Pilot areas for national park system in china: Progress, problems and recommendations

Abstract

Background: The establishment of national park system (NPS) is an important content of ecological civilization of China, and is an important measure to realize modernization of governance system and governance capacity in the field of natural and ecological protection. Aiming to obtain practical experience for reform of the NPS, central government of China launched pilot construction of the NPS in 2015. Progress: For assessing efficiency of pilot reforms in the past five years, we carried out in-depth investigation and research in 10 national parks (NPs). The result showed that: Pilot reform of the NPS was reliably and orderly promoted and accumulated a batch of replicable and propagable experience, especially on top design of the NPS, establishment of management mechanism, law and regulations construction, ecological environment protection, strengthening foundation of protection management. However, there was also relative lack of laws, regulations and standards. Management system reform of the NPS did not reach the designated position. It was also lack of monitoring system of ecological environment. Financial support was still not mature, contradictions between natural protection and society development were still obvious. Perspective: This paper provides relational countermeasure and suggestion for law system construction, deepening the reform of management system, improving the ecological environment supervision mechanism, building diversified funds safeguard mechanism, and promoting to build, to manage and to share the NPs. This paper also provides reference and basis to formally build a batch of NPs, and to preliminary establish the NPS in 2021.