Marine protected area networks in China: Challenges and prospects

With over 30 years' experience of managing Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), China has established more than 250 MPAs in its coastal and marine areas, but the overall management effectiveness is unimpressive [46]. Recently, China has made commitments to expand the MPA coverage in its waters ([7,52,53]) and develop an “ecological barrier” along the coast by connecting MPAs and islands by 2020 (The State Council 2015). In this context, this study reviews major challenges in current MPA practices in China, including the lack of systematic and scientific approaches, inadequate laws and regulations, ineffective governance mechanisms, conflicts between conservation and exploitation, limited funding, and inadequate monitoring programs. Four scenarios for developing China's MPA networks are developed and analyzed based on a literature review of experience in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and the Philippines, as well as a set of interviews with Chinese MPA experts. These scenarios include: 1) creating a national system with an inventory of MPAs, 2) developing social networks, 3) developing regional ecological networks, and 4) developing a national representative network. The first two scenarios focus on the enhancement of the governance system through connecting individual MPAs as a social, institutional, and learning network, which could provide opportunities for creating an ecologically coherent network, while the latter two emphasized ecological connectivity and representativeness. Given different focuses, they can be applied at different stages of implementation and combinations of scenarios can be used depending on China's needs.