China loses $31 bln a year to land reclamation(2)

However, the map of ecological red line areas in Liaoning and Shandong provinces indicates that the "areas where development is prohibited" and "areas where development is restricted" are distant waters far from intertidal zones, while actual land reclamation starts precisely from coastal intertidal zones.

Zhu Chunquan, IUCN representative to China, said the No 28 and No 51 resolutions of the IUCN World Conservation Congress in 2012 decided that land reclamation projects in the Yellow Sea (including Bohai Sea) had caused a conspicuous impact on the coastal waters and that management should be intensified to negate detrimental effects. The resolutions also prohibited the approval of sea reclamation activities on intertidal zones along the "Eastern Asia-Australasia" route before an ecologic-economic and biodiversity assessment of locations on that route critical to biodiversity is completed.

This means that the Chinese government, which joined the IUCN in 1996, has to implement the resolutions.

Mandatory management of land reclamation quota

Regarding the poor implementation and weak supervision of environmental impact assessment on land reclamation projects, Xia Jun, a lawyer from Beijing-based Zhongzi Law Office, suggested stronger public awareness and called on the State Oceanic Administration as well as provincial and municipal governments around the Bohai Sea to strengthen investigations into land reclamation. Any violation should be punished and rectified immediately.

Many environmental organizations have also called for more attention to biodiversity, especially the living needs of birds, in the planning and implementation of marine development.

Fan Zhiyong, a WWF director, suggested revising the Regionalization of Marine Function and Marine Ecological Red Line to protect intertidal zones, saying the "impact on birds and their habitats shall be listed as an important consideration in all environmental impact assessments".

Uninhibited sea reclamation in coastal areas has also drawn the attention of State Council leaders.

"Mandatory management should be implemented on land reclamation and the reclamation quota should not be exceeded randomly," said Liu Cigui, head of the State Oceanic Administration. According to Liu, the oceanic authority will establish a registration and statistics system for the use of land reclamation quotas and assess reclamation performance. It will not approve or examine local reclamation projects if the current-year quota is exceeded and will also deduct next year's quota on the principle of "1 sq km excess, 5 sq km deduction."