Ancient forests. Snow-capped mountain peaks. And towering waterfalls cascading down rocky slopes. China’s Shennongjia National Park is the stuff of legends, providing inspiration to thousands of years of Chinese poets, artists and authors.
It’s also home to one of the world’s most elusive primates, the endangered golden snub-nosed monkey, who spends winters in large groups of mostly males deep in the mountain forests of Asia.
But this World Heritage site is not just a home to primates and stunning landscapes. It’s also a critical basin for a river that provides energy to hundreds of millions of people.
With funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been supporting partners on the ground in Hubei province, China, to expand and better integrate the protection of Shennongjia National Park into local and national development plans.
The project has provided a range of benefits not just for golden snub-nosed monkeys, whose numbers have jumped more than 20 percent in two years, but also for the people who live near the park.
“The unprecedented collaboration demonstrated by the many stakeholders involved sets a new standard for China inhow to work together in the management of protected area landscapes,” said Max Zieren, Task Manager within the UNEP GEF Biodiversity unit.
The initiative is part of a broader effort by UNEP to safeguard sensitive natural spaces and protect endangered animals. It comes with the world facing what experts call a crisis in biodiversity. Human activity has altered three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface and has threatened 1 million species with extinction.
In 2022, world leaders will convene in Kunming, China later for the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP-15). They aim to adopt an ambitious Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework - a ten-year strategy to protect and restore biodiversity.
The unprecedented collaboration demonstrated by the many stakeholders involved sets a new standard for China.
Good for the planet, good for people
Working with the authorities, the project has helped improve the livelihoods of local residents. The state government has made direct payments into the bank accounts of farmers and other community members. The programme is also providing them with part-time jobs as rangers, supporting the development of vegetable plantations and helping with the establishment of breeding facilities for chickens, pigs and bees.
Backing like this is designed to help local communities live in harmony with their surroundings while also recognizing their basic needs.
“Working in collaboration with the park management, my family now can afford to buy fuel to heat our homes and we are also using less wood for cooking with the new energy-saving stoves we have received,” said Wang Yulong, who lives on the outskirts of the park. “This means we don’t need to venture out into the forest to collect as much firewood. It’s good for us, it’s good for the forest, it’s good for everyone.”
Beyond the immediate benefits that these schemes provide for both the local community and the ecosystem, they safeguard the significant supply of water that the area provides. This directly benefits hundreds of millions of people with electricity from the world-famous Three Gorges Dam while also providing drinking water for Beijing and most of northern China through the Danjiangkou Water Reservoir.
Before the project commenced, this landscape was divided into eight different nature reserves, with little connectivity for the hundreds of species that call the area home. Shennongjia National Park is now one of China’s largest national parks and its protection has been strengthened by its integration into the country’s five year economic development plans. These policy frameworks are a cornerstone of Chinese government planning. This kind of integrated management of a national park at landscape level and across provincial borders represents a first for China.
“This isn’t just about the expansion of a protected area,” said Zieren. “This project has been enormously successful in its engagement and outreach with local communities by incentivizing conservation, as well as the effective mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation in regional development plans.”
The project also ensured that local stakeholders – from provincial and county-level governmental institutes to residents – were aware of the new protections in place and the socio-economic benefits that they would bring.
“In the Shennongjia National Park we are working with the government to pilot national strategies to consolidate protected areas for enhanced ecological integrity,” said Zheng Lianhe, Director of the Hubei Provincial Wildlife Conservation Station. “[The project is also] providing support for institutional reform and strengthened public participation in the effective management of these important natural resources.”
UNEP is working with the Global Environment Facility to provide countries with the scientific foundations, policy expertise and innovation needed to best conserve, restore and benefit from their biodiversity. Learn more about GEF-supported work in biodiversity here.
For more information about the Expansion and Improvement of Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources in the Greater Shennongjia Area, Hubei Province or UNEP’s wider work in landscape restoration and biodiversity conservation, please contact Johan.Robinson@un.org.
