Biodiversity is the basis for human survival and development. China attaches great importance to biodiversity conservation and has made it an important part of the national strategy, and has formulated a series of laws and regulations related to biodiversity and made the Action Plan for Biodiversity Conservation in China. Zhou Jinfeng, Secretary-General of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), proposed and emphasized the importance of CRBA system for ecological evaluation under the new situation in a recent conference on ecological civilization evaluation.

In order to implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s thought of ecological civilization and enhance ecological protection, the General Office of the State Council has issued the “Evaluation and Assessment Measures for Ecological Civilization Construction Goals”, which will evaluate the achievement of ecological civilization goals every year, and make specific assessments of ecological civilization construction goals in conjunction with every five-year national economic development plan. At present, for biodiversity assessment, the main assessment systems adopted are GIS-based and GEP-based ecological product evaluation systems. However, both systems have shortcomings: GEP ecological product evaluation system, which is based on regional ecological environment evaluation by accounting for various ecological products and ecological services provided by ecosystems for human beings and their total value, is a human-centered ecological environment evaluation system; the Geographic Information System (GIS) ecological environment evaluation system, on the other hand, is mainly based on GIS technology to monitor and evaluate pollution indicators such as water, air and soil, and is more inclined to evaluate ecological environment indicators with industrial indicators. We believe that neither the human-centered nor the industrial-indicator-based evaluation system is sufficient to evaluate the real ecological environment status of a region.

In order to establish a more scientific and direct eco-environmental indicator, CBCGDF proposes to create a Comprehensive Regional Biodiversity Assessment (CRBA) system. The CRBA system, based on traditional related indicators with ecological nature as the starting point, is a comprehensive assessment system to evaluate the state of regional ecological environment with biodiversity indicators as its focus or core, for biodiversity is crucial, and it is closely related to the natural environment and human activities. For example, many species are very sensitive to their surroundings, and slight changes in water, atmosphere, soil and other factors can lead to the reduction or extinction of their populations. Likewise, ecological changes caused by inappropriate human behaviors largely affect the richness of biodiversity. Therefore, biodiversity is a direct reflection and an important indicator of the state of the regional ecological environment.

The CRBA system abandons the traditional way of judging the good or bad environment by the high or low scores of specific evaluation objects, and offers different values and evaluations according to the different types of ecosystems. CRBA focuses on the horizontal comparison of ecological environment types in the region and the vertical comparison on the time axis, so as to measure or evaluate the ecological environment in a dynamic way. To some extent, this reflects the real purpose of regional ecological environment evaluation and provides a timely basis for ecological environment restoration, maintenance and development.

The CRBA system is a product of the times born under the new state of the ecological environment in the world, and it is the vane of the contemporary ecological environment, and the basis and guarantee for the sustainable development of “lucid waters and lush mountains”.

Original Chinese article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/8AVmLdRe-T4lBKmr03KW0g

Translator/Samantha

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