Zhao Shucong, Administrator of the SFA, said that currently most of the targets are set above the actual quantity of available resources because actual levels are already unable to sustain a sound ecosystem.

As early as in October 2012, the State Oceanic Administration also started to designate areas for ecological conservation in the Bohai Sea, China's only inland sea, which has been heavily polluted.

The MEP began to study the drawing of an ecological red line in March 2012, when it set up a group to compile technical guidelines for it.

In February 2013, the MEP released a tentative guideline on establishing basic lines for zones with important ecological functions. A pilot program was launched in Jiangxi and Hubei provinces as well as Guangxi Zhuang and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions from May to August last year.

Many provincial-level governments have listed the drawing of an ecological red line as a priority on their agenda for 2014, according to their work reports to the annual sessions of local legislatures.

Chen Mengmeng, head of the Environmental Protection Department of Jiangsu Province, revealed that the province has designated 22 percent of its lands as "ecological functional areas."

"The fundamental purpose of drawing an ecological red line is to protect the environment. Human activities will certainly be restricted, but that does not mean that humans cannot do anything. We can engage in adequate development activities as long as we do not do damage," said Zhang Huiyuan, Executive Deputy Director of the Ecological Progress Research Center under the CASS.

A delicate balance

"De facto ecological red lines have already been marked in many areas. For instance, strict restrictions have been imposed on the exploitation of nature reserves, where construction projects are banned, and in core zones, even scientific experiments are prohibited," said Wang Jinnan, Vice President and chief engineer of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning. He added that a cap on total pollutant emissions is also a form of red line, even though it is not called as such."

Wang warned that once the ecological red line is set, it must be made legally binding and must be strictly observed, or otherwise it will be meaningless.

Official statistics show that nature reserves account for 14.61 percent of China's total land area. This percentage is higher than the international average of five to 10 percent, according to Zou Changxin, Deputy Director of the Ecological Center of Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences.

Although the total area under protection is large, the level of protection is not adequate, so ecological degradation still continues, Zou commented.

"In recent years, development and construction activities involving nature reserves have increased by a large margin as the speed of industrialization and urbanization has picked up," said Li Ganjie, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection.

Many large projects such as highways and hydropower stations in nature reserves have been justified by adjustments to the boundaries of nature reserves and their functional zones. Li said that about 22 percent of nature reserves in China was damaged by such activities in 2011.

Zou revealed that when environment authorities tried to designate ecological functional zones in some pilot areas, they had to bargain with other government departments. Sometimes, environment experts believe certain lands should be protected for their ecological value, but local economic planners have already made plans to develop them into industrial zones or ports.

Drawing an ecological red line is not enough; the most important thing is to step up supervision and management, Zou suggested.

To better ensure the ecological red line is observed, Gao with the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences calls for setting up an ecological inventory through remote sensing satellites and ground-level monitoring, and appraising the effectiveness of protection dynamically.

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