Strategic studies on the biodiversity sustainability in Yunnan Province, Southwest China

Abstract

With an area of 394,000 km2 (4.1% of China’s total area) and specific diversified geographical environments, Yunnan houses over 18,000 species of higher plants (51.6% of China’s total), 1,836 vertebrate species (54.8% of China’s total) and multitudinous species of rare, endemic and epibiotic wildlife, ranking first in species richness value and endemicity rate of China’s biodiversity, thus becoming a rare gene bank of wildlife species with the most concentrated distribution of important wildlife taxa and a key terrestrial biodiversity region of global significance. Despite its evident abundance and endemism, however, the biodiversity is faced with threats of ecological fragility and human disturbances in socioeconomic development resulting in attenuation of biodiversity, degradation of ecosystems and serious loss of species, thus, it needs to be carefully studied for its sustainability. Based on the analyses of the geographical diversity, the macro material bases of Yunnan’s biodiversity were reviewed and six characteristics of the provincial biodiversity were described in the ecosystems, forest types, species compositions, endemic species, genetic resources, etc. By appraising the present status of the provincial biodiversity conservation, the facts that the biodiversity coexisted with fragility were revealed so that eight key disadvantageous factors in the provincial ecological fragility causing serious biodiversity loss were summarized and described in this paper. In order to satisfy the two-fold needs of biodiversity sustainability and socioeconomic development, eight strategies for the sustainable development were intensively elaborated by borrowing certain theories in modern conservation biology, recycling economics and some successful innovations, and by giving comprehensive consideration to the ecological fragility mechanism, nature reserve construction, environmental protection and the exploitability of resources for biodiversity sustainability and socioeconomic development. Accordingly, relevant targets, principles, tactics and measures for effective biodiversity conservation and sustainability were suggested to lay a solid theoretical foundation and reliable scientific basis for the biodiversity and socioeconomic sustainable development.