Study: Beijing One of China’s Best for Preserving Biodiversity

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No where in China is without bio-diversity loss. Every single provincial-level division in the mainland suffers from at least a handful of declining species. But according to a recent major study in Science Advances, ecologists from institutions across China and Europe collaborated to map out biodiversity loss in the country and the factors that influence it, and they found that both Beijing and the surrounding province of Hebei were among the least offending regions.

The study notes that regions with more biodiversity are more likely to suffer from losses – in other words, the more species there are in a province, the more that province has to lose – but the authors also calculated the ratio of loss, and Beijing made the list of regions with less than 3 percent species loss. As a whole, that list is rather short, comprised of Beijing, Hebei, Tianjin, Henan, Shandong, and Xinjiang.

Some areas of China suffer from worse biodiversity loss than others, but Beijing seems to be holding up alright

Compare that to regions in South-east China, where upwards of 11 percent of species are in decline. What accounts for these drastic differences?

Using statistical methods designed for this kind of special analysis, the authors investigate three categories of factors that are impacting biodiversity loss – industry and other human activity, climate change, and agricultural reclamation.

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They found that along the east coast and in Northern China, industry is the most impactful factor, while climate change and agricultural reclamation are the bane of central and western regions.

For Beijing and surrounding areas, the major causes for concern are the dumping of pollutants and an excess of construction and night-time light. On the other hand, issues of NOx emissions are less of a problem than other coastal areas due to its more developed, service-industry led economy. This presents a rosy picture of the future for the species of other coastal provinces, in particular Zhejiang, which together are currently seeing a decline in 110 species (Compared to just nine in Beijing and 19 in Hebei). As the country’s economy becomes less dependent on heavy industry and these provinces follow in Beijing’s footsteps, the pressure on their species will let up.

But the same cannot be said for the tropical and sub-tropical regions in Central China, which happen to be some of the most species-rich areas. There, the primary cause of species decline is climate change, in particular rising temperatures (although long-term changes in precipitation may have the opposite effect).

In all, each region must tackle the problem of biodiversity loss based on their own unique region, but, just as it’s done to the globe, climate change has put the whole country in the same boat – without addressing it, China stands to lose a lot of species

Image: Zhihu, Sciene Advances

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