China is the world’s largest producer, which comes with it a large amount of responsibility when it comes to environmental impact. A little known fact is that China is actually one of the most biodiverse places in the world, but with it comes the most to be lost. It was measured in 2022 that 90% of China’s grasslands have degraded as well as 53% of the coastal wetlands. It has also lost 80% of it’s coral reefs and 73% of it’s mangroves in the last 70 years. This degradation and loss leads to the loss and endangerment of the many species that call that habitat home. This has lead to many species going extinct to which there is no recovery.

China has put many measures in place to try and stop this such as building the world’s largest amount of protected area. They have also spent upwards of 40 billion USD on incentives for people to live on and rebuild the degraded parts of their environment. However at the same time they have had very environmentally harming projects such as the “Belt and Road Initiative” which has lead to deforestation and degrading of the environment to put pipelines and roads across the world. China has pledged that they will make this initiative “green” but it has yet to be seen what this amounts to.

Overall in the last few years China has done a lot to try to recover from it’s loss of biodiversity and has offered many incentives for its recovery. But at the same time it actively encourages the degradation of other environments. It has a long way to go, especially as being the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter to do better in the environmental department.

Sources:

Hull, V. (2022, December 4). Analysis: Is China ready to lead on protecting nature at the upcoming UN Biodiversity Conference?. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/analysis-is-china-ready-to-lead-on-protecting-nature-at-the-upcoming-un-biodiversity-conference#:~:text=Biodiversity%20in%20China&text=It%20is%20home%20to%20nearly,nowhere%20else%20in%20the%20world.