences, presented on the status, services and results of China National Ecosystem Assessment, as well as restoration measures after assessment. Based on information retrieved from more than 16,000 remote sensing data images and over 110,000 ground survey sites, the National Ecosystem Assessment project has developed an overall image of China’s ecosystem status as well as monitored the distribution, patterns, quality, services and changes in China’s ecosystem. ‘Findings from ecosystem assessment, ecosystem service evaluation and mapping have been used to identify key protection areas, develop imitative conservation policies and regional development strategy,’ Ouyang concluded.
Ouyang Zhiyun
Management Practices and Frameworks
To inform the development of biodiversity management frameworks in China, emerging non-governmental organizations (NGOs), environmental policy experts and ecologists at the Conservation of China’s Tropical Biodiversity conference shared with the audience their first-hand experiences in biodiversity management in China.
In his keynote speech on the role of NGO in biodiversity conservation, Zhou Jinfeng reminisced about his involvement with public interest litigation, public interest advocacy, creation of new conservation areas and cooperation with government agencies and other NGOs. Underlining the importance of cooperation in biodiversity conservation, he talked about the many challenges encountered in his work.
‘NGOs should cooperate with scientists to fill the gap between research and public awareness, policy and practice. By joining forces, we can do much better at conserving China’s biodiversity, ‘ said Zhou.
Creating conservation areas is another biodiversity management approach that holds great promise. As senior researchers in conservation area selection, Professor Pimm and Li Binbin, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University, presented their research on setting conservation priorities in topical China and adjacent countries. ‘There are broadly two classes of threatened species. Species that have relatively large geographical ranges are threatened because people hunt them, but for a much larger group of species that have tiny geographical ranges, they are disproportionately concentrated. So we should have a strategic idea of where we need to do conservation.’
Li Binbin
Li Binbin pointed out that giant pandas’ habitats have actually covered a huge proportion of the habitats of many other forest endemic species. As a result, China’s efforts to preserve habitats for the giant panda also protect many other mammals, birds and amphibians that live only alongside pandas. Although there are a few species that do not share the same habitat with panda, its role as an umbrella species is well established nonetheless. The success of panda conservation should be replicated in other areas, as noted by Li. ‘There are many other ecosystems that still lack this kind of protection. In tropical areas, maybe elephants can serve as the ‘umbrella species’. We want to see more successful stories like this.’
Additionally, Professor Lu Zhi, deputy director of Peking University Center for Nature and Society, offered her advices on the way biodiversity-conservation-related information should be gleaned, distributed and used. She pointed out that there’s a significant difference between China’s Protected Species List and the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Red List and that China’s Protected Species List has not been updated for the last 30 years, whereas the IUCN Red List is re-assessed every five years. Thus, she proposed three suggestions to address the difference: first, the protected species list needs to be updated frequently; second, the information regarding biodiversity protection, especially the forest data, needs to be shared; third, the government and other organizations should support citizen scientists in collecting relevant information on a regular basis.
Lu Zhi
Tropical Biodiversity and Human Health
Tropical biodiversity and human health are two seemingly unrelated topics to many people, but this lack of awareness was challenged by leading environmental scientists, global health and medical experts, who revealed the underlying relations between biodiversity and human health at the conference.
Professor Wang Linfa from Duke-NUS Medical School identified bats and a few other species from tropical and subtropical areas as a major source of emerging infectious diseases. He maintained that controlling wildlife consumption and reducing direct or indirect contact with wildlife could support infectious disease control.
Wang Linfa
On the other hand, Dr. William Pan from Duke Global Health Institute revealed the positive influence of tropical biodiversity on human health. He presented a case study in Amazon rainforest to demonstrate the correlation between change in land use, land coverage and human diseases, and that rainforests may contain undiscovered natural resources for new medicines.
William Pan
Duke Kunshan Places Emphasis on Environmental Studies and Research
This is the third major conference that has been held as part of Duke Kunshan’s academic initiatives in environmental issues. Previous conferences focused on U.S.-China climate cooperation, and energy development and water quality in China.
Professor Peter Raven praised Duke Kunshan’s efforts in hosting this conference to address environmental problems in China. ‘Increase in government awareness in these problems is extremely important, and Duke Kunshan University will play a role in it. What is going on here at Duke Kunshan will help a lot as we plan the future environmental conditions in China, accelerate the study of biodiversity conservation, and take all possible steps to limit climate change.’
Duke Kunshan will launch a new international master’s degree in environmental policy beginning in the fall of 2017. It will be offered at Duke Kunshan as a Duke University degree jointly issued by Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Sanford School of Public Policy.
