Tourists go boating on a wetland scenic spot in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang province, Jan. 6, 2023. (People's Daily Online/Liu Jili)
The shrinking area of wetlands and degrading ecological functions are a challenge faced by the entire world.
Since becoming a party of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat, or the Ramsar Convention in 1992, China has constantly enhanced its efforts in legislation, monitoring, science popularization, and international cooperation to fulfill its obligations.
China's wetland conservation has gone through three stages: problem identification, rescue protection, and comprehensive conservation.
So far, the country has completed over 4,100 projects to advance wetland protection and restoration. It is the only country in the world that has done national wetland resource investigation three times.
China boasts remarkable achievements in wetland conservation. Wetland ecology is constantly improving in the country.
Its wetland area, covering 56.35 million hectares, ranks the first in Asia and fourth in the world. Especially in the recent decade, China has added or restored more than 800,000 hectares of wetlands. It also has 64 wetlands of international importance and 29 wetlands of national importance. The country is home to 13 international wetland cities, the highest in the world.
The total number of wetland-type nature reserves in China has reached more than 2,200, while 11 million hectares of wetlands are included in the country's national park system with stringent protection management.
