708
D. Guan
economy, China’s marine industry has been flourishing, with its management going
through four stages of industrial management, navy management, administrative
management, and comprehensive management. Moreover, the preservation of the
marine ecological environment started with establishing a marine environment monitoring network to keep an eye on the ocean, and then gradually moved towards
a legal and professional track; after the institutional reform, the responsibility of
marine environmental protection was integrated into the newly formed Ministry of
Ecology and Environment—an approach combining the management of the land
and ocean. As such, marine environmental protection tasks have gradually shifted
from “fragmentation” and “five dragons governing the sea”—a phrase referring to
the involvement, usually not well-coordinated, of multiple units in charge—to landsea coordination and integrated management, with the tasks gradually moving from
“focusing on prevention and control of pollution in coastal waters” to “equal emphasis
on prevention of marine pollution, ecological protection, risk prevention, and global
governance.”
(1) Oceanic monitoring. As basic marine management and an important means
of preserving the marine environment, oceanic monitoring was initiated in
the 1970s, with everything starting from scratch—from the construction of the
Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea marine environmental monitoring network to the
completion of the national marine environmental monitoring network. What’s
more, the marine environment monitoring items have been expanded from
water environment monitoring only to multi-medium and multi-regional monitoring, such as monitoring the sedimentary environment, biological quality,
ecology, marine functional areas, pollution sources, etc., with the monitoring
scope first covering the waters under China’s jurisdiction before being extended
to the Western Pacific, an area that is closely related to China’s ecological
security.
(2) The protected marine area. Since our first marine reserve was created in 1963,
China has undergone sporadic and stagnant development, then recovery and
rapid development, and has now entered a stage of high-speed development
with the natural reserve system in place. Up to now, there are 271 protected
marine areas of all types at various levels, which account for 4.1% of the sea
area under China’s jurisdiction, across 11 coastal provinces (municipalities and
autonomous regions), and cover a number of typical marine ecosystems and
rare, endangered species, thus achieving the protection of diverse marine life
forms.
(3) Oceanic restoration. The recent years have seen the implementation of air,
water, and soil pollution prevention plans and the war on pollution, which
have helped improve the ecological environment and marine habitats across or
along China. The strict reclamation management and the “Blue Bay” ecological
environment improvement and restoration project have helped clean up more
than 600 illegal (or unreasonable) sewage outlets into the sea, with more than
260 km of restored shorelines, over 1200 hectares of restored beaches, and
D. Guan
economy, China’s marine industry has been flourishing, with its management going
through four stages of industrial management, navy management, administrative
management, and comprehensive management. Moreover, the preservation of the
marine ecological environment started with establishing a marine environment monitoring network to keep an eye on the ocean, and then gradually moved towards
a legal and professional track; after the institutional reform, the responsibility of
marine environmental protection was integrated into the newly formed Ministry of
Ecology and Environment—an approach combining the management of the land
and ocean. As such, marine environmental protection tasks have gradually shifted
from “fragmentation” and “five dragons governing the sea”—a phrase referring to
the involvement, usually not well-coordinated, of multiple units in charge—to landsea coordination and integrated management, with the tasks gradually moving from
“focusing on prevention and control of pollution in coastal waters” to “equal emphasis
on prevention of marine pollution, ecological protection, risk prevention, and global
governance.”
(1) Oceanic monitoring. As basic marine management and an important means
of preserving the marine environment, oceanic monitoring was initiated in
the 1970s, with everything starting from scratch—from the construction of the
Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea marine environmental monitoring network to the
completion of the national marine environmental monitoring network. What’s
more, the marine environment monitoring items have been expanded from
water environment monitoring only to multi-medium and multi-regional monitoring, such as monitoring the sedimentary environment, biological quality,
ecology, marine functional areas, pollution sources, etc., with the monitoring
scope first covering the waters under China’s jurisdiction before being extended
to the Western Pacific, an area that is closely related to China’s ecological
security.
(2) The protected marine area. Since our first marine reserve was created in 1963,
China has undergone sporadic and stagnant development, then recovery and
rapid development, and has now entered a stage of high-speed development
with the natural reserve system in place. Up to now, there are 271 protected
marine areas of all types at various levels, which account for 4.1% of the sea
area under China’s jurisdiction, across 11 coastal provinces (municipalities and
autonomous regions), and cover a number of typical marine ecosystems and
rare, endangered species, thus achieving the protection of diverse marine life
forms.
(3) Oceanic restoration. The recent years have seen the implementation of air,
water, and soil pollution prevention plans and the war on pollution, which
have helped improve the ecological environment and marine habitats across or
along China. The strict reclamation management and the “Blue Bay” ecological
environment improvement and restoration project have helped clean up more
than 600 illegal (or unreasonable) sewage outlets into the sea, with more than
260 km of restored shorelines, over 1200 hectares of restored beaches, and