Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan Released
Approved by the State Council, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment recently released the "China Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan (2023-2030)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Action Plan").
The Action Plan, as the overall plan for national biodiversity conservation and the core tool for fulfilling the Convention on Biological Diversity, clarifies China's new era biodiversity conservation strategy and deploys four priority areas: mainstreaming biodiversity, addressing the threat of biodiversity loss, sustainable use and benefit sharing of biodiversity, and modernization of biodiversity governance capacity.
Each priority area has 6 to 8 priority actions, covering a wide range of areas such as laws and regulations, policy planning, law enforcement supervision, publicity and education, social participation, investigation, monitoring and evaluation, protection and restoration, biosafety management, sustainable management of biological resources, realization of ecological product value, urban biodiversity, benefit sharing, climate and environmental governance, investment and financing, international compliance and cooperation, etc., providing guidance for various departments and regions to promote biodiversity conservation work.
The 'Action Plan' contains detailed official data, excerpting several issues of concern to professionals in the field of landscaping and gardening
Biodiversity of ecosystems. China has various types of global terrestrial ecosystems, including 212 types of forests, 36 types of bamboo forests, 113 types of shrubs, 77 types of meadows, 55 types of grasslands, 52 types of deserts, and 13 secondary land types such as wetlands; There are various types of marine ecosystems such as mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds, islands, bays, estuaries, and upwelling currents; There are artificial ecosystems such as farmland, artificial forests, artificial wetlands, artificial grasslands, and cities.
As of now, the forest area in China is 231 million hectares, with a forest coverage rate of 24.02%, of which 140 million hectares are natural forests; The grassland area is 265 million hectares, including 210 million hectares of natural grassland, with a comprehensive vegetation coverage of 50.32%; 56.35 million hectares of wetlands, with 82 wetlands listed in the International Important Wetlands List of the Ramsar Convention, covering an area of 7.647 million hectares, ranking fourth in the world; There are 45203 rivers with a drainage area of 5000 hectares or more and a total length of 1.5085 million kilometers.
Species diversity. There are 135061 known species in China, including 65362 species in the animal kingdom, 39539 species in the plant kingdom, 35714 species of vascular plants, and a total of 3130 species in the phyla Ceratopsia, Bryophyta, and Dicambaria; There are also 30160 species in the fungal kingdom, protozoan kingdom, pigment kingdom, bacterial kingdom, and viral kingdom.
There are 455 species and 40 categories of wild plants listed in the National Key Protected Wild Plant List, including 54 species and 4 categories at the national first level and 401 species and 36 categories at the national second level.
Genetic diversity. China is one of the main centers of origin for global crops, as well as one of the original origins of crops such as rice, flax, eggplant, banana, and sweet orange. It was the first to domesticate and cultivate crops such as soybeans, millet, plums, peaches, and apricots.
According to incomplete statistics, there are 1339 species of cultivated crops in 455 categories in China, including 1930 species of wild relatives; There are 12807 types of traditional Chinese medicine resources, and over 3500 medicinal plants are endemic to China; There are over 1000 economic tree species and 7000 native ornamental plant species.
Article source: Reprinted from Zhongyuan Garden