How to Exercise Administrative Authority Efficiently in the Management of PAs Under a Holistic Spatial Protection Perspective—Evidence from China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

I find your approach very interesting and I admire all the analytical effort you put in preparation of the manuscript. Unfortunately, I must have stopped my review at page 14, because the structure of your paper makes it impossible for me to follow your point. What is crucial, it is not only a matter of the content overload. In order to effectively 'guide' the reader through your concepts and approaches, you should put the greatest possible attention to the clarity of your presentation. Specifically, please reflect on:

- which parts of your paper describes the theoretical and geographical context of the study,

- what is the actual aim of the paper,

- which parts discuss your methodological assumptions and what is the actual procedure that you applied for the data analysis,

- what are the results of this procedure ,

- how these results can be discussed with the assumptions you made and with the results of other scholars.

In a current form, none of these points is obvious to me. Your introduction clearly sets the specific context of your research (PA governance) but the geographical context (Chinese system of PAs) is scattered across the paper, including the methods and materials section. You do not formulate a clear aim of your paper. Your main theoretical framework is not exhaustively described, while connections between the main and the remaining frameworks presented in your manuscript are unclear. Descriptions of your methodological and terminological assumptions are, again, scattered across the article in a way that makes it difficult to understand your research procedure. Based on your description, I am unaware what were your actual methodological steps applied to the study. In the data analysis section, you are providing tables which contains specific examples from the legal or policy acts - I really cannot differentiate it from the results of your content analysis. Finally, in the discussion section, you're using 8 references only for more than an 11-pages chapter, which means you hardly discuss your results with the state of the art.

I would be happy to reassess your revised paper, providing its clarity and structure is significantly enhanced. Some specific suggestion on that are provided in the comments to the text (incl. numbering the sections of your frameworks, constructing the terminological glossary and many others).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I suggest proofreading of the revised version of your manuscript, as some of the expressions used had not been encountered by me in the subject literature so far. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

 

Thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to revise our manuscript and we deeply appreciate for your positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “How to construct the governance structure of protected areas from a spatial perspective —— The China experience”. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper,and also have the important guiding significance to our researches.We studied your comments carefully and have made revision which marked in red in this paper. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to all the comments. Earnestly we hope you find the revised version attached, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration. The corrections in the paper and the responds to comments are as follows:

 

 

Responds to Reviewer #1’s Comments Point by Point

 

Comment 1: In order to effectively 'guide' the reader through your concepts and approaches, you should put the greatest possible attention to the clarity of your presentation.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion! We very much agree with your suggestion to streamline the presentation of the article and the related statements. We have checked the specific phrases in the article and tried to change the use of long and difficult sentences, so as to ensure the accuracy of the presentation on the basis of making the relevant expressions easier for readers to understand and appreciate. On the basis of checking the accuracy of the statements, we have focused on reducing the volume of the article, adjusting some of the tables to the annexes, and optimising the structure of the article, so as to make the research questions of the article more focused and enhance the readability of the article. On this basis, we focus on how to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs to meet the expectation of holistic spatial protection of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, and to promote the management of PAs from ‘flat’ to ‘three-dimensional’ and from ‘three-dimensional’ to ‘three-dimensional’. This will lead to the transformation of the management of PAs from ‘flat’ to ‘three-dimensional’ and from ‘two-dimensional’ to ‘three-dimensional’, so as to realise the efficient management of PAs. We streamline the parts of the article according to the following ideas: in the theoretical framework part, it is made clear that the ideal state of PAs management is to achieve holistic spatial protection, and that the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methodology and materials part, it is put forward the methodological steps of normative analysis and case study analysis, with a view to achieving efficient management of PAs in the light of the current situation. qualitative analysis methodological steps to sort out the practice of nature PAs management in China, using existing laws, policy documents, and case data as samples; in the results section, the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in China's nature PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are elaborated, including a description of the main body of PAs management, what reforms have been carried out by China's bureaucratic organisations in order to adapt to holistic protection, and what reforms have been carried out by the central government Based on this, the paper concludes with a discussion section that analyses whether the exercise of power in the management of PAs in China is in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, the dilemmas encountered in the process of effective promotion of the practice and exploration of the management of PAs, and proposes strategies to solve the problems accordingly. The analytical framework of the article is shown in Fig 1.:

 

 

 

 

Comment 2: Which parts of your paper describes the theoretical and geographical context of the study.

Response: Thank you for your interest in this issue, and we strongly agree with your suggestion to revisit the theoretical and geographical context of the article. Based on the streamlining of the original article, we have extracted a theoretical framework focusing on holistic spatial protection, which constitutes the theoretical background of the article. We have added a new section on ‘Theoretical Framework’ to the article, which elaborates on the theoretical framework of the PAs from three aspects: first, the ideal state of governance of PAs is the realisation of holistic spatial protection; second, the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection; and third, the requirements that the effective operation of administrative authority in the management of PAs should satisfy from the perspective of holistic spatial protection. conditions that should be met by the operation of administrative authority in management, because holistic spatial protection is the research perspective of this paper, and the network of governance of PAs is the research field of this paper, in which the mechanism of administrative authority allocation is the research problem of this paper.

In addition, we further add information on the geographical background of PAs governance in China in the introduction, explaining why China was chosen as the research sample, which hopefully can provide readers with a clearer geographical background. In addition, there is also an elaboration on the geographical context in the Methods and Materials section. In the selection of the study area, because this paper explores the operation of administrative authority of PAs as a spatial whole, it may be difficult to comprehensively analyse the relevant issues if the study area is limited to a specific type or category of geographic area, we focus on analysing the relevant policy and legal texts as well as relevant judicial precedents, which are selected on a nationwide scale, and the policy and legal The scope of application of the texts is also nationally applicable, and the selection of a particular PAs may make the relevant conclusions unconvincing. In fact, our search in this journal as well as journals in the field revealed a large number of articles dealing with policy and law that selected the scope of the study as the overall scope of a country. As a result, our study area focuses on three types of PAs in China: national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks, and provides a thorough explanation of how the three types of PAs are defined.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

2.1 The ideal state of management of PAs is holistic spatial protection

The first ideal state of the management of PAs is to realize holistic spatial protection, which is determined by the holistic nature of the space and the negative externality of spatial behavior. On the one hand, the wholeness of PAs becomes the objective law that the spatial management of PAs should follow in the first place.Some scholars believe that the wholeness is a reflection of the form of interaction between man and man, man and nature, nature and society, and the wholeness covers the wholeness of the subject, the wholeness of the object and the wholeness of the relationship between the subject and the object . The wholeness of the space of PAs refers to its objective characteristics presented as a physical space object, including the completeness and indivisibility of the elements, the natural ecological space is an organic whole that interacts with each other and constrains each other, and it is a kind of mountain, water, forest, field, lake and grass life community. This objectivity is the law that cannot be violated in the process of spatial management of PAs, and if the space is reduced to individual elements, the meaning of the space itself will be diminished.

On the other hand, the negative externality of the spatial behavior of PAs determines the protection of this physical space as well as the constraints on the behavior within the space from a holistic perspective. The different forms and scales of social practice activities carried out by human beings in the natural space are spatial behaviors, and the spatial behaviors will produce certain ‘spillover effects’ to the outside, which may be ‘positive effects’. This ‘spillover effect’ may be ‘positive effect’ or ‘negative effect’. As the spatial behavior is carried out under the subjective will of the main body of the space, and the subjective will is more combined with their own needs to maximize the pursuit of the use of benefits, and does not fully follow the objective law, this self-interested and arbitrariness leads to the spatial behavior will have an adverse impact on the outside, damaging the social and public interests and the interests of the state. For example, disorderly mining activities in the space of PAs can cause problems such as the destruction of surface vegetation, increased soil erosion, and surface subsidence, and then the over-exploitation of natural resources such as land and forests in the space of PAs leads to the reduction of biodiversity. Although individual spatial behaviors may produce small negative externalities, these spatial behaviors negative externalities are often gradually accumulated and work together, ultimately making the space chaotic and disorderly, spatial interests are out of proportion, and the space is difficult to develop in a sustainable manner. It is difficult to achieve a better protection effect just by restraining and controlling individual subjects and behaviors, therefore, it is necessary to implement holistic spatial protection for the whole physical space and impose holistic spatial behavioral constraints.

China's Overall Program for the Reform of the Ecological Civilization System has refined the objectives of spatial management, focusing on solving the problems of over-occupation of high-quality arable land and ecological space, ecological damage, and environmental pollution caused by disorderly, excessive, and scattered development. The Measures for the Use Control of Natural Ecological Space breaks down the spatial management objectives into three major requirements: ensuring that the area of ecological space is not reduced, maintaining ecological functions without degradation, and gradually improving the capacity to guarantee ecological services, and states that the evaluation of the carrying capacity of resources and the environment and the appropriateness of territorial space development will be used as the basis for control. In addition, the general objective of the ‘Guidance on the Establishment of a PA system with National Parks as the Main Body’ also explicitly proposes to ‘enhance the carrying capacity of natural ecological space’. It can be seen that the overall area and quantity of ecological space, and the maintenance and improvement of overall ecological functions, have become an important criterion for the spatial management of PAs.

2.2 Exercise of administrative authority should be consistent with holistic spatial protection

As can be seen from China's existing environmental protection legislation, holistic spatial protection is often used as a guiding principle for the government's management. For example, article 3 of China's Yangtze River Protection Law emphasizes the principle of unified protection and systematic management. The Law on the Ecological Protection of the Tibetan Plateau also continues to require the implementation of the principles of overall coordination and systematic management in the protection of the Tibetan Plateau as a space through article 3. Article 4 of the Measures for the Use Control of Natural Ecological Space (for Trial Implementation) clearly stipulates that the use control of ecological space should follow the basic principles of regional integration and collaborative management. In practice, the holistic spatial protection has been refined into clear geospatial units, such as the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, national parks and PAs, etc. In terms of the attributes of the holistic spatial protection, the holistic spatial protection is also more often reflected as a combination of spatial planning, administrative licenses for spatial exploitation and utilization, and administrative authorities such as administrative levies, administrative penalties, and administrative coercive measures to achieve the spatial control objectives. Synthesis.

From the perspective of the relationship between the various control subjects, spatial management presents a characteristic of both differentiated management but also mutual cooperation and synergistic promotion. Different physical spaces have their own characteristics, coupled with the fact that different regions have different interests due to unbalanced economic and social development and unbalanced environmental obligations, thus requiring differentiated management. However, at the same time, due to the interconnectedness of space, spatial management emphasizes more on resource sharing and integration and linkage among various subjects. Throughout the framework and practice of management of PAs in various countries, it is also emphasized that the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection.

(1) U.S. national parks system National Park from the establishment of the first national parks in 1872 to the official establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the early days of the single national parks patrolled by the federal military, and can not guarantee that the national parks of the wild species resources and habitats are well protected until the National Park Service was formally established, the jurisdiction of the national parks are formally oil laws It was not until the National Park Service was formally established that the jurisdiction of national parks was formalized in law as direct federal management, enjoying federal financial support, and in the course of nearly 100 years of development, absorbing fresh types of protected areas, exploring cooperative models for different types of members, merging redundant agencies, improving the legal system, and consolidating the monitoring mechanism to ensure that the national park system can reflect the well-being of all people. The direct federal management of national parks indicates that the maintenance and improvement of the national park system is an important task of the government, and the significance of this is much greater than the ecological protection and resource utilization of a single element, but the national parks as a holistic spatial protection .

(2) One of the characteristics of the EU Natural 2000 is that the implementation of its strategic planning is based on a large regional perspective and cyclical planning, and also follows the requirements of holistic spatial protection, which evaluates the territory of the European Union as a whole, and, on the basis of respecting each member state's own biodiversity conservation laws and regulations, integrates the whole region and proposes the protection strategies that each country needs to implement. The plan is a comprehensive and integrated approach, respecting each Member State's own biodiversity conservation laws and regulations. This is conducive to increasing the internal connectivity of Natura 2000 and improving the overall quality of conservation; it can also avoid some unnecessary conservation measures and reduce the cost of conservation .

(3) Germany in the PAs legislation will be the federal and state are entitled to set up a certain legislative power, generally including the federal exclusive legislative power and competing legislative power two parts, national parks belong to the scope of competing legislative power, that is, the federal only on the construction of national parks to put forward a guiding framework for the provisions of the specific by the state through the laws and regulations to be stipulated and protected. At the state level, each state ‘one area, one law’, that is, each PAs (national parks or biosphere reserves, etc.) combined with their own actual situation to put forward specific regulatory requirements, through the legislation from the federal and state level to regulate the operation of administrative authority in the overall scope of the space of nature reserves .

 (4) In Russia, direct management is practiced in the mode of management of PAs. Special nature reserves at the federal level are directly managed by federal state bodies; special nature reserves at the regional level are directly managed by the state power bodies of the constituent entities of the Federation; and special nature reserves at the local level are directly managed by the local self-governing bodies of the municipal administration districts in which they are located. Moreover, specialized management bodies have been established within the different levels of protected areas. This management system clarifies the administrative authority and responsibility of all levels of government, and is conducive to the adjustment and control of personnel and funding for PAs at all levels. As a result, it prevents the occurrence of the phenomenon of ‘complicated management’ .

(5) France in the exercise of administrative resources in the PAs are also more subject to the constraints of administrative divisions, but in the board of directors, the charter, the park brand value-added system of these measures, France's regional parks across the provinces or even across the region of the integrated management is easy to realize, so that the various regions within an ecosystem can comply with the unified planning and coordination of the relationship between protection and utilization by a unified body. This is actually a kind of contractual federal management mode, which also embodies holistic spatial protection .

2.3 Conditions to be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection

The management of PAs from dispersion to integration, and from single government management to shared governance by multiple subjects requires that the exercise of administrative authority should take full account of space as a whole, and take the realization of holistic spatial protection as a criterion for judging behavior. Under this perspective, the governing bodies are not in a state of doing their own thing under single-factor governance, but a mode of coordination as far as possible, i.e., despite the need to realize the protection of the whole space, the different governing bodies will not conflict in their powers and duties, on the contrary, the different governing bodies also have the willingness to cooperate collectively and support each other for the common goal. The focus of holistic spatial protection of PAs is to realize the synergy of the governing bodies, but this synergy is not to realize the simple cooperation of different governmental agencies, but to truly connect different levels of government, synergize with the cross-space government, and at the same time, expand the participating bodies of governance, forming a synergistic, three-dimensional governance network .

(1) The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs urgently needs to coordinate the relationship between the central and local governments, coordinate and integrate various management forces and management resources, and ultimately form a state of unity of purpose, common mission, up and down linkage, and synergistic operation between the central and local governments in the management of PAs. The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs should closely follow the ideal state of holistic spatial protection, i.e., striving to realize holistic spatial protection of PAs, including the granting of administrative authority to the authority that is most likely to make wise decisions in terms of organization, structure, procedures and staffing. At the same time, authorities exercising administrative authority need to adapt their organization, structure, procedures and staffing accordingly to ensure that they adapt and perform their functions effectively. The overall management of the space of PAs requires not only clarification of the characteristics and ecological laws of the space under management, but also collaboration and cooperation of different spaces, as well as the same cooperation of the relevant subjects in the space altogether.

(2) The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs needs to be adapted to the multiple attributes of the management content. The management of PAs belongs to the category of ecological civilization construction. As a brand-new form of human civilization, ecological civilization is not only limited to economic development or environmental protection, but also involves the whole situation of economic and social development, and presents a more prominent integration and comprehensiveness in the management content. Since the behavior of individuals is from the perspective of self-interest, it is difficult to consider the protection of the whole space, so this requirement is more for the government body. The overall management of the space of PAs includes both the management of public property and the management of public affairs, which is a mixture of several contents. If understood from a narrow perspective, administrative authority in the overall management of spatial management of PAs is mainly manifested in the control power exercised by the government. The control power includes three specific forms of goal-setting power, inspection and acceptance power, and incentive distribution power . Among them, the goal-setting right is the core of the hierarchical authority relationship, refers to the organization of the commissioner through the unilateral formulation, top-down implementation or both sides of the negotiation for the subordinates to set goals and tasks of the right of control; inspection and acceptance of the right of the commissioner or the management to check the completion of the set goals of the right of control; incentives to distribute the right of the commissioner or the management of the management of the subordinates of the agent's incentives to set the power to assess rewards and punishments As well as the organization and implementation of the target implementation, resource allocation and other control rights.

(3) The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs needs to be in line with the holistic nature of governance results. The object of the exercise of administrative authority in the management of existing PAs is more of a single element, while the holistic spatial protection requires that the legal nature of the entire PAs space must be responded to, so as to make the corresponding adjustments. The premise of the independent existence of the overall management of the space of PAs is that the object of the overall management of the space of PAs is an independent spatial unit of PAs, in other words, the space of PAs as a whole should be the object of management in terms of the object of the role of administrative authority. If the object of the overall management of PAs space is still the traditional environmental elements and individual natural resources, then it seems unnecessary to emphasize the overall management of the space, and there is no way to talk about the wholeness of the exercise of administrative authority dependent on the object of management. Overall protection and systematic management put higher requirements on the management object, and only when PAs become an independent management unit can overall protection and systematic management be better realized.

 

1 Introduction

China has demonstrated sustained efforts to enhance the effectiveness of management of PAs. The development of PAs in China is in the midst of a reform process that is breaking down and building up at the same time. 1956 saw the establishment of China's first nature reserve, the Dinghu Mountain National Nature Reserve, which gave China's PAs management a formal start. In order to address the systematisation and comprehensive promotion of nature reserve legislation, China is actively building a nature reserve system with national parks at its core.In 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on the Establishment of a PA System with National Parks as the Main Body, which classifies PAs into three categories, namely, national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks(accessible at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2019-06/26/content_5403497.htm). In fact, China's classification of PAs is also based on the IUCN's classification of PAs, as shown in Table 1.Furthermore, in 2022, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration drafted the National Parks Law (Draft) and widely solicited opinions and suggestions from the public. Subsequently, in September 2023, the Law on National Parks and the Law on PAs were formally incorporated into the legislative plan of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC).On 10 September 2024, the Draft Law on National Parks was submitted to the 11th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th NPC for first consideration. As of October 2024, after consolidation and optimisation, there were a total of 6,736 PAs in China, with a total area of 185,236,100 hectares. Among them, there are 5 national parks with a total area of 23,225,400 hectares; 1,527 nature reserves with a total area of 120,313,300 hectares; and 36,381,000 hectares of natural parks such as scenic spots, forest parks, geological parks, wetland parks, marine parks, and desert (rocky desert) parks.

In the management practice of PAs in China, we observe that the government, as an important subject, has made significant innovations to achieve the overall protection of PAs. Whether it is the integration of PAs management or the reform of institutions, the Chinese government has continuously optimised the management structure and the exercise of administrative authority, reflecting the pursuit of holistic spatial protection and systemic governance. In fact, theoretical research has been weaker than practical exploration in this area, and existing studies have not explored more about how administrative authority in PAs management can be adapted to the needs of holistic spatial governance. Currently, the literature on PAs management either focuses on analysing changes in PA governance in order to differentiate PAs management; analyses the differences in the way different subjects carry out PAs management as a way of arguing for an increase in the level of participation of other subjects in the management; provides criteria, indicators and methodologies on the evaluation of the effectiveness of PAs management, or, by taking into account the different factors related to the efficiency of PAs, either analysing the impact of PAs. It is valuable to observe and elaborate on China's innovative practices and the challenges it faces in achieving holistic spatial protection of PAs, especially as the system of PAs develops and the use of administrative authority for management and guiding multi-party participation will play an important role. Some of China's existing experiences can be of value for the construction and optimisation of PAs, and for the improvement of the organisational structure of cooperative global biodiversity management.

 

3.2 Materials

In terms of the selection of research areas, we selected three types of PAs: national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks as the research areas and scopes of this paper. Among them, national parks, as the main body of China's PAs management system, refer to specific land or sea areas where the main purpose is to protect nationally representative natural ecosystems and to realize the scientific protection and rational use of natural resources. Nature reserves refer to specific territories designated for the specialized protection of representative natural ecosystems, natural distribution areas of rare and endangered species of wild animals and plants, and natural relics of special significance. As a supplementary protection area in the management system of PAs, nature parks aim to protect natural ecosystems, natural relics and natural landscapes with remarkable ecological, ornamental, cultural and scientific values. In order to learn more about the management practices of PAs in China, we conducted a study of the national parks of Sanjiangyuan, Giant Panda, Northeast Tiger and Leopard, Hainan Tropical Rainforest, and Wuyi Mountain, as well as the Liupanshan, Helanshan, and Luoshan National Nature Reserves of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Nanling National Nature Reserve, Zhangjiajie Badaigongshan National Nature Reserve, Nanji Liedao National Marine Nature Reserve of Zhejiang Province, Sedan Chair National Nature Reserve of Kunming City, and Inner Mongolia Dajiagongshan National Nature Reserve. National Nature Reserve, Inner Mongolia Daxing'anling Khanma National Nature Reserve, and Zhangjiajie Badaigongshan National Nature Reserve in Zhangjiajie City were studied.

 

Comment 3: What is the actual aim of the paper.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion! In order to answer your question, we have rearranged the structure of the article, condensed the core ideas of the article, eliminated all the parts that are not directly related to the theme of the article, and focused the real purpose of the article on the ‘Optimisation of administrative authority allocation in PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection’. In terms of specific modifications, we pay special attention to the introduction of the article's core purpose in the introductory part, so as to enhance the distinctiveness of the article's core viewpoints, and to enable readers to understand the article's research purpose more directly. As a matter of fact, it needs to be stated that the power allocation mechanism of the management subjects and inter-subjects of PAs is a key issue for the effective management of PAs, which is directly related to the balanced and stable state of natural resource elements and the whole ecosystem in PAs. PAs itself is a special kind of ecological space, and the state of administrative authority operation in the management of PAs must be able to guarantee the shaping of the order of this special ecological space. On this basis, this paper uses normative analysis and case study method to focus on the allocation of administrative authority in the governance network of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, and combines qualitative analyses of policy texts, legal texts and typical judicial cases related to the governance of PAs to sort out and review the mechanism of allocating administrative authority in the management of PAs in China, and to make clear how to carry out It also clarifies how to centralise and synergise administrative authority in the management of PAs, so as to meet the expectation of comprehensive, synergistic and three-dimensional holistic protection of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

In the management practice of PAs in China, we observe that the government, as an important subject, has made significant innovations to achieve the overall protection of PAs. Whether it is the integration of PAs management or the reform of institutions, the Chinese government has continuously optimised the management structure and the exercise of administrative authority, reflecting the pursuit of holistic spatial protection and systemic governance. In fact, theoretical research has been weaker than practical exploration in this area, and existing studies have not explored more about how administrative authority in PAs management can be adapted to the needs of holistic spatial governance. Currently, the literature on PAs management either focuses on analysing changes in PA governance in order to differentiate PAs management; analyses the differences in the way different subjects carry out PAs management as a way of arguing for an increase in the level of participation of other subjects in the management; provides criteria, indicators and methodologies on the evaluation of the effectiveness of PAs management, or, by taking into account the different factors related to the efficiency of PAs, either analysing the impact of PAs.  It is valuable to observe and elaborate on China's innovative practices and the challenges it faces in achieving holistic spatial protection of PAs, especially as the system of PAs develops and the use of administrative authority for management and guiding multi-party participation will play an important role. Some of China's existing experiences can be of value for the construction and optimisation of PAs, and for the improvement of the organisational structure of cooperative global biodiversity management.

This paper takes the policy texts, legal texts and typical judicial cases related to the management of PAs as the object of study, and anchors the question of how to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs to meet the expectation of holistic spatial protection of PAs , and to promote the management of PAs from flat to three-dimensional, so as to realise the efficient management of PAs. This paper discusses the following aspects in each part: in the theoretical framework part, it is clear that the ideal state of PAs management is to achieve holistic spatial protection, and the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methodology and materials part, it proposes the methodology steps of normative analysis and case study analysis, and the methodology steps of qualitative analysis with the existing existing methods and methods of analysis. qualitative analysis methodological steps to sort out the practice of nature PAs management in China, using existing laws, policy documents, and case data as samples; in the results section, the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in China's nature PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are elaborated, including a description of the main body of PAs management, what reforms have been carried out by China's bureaucratic organisations in order to adapt to holistic protection, and what reforms have been carried out by the central government Based on this, the paper concludes with a discussion section that analyses whether the exercise of power in the management of PAs in China is in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and the dilemmas encountered in the process of practice and explorationof effective promotion of the management of PAs, as well as proposing corresponding strategies to solve the problems, in the hope of promoting the effective management of PAs and helping to achieve the goal of holistic spatial protection. The paper also proposes corresponding solution strategies, hoping to provide reference for promoting the effective management of nature reserves and helping to achieve the goals of holistic spatial protection as well as sustainable development.

 

Comment 4: Which parts discuss your methodological assumptions and what is the actual procedure that you applied for the data analysis.

Response: Thank you for your interest in the theoretical assumptions of this article and the steps of data analysis. Following your suggestion, we have added a new section on theoretical framework to illustrate the theoretical foundation of the article. We have also added the methodology section to explain the research methodology, data sources, and specific steps of data analysis. We need to clarify that our qualitative analysis method based on normative analysis and case study is mostly without theoretical assumptions before implementation, but the final results can produce theories and patterns, which is what we strongly explain in the results section of this article. Compared with quantitative research methods, qualitative research methods focus more on describing, interpreting, and exploring, and the basis of qualitative research methods lies in interpreting, which is roughly characterised by a few points, which we will now present to you in order to make it easier for you. There are a few characteristics of qualitative research methods, which I would like to explain to you to facilitate your understanding: (1) In contrast to the positivist theoretical paradigm that emphasises ‘value neutrality’, the theoretical paradigm of qualitative analysis subscribes to the view of ‘value intervention’. They argue that strict ‘value neutrality’ is not only impossible, but also harmful. Not only does it ‘cause the avoidance of research on important yet controversial social issues, making it difficult to conduct research without clear moral obligations’, but it also hampers the critique of reality under the guise of ‘value neutrality’, in fact hiding the tendency to defend the established reality. The researcher, in the process of scientific analyses The researcher must remain value-neutral in the process of scientific analysis, but in choosing the questions to be studied, the researcher's values inevitably serve as a potential basis for the research. (2) The theoretical paradigm of qualitative analysis holds that the social world is completely different from the natural world in that it cannot exist independently of the subjective consciousness of individuals. The social world consists of a myriad of ‘symbols’ full of subjective meanings, and the meanings of these ‘symbols’ are given to them by individual experience or subjective consciousness, and vary according to the individual's understanding of them. Because of this difference, there is no causal necessity or regularity in the social world as there is in the natural world, and it is therefore impossible to study society in the same way as the natural world. As Lawrence Newman argues, hermeneutics is epistemic. Epistemic means that hermeneutics provides a symbolic presentation or ‘thick’ description. An interpretive study reads more like a novel or a biography than a mathematical proof. Interpretive analyses of social contexts, like the interpretation of a literary work, are inherently coherent and rooted in the text, except that more emphasis is placed on the everyday life that the researcher finds meaningful. In other words, it is by revealing the meanings, values, interpretative frameworks, and rules of life used by people in everyday life that interpretive theory allows the reader to experience the social reality of another person. Perhaps it can be said that interpretive theory is like a map outlining the social world or a travel guide depicting local customs and informal norms. (3) In contrast to the quantitative analysis theoretical paradigm's tendency towards social realism and methodological holism, the hermeneutic theoretical paradigm generally advocates the principles of social nominalism and methodological individualism. The hermeneutic theoretical paradigm holds that society is not an independently existing entity, but merely the sum of countless individuals. Therefore, hermeneutics firstly introduces the experience and understanding of individual action into research, takes social action as the object of research, and believes that the individual is the real subject of social action, and only through grasping the motivation of human action can we ‘understand’ the ‘subjective meaning’ of social phenomena. It is only through grasping the motivation of human action that the ‘subjective meaning’ of social phenomena can be ‘understood’, and the individual cannot be removed first to study the so-called society which is beyond the individual’. Societies, cultures, structures, institutions, etc. are not physical abstractions; their existence and their changes cannot be dissolved by themselves, but must be explained by the behaviour of individuals. To understand society one must first understand its individuals. Therefore, the path of study of society should not start from the macro-whole and then descend to the micro-individual, but should start from the micro-individual and gradually rise to the macro-whole.

 

The specific modifications are made as follows：

3.1 Qualitative analysis

This paper adopts the method of qualitative analysis, combining normative analysis with typical case analysis to carry out relevant research on the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection. Through the normative analysis and case analysis method, the provisions and practices of legal norms, policy texts and judicial practices on the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs are clarified. The normative analysis in this paper is mainly based on policy texts and legal texts. The Chinese government has issued numerous policy documents and legal norms around the matter of administrative authority allocation in PAs management, and local provinces and municipalities have also issued numerous local policies. Through the qualitative analysis method based on the practice of PAs management, especially the analysis of laws and policy documents related to PAs, it is possible to sort out the implementation process, the evolution direction, and the promotion effect on the holistic spatial protection objectives of the innovations in the management of PAs in China. In terms of case analysis based on the management of PAs in China, after searching for cases involving the management of PAs, we conducted case analyses under the headings of implementation subjects and sources of administrative authority to illustrate the current status of judicial practice in the management of PAs in China, which can support the subsequent proposal of a globally meaningful path of the exercise of administrative authority over PAs.

In order to more comprehensively and accurately conduct an in-depth study of the operation of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China, after selecting the texts and cases mentioned above, and combining the theoretical framework of holistic spatial protection with the judging criteria, a qualitative analysis was conducted according to three steps: (1) Summarization. Summarize the facts of the cases related to administrative authority in the management of PAs, extract all the facts that affect the conclusions of the judges, and eliminate the facts that do not really affect the value judgment of the judges; when summarizing, this paper adopts the form of a table to present the relevant facts. (2) Comparison. When comparing the cases related to administrative authority in the management of PAs, it is done through two directions. The first direction is to put the cases with the same facts together and observe whether the judges reach the same conclusion with the same facts. The second direction is to compare cases that reach the same conclusion together and analyze whether the facts of the respective corresponding cases are consistent. Through generalization and comparison, certain rules of adjudication are extracted, and key points such as the source of administrative authority in the management of PAs can be initially identified. (3) Analysis. In the analysis, the factual elements related to administrative authority in the management of PAs are closely focused. By analyzing the source and operation process of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, the conditions that should be satisfied for the optimization of the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs are derived. It can be initially found that the exercise of administrative authority and management have a high degree of linkage, and management serves as the field and background for the distribution and exercise of administrative authority. Under the pursuit of holistic spatial protection objectives, the management of PAs is adjusted in terms of centralization and decentralization in the vertical relationship, and integration and cooperation in the horizontal relationship.

3.2 Materials

In order to obtain the literature on the exercise of administrative authority in PAs management as comprehensively as possible, we searched the literature published from 2015-2024 on databases such as CNKI, SpringerLink, Scopus, Web of Science, Wiley Online Library, etc., in both Chinese and English, using the search keywords ‘Protected Areas’; ‘National Parks’; ‘Nature Reserve’; ‘Nature parks’; ‘Protected Areas in China’; ‘The Administration of PAs’; ‘Effectiveness of PAs management’. The reason for adopting this time period is to explore more literature, and another reason is that since 2015, China's PAs have entered a period of consolidation and optimization, including the pilot national parks and the reform of national institutions, and other important practices are in this time period, and we would like to better observe the latest literature that is more relevant to the management of PAs in China.

In terms of the selection of research areas, we selected three types of PAs: national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks as the research areas and scopes of this paper. Among them, national parks, as the main body of China's PAs management system, refer to specific land or sea areas where the main purpose is to protect nationally representative natural ecosystems and to realize the scientific protection and rational use of natural resources. Nature reserves refer to specific territories designated for the specialized protection of representative natural ecosystems, natural distribution areas of rare and endangered species of wild animals and plants, and natural relics of special significance. As a supplementary protection area in the management system of PAs, nature parks aim to protect natural ecosystems, natural relics and natural landscapes with remarkable ecological, ornamental, cultural and scientific values. In order to learn more about the management practices of PAs in China, we conducted a study of the national parks of Sanjiangyuan, Giant Panda, Northeast Tiger and Leopard, Hainan Tropical Rainforest, and Wuyi Mountain, as well as the Liupanshan, Helanshan, and Luoshan National Nature Reserves of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Nanling National Nature Reserve, Zhangjiajie Badaigongshan National Nature Reserve, Nanji Liedao National Marine Nature Reserve of Zhejiang Province, Sedan Chair National Nature Reserve of Kunming City, and Inner Mongolia Dajiagongshan National Nature Reserve. National Nature Reserve, Inner Mongolia Daxing'anling Khanma National Nature Reserve, and Zhangjiajie Badaigongshan National Nature Reserve in Zhangjiajie City were studied.

In order to improve the accuracy of the study, we searched the websites of relevant government and PAs management organizations for data and information on basic information on nature reserve management and management organization setups in China from 2015-2024, and the reason for adopting this timeframe was that we wanted to observe the latest data, including: official websites of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration and the National Parks Administration (accessible at https://www.forestry.gov.cn). In addition, numerous policy documents and legal norms have been issued by the Chinese central government and numerous local policies have been issued by local provinces and municipalities around matters of administrative authority allocation for the management of PAs.The relevant policy documents of PAs are collected from the State Council Policy Document Library of the Chinese government website (accessible at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengcewenjiank/), the relevant administrative regulations and rules are collected from the the State Council Bulletin of People's Republic of China (PRC) (accessible at https://www. gov.cn/gongbao/2024/issue_11086), and the relevant laws and local regulations are collected from the national laws and regulations database.

In terms of the analysis of typical cases based on the management of PAs, we searched for judicial cases involving PAs in China's adjudication documents website (accessible at https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/). The adjudication documents are the legally binding legal documents made by the court on the entities and procedures of the case based on the facts and the law after the trial of the case is finalized. It is a binding legal document with more judicial openness, judicial fairness and judicial credibility. Therefore, the adjudication documents are the most complete and accurate source of data for this study to identify the operation of administrative authority in the management of PAs. All the texts and typical cases mentioned in the article are shown in the annex.

 

Comment 5: What are the results of this procedure.

Response: Thank you for your comments! We agree with your suggestion to reorganise the results section of the article, and we have deleted the data analysis section of the original article and adjusted and improved the results section. As a matter of fact, holistic spatial protection puts forward the requirements of holistic, synergistic and three-dimensional requirements on the underlying logic and governance content of PAs governance network. Among them, how to adjust the administrative authority configuration according to the objectives of holistic spatial protection is a problem that needs to be explored and solved in the effective management of PAs. The focus of administrative authority configuration is to coordinate the hierarchical relationship of management subjects and realise the coordination of management subjects according to the multiple attributes of management contents and the pursuit of the integrity of governance results. The results section describes the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in the management of China's PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, including the reforms of the management subjects and bureaucratic organisations of China's PAs in order to adapt to holistic protection, as well as the distribution of administrative authority among the central government, local governments and different administrative departments. This lays the scope and prerequisites for a subsequent exploration of the obstacles faced by China's PAs management in the allocation and exercise of administrative authority and suggestions for improvement in order to achieve the goal of holistic spatial protection as a whole.

 

The specific modifications are made as follows：

4 Results

Holistic spatial protection puts forward the requirements of holistic, synergistic and three-dimensional for the underlying logic and management content of PAs management. Among them, how to adjust the exercise of administrative authority according to the goal of holistic spatial protection is a problem that needs to be explored and solved urgently in the improvement of the management of PAs. One of the core contents of the management of PAs is the exercise of administrative authority, and the focus of the exercise of administrative authority lies in the coordination of hierarchical relations, and the synergy of management subjects is realized according to the multi-attributes of management contents and the pursuit of holistic management results. On this basis, this part of the paper firstly analyzes the transformational features of the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, which sets the scope and prerequisites of the issue of the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs, and secondly specifically analyzes the sources of administrative authority in the management of PAs in the context of the policy texts and judicial cases. Through a normative study of the policy and legal texts involved in the management of PAs in China and an analysis of judicial cases involving PAs, the operational characteristics and the basis of the sources of administrative authority in the management of PAs from the perspective of holistic spatial protection are clarified, and the conditions that should be fulfilled for the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs from the perspective of holistic spatial protection are explored.

4.1 Spatial scale expression in the texts of laws and policies on PAs in China

At present, China does not have a specialized law on PAs, and is more dominated by policy documents, administrative regulations, departmental rules and normative documents issued by the two offices. For example, the policy basis for providing guidance for the integration of the existing system of nature reserves is the Guidance on Establishing a Nature Reserve System with National Parks as the Main Body. Currently, the norms for nature reserve management mainly originate from administrative regulations such as the Regulations on Nature Reserves and the Regulations on Scenic and Historic Areas issued by the State Council, as well as the Interim Measures for the Management of National Parks formulated by the State Forestry and Grassland Administration (SFGA). Also included are the Measures for the Administration of Forest Parks, the Measures for the Administration of National Wetland Parks and the Measures for the Administration of National Desert Parks issued by the former State Forestry Administration, as well as departmental regulations such as the Measures for the Administration of Marine Specially Protected Areas issued by the former State Oceanic Administration, which together constitute the legal framework for the management of PAs. In addition, some regions that have launched pilot national park systems have also begun to carry out local legislation, including both unified local legislation, such as the Yunnan Provincial National Park Management Regulations formulated by Yunnan Province for national parks in the whole province, as well as the Protection and Management Regulations of Shangri-La Pudacuo National Park of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province, the Regulations of Wuyi Mountain National Park (Trial), the Protection Regulations of Shennongjia National Park, and the Regulations of Sanjiangyuan National Park. Regulations”,‘Sanjiangyuan National Park Regulations’, ‘Sichuan Giant Panda National Park Management Regulations’, and other ‘one park, one law’, all of these norms provide innovative local experiences for the actual management of PAs.Observing the legal and policy texts of China's PAs, there are expressions of spatial scale, as shown in Table 2, which lays the foundation for the exercise of administrative power.

4.2 Government-led management of China's PAs

PAs management is a government-led model with the participation of the market, social organizations and the public. China's ‘Guiding Opinions on the Establishment of a PA system with National Parks as the Main Body’clearly puts forward ‘exploring public welfare management, community management, co-management and other conservation methods’, and community management, public welfare management and co-management are in fact new management modes proposed in response to the limitations of the government's single management mode, and provide a new way for the government to manage the PAs. In the judicial case study on the management of protected areas, we also found that the main structure of the management of PAs has changed from the government as a single management subject to the coordination of the market, social organizations and the public,as shown in Table 3.

However, it should be noted that despite the transition from a single subject to a multi-subject participation, the government still has a dominant role in the management of PAs. Not only are legal and policy texts filled with descriptions of government-led management of PAs, but judicial cases also emphasize the legitimacy basis of government management of PAs through various forms of expression. The judicial case study on the management of PAs found that the basis of legitimacy for the government as the dominant party to manage PAs mainly includes the government's public property right and the right to manage public affairs, as shown in Table 4. These two kinds of administrative powers not only reflect the maintenance of order, but also cover the protection and management of public property, and they play an important role in the management of PAs.

 

4.3 Reform of the bureaucratic organization in China under holistic spatial protection

4.3.1 Reform of state organizations in 2018

PAs management is aimed at realizing holistic protection, and it should emphasize the realization of the overall effectiveness of PAs management, be result-oriented, and not be biased in favor of a particular local or sectoral interest. PAs management should be centered on a coordination and integration mechanism, through which it can better utilize synergistic effects and promote the unity and cooperation of various departments and professional institutions to realize the comprehensive management of PAs space.China's reform of the major ministry system in 2018 is actually a holistic and systematic transformation of the management structure, and against the backdrop of the 2018 national institutional reform, the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has succeeded in realizing the centralized and unified supervision of natural resources. The supervisory and management functions of the former State Forestry Administration and the Ministry of Agriculture regarding grasslands, as well as the management responsibilities of the former Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the State Oceanic Administration with respect to nature reserves, scenic spots, natural heritages, and geoparks have all been consolidated and integrated into the newly-established State Forestry and Grassland Administration (SAGA), thereby realizing a more efficient and coordinated management of these natural resources. This impact also extends to the management of PAs, as shown in table 5.

4.3.2 Specific authorities in the management of PAs

The specific competent authorities in the management of PAs are not clear in the law and have not formed a unified perception. For example, regarding the competent authorities of nature reserves, the Regulations only generally stipulate in Article 21 that nature reserves of different levels shall be managed by their corresponding competent administrative authorities of the nature reserves concerned, but it is not clear what is meant by ‘competent administrative authorities of the nature reserves concerned’. At present, there are three main approaches in practice: (1) the competent forestry department is in charge. For example, Article 3 of the Regulations on the Liupanshan, Helanshan and Luoshan National Nature Reserves of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region stipulates that the competent authority of the nature reserve is the competent authority of the forestry administration, and that the comprehensive management of the nature reserve shall be undertaken by the governmental administrative authority of environmental protection; (2) the competent authority of environmental protection. For example, Article 6 of the Regulations on Nature Reserves of Hainan Province stipulates that the competent department of environmental protection of the people's government at or above the county level is the competent department of the nature reserve; (3) the competent department of natural resources administration. For example, the Regulations on Nature Reserves of Gansu Province stipulate that the competent department is the administrative department of natural resources of the people's government at or above the county level, and also stipulate that the main responsibility for ecological environmental protection and restoration of nature reserves shall be borne by the people's government at or above the county level.

4.4 Patterns of administrative authority of central and local governments in the management of PAs in China

At present, the distribution mode of administrative power between central and local governments in the management of PAs areas is generally divided into three categories according to the different leading government subjects and the difference in the degree of discretion enjoyed by different governments: the direct management mode of central government, the supervisor mode of local government and the co-management mode of central and local government..

Central government direct management type. In the actual construction and management of national parks, for the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park, the Giant Panda National Park, the Qilian Mountain National Park and the Sanjiangyuan National Park, which have a high proportion of state-owned land, forest land and other natural resources in the space, China has indeed adopted this model of direct management by the central government, which exercises decision-making, implementation and supervision powers, as well as bears the financial expenditures, as shown in Figure 2. According to the authorization of the central government, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration has added the logo of Qilian Mountain National Park Administration to the Office of the Commissioner for Forest Resources Supervision in Xi'an, which then exercises administrative authority over the management of PAs such as national parks under the direct management of the central government in accordance with the law. Article 11 of the Sanjiangyuan National Park Regulations also clearly stipulates the establishment of a centralized and unified vertical management mechanism for the national park.

Local government competent type. Under the local government competent model, the central government is responsible for legislation and macro policy making, while administrative authorities in the establishment and adjustment of PAs, planning and approval, natural resource asset management, supervision and punishment, dispute coordination, etc. are mainly the responsibility of the local government, which has a large amount of discretionary power over the management of PAs. For a long time, due to the objective status of PAs, the ambiguous division of affairs and powers, and the mismatch of centralized finance, the management of PAs in China has actually shown a state of administrative outsourcing. In this state, local governments, as the specific implementers of the objectives and affairs of PAs entrusted by the central government, actually have greater discretionary power over the management of PAs. China's Shennongjia National Park and Wuyi Mountain National Park has adopted this model.

Centralized co-management model. This model synthesizes the advantages of the sectional system and the administrative outsourcing system, in which the central government and the local government jointly exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs affairs. Among them, the central government exercises legislative power, decision-making power on major issues and supervisory power, and plays a coordinating role, while the local government exercises specific management power and implementation power, with certain discretionary power, and in terms of financial expenditure, it is co-financed by the central government and the local government. China to take the model of the national park is mainly Hainan tropical rainforest national park. The park's administrative authority in the management of the central government and local governments to exercise, including the park's planning and approval, the establishment of management bodies and other important matters such as decision-making by the central government, the exercise of the government at all levels is mainly the comprehensive coordination, public services, social management, market supervision, and other administrative authority, the financial input is by the provincial government and the central government in accordance with the division of power between the central and local affairs.

Further analysis of the relevant judicial cases shows that the administrative authority in the spatial management of PAs is mainly embodied in the administrative authority of environmental protection. From the physical point of view, the administrative authority of national environmental protection mainly originates from the two major aspects of order management and public property rights. This administrative authority not only embodies the maintenance of order, but also covers the protection and management of public property. Space, as a dependent carrier of natural resources, covers natural resources such as water flow, forest, grassland, land (including mountains, wasteland), mudflat, sea and mineral deposits, etc., which are mainly dependent on the three types of spatial carriers, namely, land, water (fresh water) and sea (sea area). Since space cannot exist independently of these natural resources, the legal basis for government-led spatial management is closely related to public property rights, especially since the government often acts as a representative exerciser of state ownership of natural resources. Generally speaking, the state's management and control of space and natural resources is based on the acquisition and establishment of sovereignty over land and sea territories, plus the fact that natural resources are different from other materials in that they carry multiple functions such as economic, ecological, and social values, and that they are related to the interests of the entire population and the fulfillment of public purposes, so China's Constitution explicitly stipulates that the state owns all natural resources such as mineral deposits, streams of water, forests, mountains, grasslands, wastelands, and mud flats, etc., and establishes that the state owns all natural resources. Therefore, the Constitution of China explicitly stipulates that natural resources such as mineral deposits, water flows, forests, mountains, grasslands, wasteland, mudflats, etc. are owned by the State, establishing the State's ownership of natural resources. And when other right holders carry out activities such as mining, excavating, and packaging the above natural resources, they enter, develop, utilize, and influence these space carriers, which is directly related to the state of ownership of natural resources in the space, and the two are to some extent two sides of the same coin. Globally, residential space is protected by property law, and property owners have the right to decide whether or not those within the space stay or leave, and the extent of this control over the space often also means the extent to which property rights are protected. Through the management and control of various types of space, such as land, sea, and water, based on the public good, the state draws boundaries for other non-rights holders, and the theoretical basis for spatial management that involves the content of the above behaviors is the ownership of natural resources. It should be noted, however, that the subject of certain natural resource rights in space is not the State, for example, collective land resources in space do not belong to the State, and the legitimacy of spatial control over them is not based on ownership, but on the Government's right to manage public affairs.

 

4.5 Relationship between different administrative authorities in the management of PAs in China

4.5.1 Relationship between governmental public property ownership and regulatory authority

The existing management mechanism of PAs is designed based on the government's public affairs management function, but under the reform of natural resource assets property right system, its management mechanism is faced with the conflict and adjustment of the supervision and ownership functions. In order to focus on solving problems such as the lack of natural resource owners, unclear ownership boundaries, and difficulties in implementing the rights and interests of owners, in September 2015, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council jointly issued the Overall Program for the Reform of the Ecological Civilization System, which establishes the goal of ‘constructing a property right system of natural resource assets with clear property rights, clear division of rights and responsibilities, and powerful supervision ‘.This marks the official launch of the reform of the property rights system for natural resource assets. To further deepen this reform, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the General Office of the State Council jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Coordinating and Promoting the Reform of the Property Rights System of Natural Resource Assets in 2019, which explicitly stipulates that the State Council authorizes the Ministry of Natural Resources to unify the exercise of the ownership of all natural resource assets on behalf of the State, and explores the implementation of the system of entrusting the exercise of ownership of natural resources to the provincial and municipal (prefectural) levels of government as an agent on a graded Framework. Based on the above policy documents, in 2022, China formally promulgated the Pilot Program on Ownership Delegation Mechanism for Nationally Owned Natural Resource Assets, which aims to comprehensively carry out a pilot program of ownership delegation for the eight core categories of nationally owned natural resource assets (including natural ecological space), including land, minerals, oceans, forests, grasslands, wetlands, water, and national parks. With the further separation of ownership and use rights in the reform of the property right system of natural resource assets, the clarification of the ownership subject, and the implementation of the ownership entrustment agency mechanism, the original management mechanism of PAs will also be affected to some extent. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed in the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reform that ‘the national natural resource asset management system should be improved, and the duties of owners of all natural resource assets should be exercised in a unified manner; the natural resource regulatory system should be improved, and the duties of the use and control of all territorial space should be exercised in a unified manner.’. This makes it clear that the reform idea of separating the rights of owners and the exercise of administrative supervision rights is clear.

However, in the practice of PAs management, there are also practices in which the natural resources departments and PAs management organizations uniformly exercise the responsibilities of asset management and administrative supervision. For example, Article 15 of the Regulations of Sanjiangyuan National Park clearly stipulates that the county people's government in the management of natural resources assets in specific matters characterized as the performance of its statutory administrative responsibilities, and authorizes the management body of the national park to exercise the same. Articles 5 and 22 of the Regulations on Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park (for Trial Implementation) clearly stipulate that the management of natural resource assets in the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park shall be undertaken by the national park management organization. Article 10 of the Wuyi Mountain National Park Regulations further specifies that the responsibility for the protection and management of natural resource assets owned by all people within the scope of the national park will be carried out by the national park management organization. According to Article 30 of the Regulations on the Management of Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan Province, the provincial people's government will fulfill the responsibility of the owner of the nationally owned natural resource assets in the Sichuan Area of the Giant Panda National Park in accordance with the national regulations, and the management organization of the national park will be specifically responsible for the management of the natural resource assets, and the implementation of the system of compensated use of natural resources.

4.5.2 Circulation of administrative punishment power among different departments

From the perspective of institutional reform and ecological civilization system, the current management structure of ecological environmental protection in China presents a trend of upward collection of monitoring power and downward sinking of law enforcement power. In the Provisions on the Exercise of Functions, Internal Institutions and Staffing of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, jointly issued by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council, it is explicitly pointed out that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment is responsible for organizing the formulation of the ecological environment regulatory system of various types of PAs, and for exercising the The Ministry of Ecology and Environment is responsible for organizing the formulation of ecological environment regulatory systems for various types of PAs, and exercising relevant law enforcement and supervisory powers, while the supervisory powers of PAs are mainly taken care of by the Office of Biodiversity Conservation of the Department of Natural Ecology Conservation and the National Biosafety Management Office, and the Department of Management of PAs of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration is responsible for the supervision and management of various types of PAs. This, together with the doubts about the right to penalize PAs in practice, has led to the discussion of the exercise of the right to penalize within the space of nature reserves to become extremely necessary. In practice, the subjects of the exercise of the right to impose administrative penalties in PAs include the competent nature authorities, the public security organs within the PAs and the management organizations of the PAs.

1. Exercise of administrative penalty power by competent departments of PAs

From the provisions of the existing administrative regulations and local regulations of PAs, most of the competent departments of PAs are forestry and grassland departments, and in practice, the law enforcement authority of forestry and grassland departments in PAs mainly focuses on investigating and dealing with the ecological damage of ecological space caused by illegal mining, road building, dam building and construction activities. For example, Article 18 of the Measures for the Management of Minjiang River Estuary Wetland Nature Reserve in Fuzhou City clearly stipulates that the duty of the management organization of the protected area is only to inform the relevant competent department in time when it finds out the illegal acts affecting the nature reserve, and the relevant competent department has the right to penalize the illegal acts, and the relevant competent department in the Act refers to the municipal forestry department.

1. Public security organs in PAs exercise the right to impose administrative penalties

For example, the regulations on nature reserves in Hainan Province make it clear in a general sense that administrative penalties and other administrative enforcement powers may be delegated by the competent department of the nature reserve to the management organization of the nature reserve, and also stipulate that the investigation and handling of violations of laws and regulations within the protected area may be the responsibility of the public security police agency set up within the protected area. For some spaces of PAs where mountain ranges are the main ecosystem, the subject of exercising the right to impose administrative penalties is further clarified to be the forest public security agency. For example, the management regulations of Liupan Mountain, Helan Mountain and Luoshan National Nature Reserve in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Sedan Chair Mountain National Nature Reserve in Kunming City, Khanma National Nature Reserve in Daxing'anling, Inner Mongolia, and Badaigong Mountain National Nature Reserve in Zhangjiajie City, etc., also stipulate that forest public security departments of the protected areas are responsible for investigating and punishing cases of crimes and offences damaging natural resources and natural ecosystems of the protected areas.

1. Unified exercise of the right to impose penalties by management agencies of PAs

By explicitly authorizing the necessary comprehensive resource and environmental law enforcement duties within the boundaries of national parks to be performed by national park management agencies when the time is ripe, the Overall Program has in fact begun to explore the unified exercise of spatial administrative punitive powers in this category of PAs. Local legislation has also explored this program in practice, one approach is to centralize the exercise by the management agency of the nature PAs, for example, Article 8, paragraph 2 of the Regulations on the Protection of Shennongjia National Park stipulates that within the jurisdiction of the Shennongjia National Park, the management agency of the national park is responsible for the full performance of the duties of comprehensive law enforcement of the resources and environment, and centralizes the exercise of the relevant administrative penalty power in accordance with the law; the other is to set up a special nature Another practice is to set up specialized law enforcement agencies for protected areas. 

 

Comment 6: How these results can be discussed with the assumptions you made and with the results of other scholars.

Response: Thank you for your review and interest in this section. In response to your comments, we have rearranged the discussion section of the article to focus on the linkages with the results section, as well as adding dialogues with different scholars in the discussion section. We have added several papers on the practices of India, the Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa, France, the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom in the holistic conservation of PAs. We believe that the article attempts to observe the progress of management of PAs in China, especially the practice of exercising administrative authority, and to study how administrative authority adapts to the requirements of holistic spatial protection in Chinese laws and policy documents, promotes nature conservation, and achieves the goal of effective management of PAs. Therefore, the discussion section of this article focuses on two main aspects: first, whether China's current PAs management mechanism meets the requirements for the exercise of administrative authority under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; and second, how to improve the measures and unblock the obstacles to address the challenges faced by the exercise of administrative authority in realising the goal of holistic spatial protection, in the event that the practices and reforms of the PAs management institutions do not meet the requirements for holistic spatial protection The second is how to improve measures and remove obstacles to address the challenges faced by the exercise of administrative power in realising the goal of overall spatial protection.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

5.1 Hierarchical management mode is difficult to fully adapt to the needs of holistic spatial protection

Closely related to scalability, the management of nature PAs under holistic spatial protection reflects holistic protection, which is different from decentralized protection. The holistic protection of nature PAs in space emphasizes the integration of the protection of various elements, and needs to address the difficulty of the organizational structure under functional decentralization to respond to the problems of communication and coordination between upper and lower levels of government, and between different government departments. Therefore, post-transition management of PAs requires rethinking the relationship between upper and lower levels to ensure that the central government is able to play its leadership role, while also effectively integrating local resources in order to solve the problems faced in the management of PAs. Under the current management of PAs in China, administrative authority is mainly distributed under the hierarchical government model, and the government's organizational management and personnel system is designed for the hierarchical government model rather than the chemical government model. And the current hierarchical management mechanism is difficult to meet the management needs of PAs. In certain pilot national parks, direct management bodies have not yet been established at the provincial level, which is not conducive to the formation of effective management entities. Therefore, in the future, it is necessary to further optimize the management system and establish a supervision system combining vertical management and law enforcement stationing, as well as an operational mechanism of provincial-ministerial cooperation and multilevel linkage, in order to give full play to the advantages and functions of vertical management.

Whether adopting centralized direct management or local government supervision, a single model does not meet the spatial management needs of PAs. Looking at the exercise of vertical administrative authority in the management of natural resources in various countries from a global perspective, although decentralization-led central-land relations are common, the ultimate effectiveness of decentralization is subject to significant uncertainty, given that it involves multi-level and multi-dimensional institutional innovation. Decentralization may weaken the central government's overall control over natural resources in PAs, and the incentives for local governments are unclear; Véron et al. show that in India, despite decentralization reforms in the area of forest protection, the state forest department retains central control over resources. Meanwhile, Sauquet et al. suggest that the incentive effects of fiscal decentralization in Brazil's ecological sector may be weakened by local government interactions. Crucially, Maia et al.'s study of national parks in the Netherlands suggests that decentralization of administrative authority may lead to a weakening of local responsibility for environmental protection, which in turn affects the effectiveness of environmental policy implementation and potentially threatens the resilience of ecosystems in PAs.

Therefore, in the vertical distribution of administrative authority, the central and local governments are not in an either/or relationship, and this paper argues that a mechanism for joint cooperation between the central and local governments should be established from the perspective of the implementation effect of management policies, combining the observation of the two in terms of whether their concerns and actions are coordinated or not. On the one hand, the concerns of the central and local governments should be clarified, the spatial advantages of the localities should be fully utilized, and the localities should be stimulated to carry out nature conservation, while the authority of the central government as the agent of the ownership of natural resources owned by all people should be guaranteed; on the other hand, the coordination of the actions of the central and local governments in the spatial management of PAs should be realized, in terms of objectives, distribution of powers and responsibilities. Generally speaking, the central government and local governments jointly exercise administrative authority in management, emphasizing the cooperation, coordination and unified exercise of administrative authority in management at different levels of government. In special cases, the central government directly exercises administrative authority to ensure the efficiency of the management of PAs of special significance or value.

5.2 Cross-regional collaboration mechanisms have not been fully established

The distribution of administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs is affected by physical space and administrative divisions. The core quality of holistic spatial protection lies in crossing the boundaries of administrative regions and constructing and optimizing the management structure based on the boundaries of ecosystems or ecological spaces. In China's practice, cross-regional PAs face difficulties in integration, obstacles in coordination, and cumbersome procedures. Most of their management activities and funding channels follow the old system, and the nature of their subordinate organizations is different, which may easily lead to the phenomenon of “one park, two systems” in management. In addition, the overall planning and layout of different PAs are not synchronized and coordinated. In some pilot areas, the differences between internal and external management policies also bring challenges to management. Therefore, it can be said that the working mechanism for cross-regional collaboration has not yet been fully established.

In order to achieve the holistic spatial protection, in many cases Networks of PAs (NPAs) emerged as a governance instrument in the framework of territorial sustainable development.[ ]For the synergistic integration of administrative authority in the management of interconnected boundary spaces, this paper suggests that there are two paths: one is the establishment of a unified management body, whereby a single management body will uniformly exercise administrative authority in the overall governance of multiple spatial PAs connected by boundaries, for example, Section 38(4) of the South African Protected Areas Act stipulates that marine and terrestrial PAs with common boundaries must be managed in an integrated manner by a single management body for integrated management. In France, the exercise of administrative resources in PAs is also more subject to the constraints of administrative boundaries, but under the board of directors, charters, and value-added park product branding system, the integrated management of the French regional parks across provinces and even regions is easy to realize, allowing the various regions within an ecosystem to comply with a unified plan and the coordination of the relationship between conservation and utilization by a unified body. This is in fact a contractual federal management model, which also reflects holistic spatial protection.

Another approach is to establish collaborative mechanisms for territory management and planning. From the viewpoint of management practice, the synergy of administrative authorities in the management of spatial planning, supervision and investigation is a problem that needs to be solved urgently in the management of the boundaries of PAs,including the coordination of national parks and nature reserves, natural park management, cross-border coordination of PAs. One of the characteristics of the European Union's Natura 2000 is that the implementation of its strategic planning is based on a large regional vision and cyclical planning, which also follows the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and this plan evaluates the territory of the European Union as a holistic spatial protection, and, on the basis of respecting each member state's own biodiversity protection laws and regulations, it integrates the whole territory and proposes the protection strategies that need to be implemented by each country. This will help to increase the internal connectivity of Natura 2000 and improve the overall quality of conservation; it will also reduce the cost of conservation by avoiding unnecessary conservation measures.

Specific paths include, on the one hand, the establishment of a joint meeting mechanism for the right to spatial planning of protected area boundaries. Joint meeting generally refers to the convening of a special meeting between multiple government departments at a higher level to communicate on a certain matter. There are already some provisions on joint meetings in Chinese laws, and they are mostly found in ecological environmental protection behaviors and legal norms that require cooperation, which can be adopted for the coordination of spatial planning rights of PAs across administrative regions. On the other hand, a joint enforcement mechanism for the boundary space of protected areas has been established. Joint law enforcement provisions are more often found in China's general environmental pollution prevention and ecological protection laws and norms. For example, according to Article 29(3) of China's Marine Environmental Protection Law, departments and agencies exercising the right to supervise and manage the marine environment are granted the legal administrative authority to carry out joint law enforcement at sea. Article 80 of China's Law on the Protection of the Yangtze River and Article 105 of the Law on the Protection of the Yellow River expressly provide that the relevant departments of the State Council, local people's governments at all levels of the river basins and their relevant departments shall carry out joint law enforcement in accordance with the law in respect of cross-administrative areas, ecologically sensitive areas, areas with high incidence of ecological and environmental violations, and cases of major violations of the law. Article 35, paragraph 3, of China's Wildlife Protection Law clearly states that the State shall establish a coordination mechanism for joint wildlife law enforcement led by the competent departments of the State Council in charge of forestry, grassland and fisheries, with the participation of other relevant departments. At the same time, local people's governments should also establish corresponding joint law enforcement coordination mechanisms. Therefore, in the future, the improvement of the spatial law enforcement coordination mechanism for PAs should also pay attention to the connection and coordination with the existing joint law enforcement mechanism, so as to fill the legislative gaps in the joint law enforcement mechanism for the specialized spatial protection of PAs in the existing legislation on wildlife protection, marine environmental protection and natural ecological space.

5.3 The horizontal connection of administrative authority in PAs needs to be further strengthened.

China's ‘Overall Program for Reform of Ecological Civilization System’ explicitly proposes to ‘establish a system of unified authority and hierarchical management’, where the unified authority is more concerned with the distribution of horizontal administrative authority, for two reasons: firstly, the integration of the functions of ecological protection, natural resource asset management, concession management, social participation in the management, and publicity and promotion, essentially reflecting a horizontal unification across departments; secondly, the ‘hierarchical exercise of ownership’ in the context of the program needs to be further strengthened. First, the integration of functions such as ecological protection, natural resource asset management, concession management, social participation management, and publicity and promotion is essentially a horizontal unification across departments; second, in the context of the program, the ‘hierarchical exercise of ownership’ and the emphasis on the rational division of authority between the central government and the local government, as well as the synergistic management of the program emphasize the distribution of administrative authority in a vertical manner. China's subsequent reform of the major ministry system realized this policy design. China's 2018 ministerial reform has realized this policy design. After the institutional reform, the fragmentation of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China has been improved to a certain extent, but it is more of a preliminary macro-design, and the solution to the problem of fragmentation of authority and responsibility in the management of PAs must be achieved through a unified and stable institutional system to play a legal role.

As to how administrative authority in the management of PAs is distributed and exercised at the inter-ministerial level, there are two main practices, one is to unify the administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs to a certain department to centralize the exercise of administrative authority, and the other is to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs in sub-departments. In the United States, the management and protection of PAs are mainly carried out by the National Park Service (NPS), the National Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the Department of Agriculture (DOA) under the Ministry of the Interior. Management (BLM), and the National Forest Service (US Forest Service, USFS) under the Department of Agriculture. In the United Kingdom, the National Park Authority was established to fulfill the responsibility of conservancy stewardship. At the management level, based on the diversity of protected areas, the Heritage Department, the Department of Agriculture and Forestry, and other resource management departments have adopted a multi-agency model to share management responsibilities.

Firstly, the types and contents of administrative acts requiring cooperation in the overall spatial governance of PAs should be clarified. The administrative acts requiring cooperation refer to the administrative acts implemented by administrative organs in cooperation with each other on the same matter due to the division of functions. According to the relationship between different administrative organs, administrative acts requiring cooperation can be broadly divided into administrative acts requiring supplementation, administrative acts requiring preliminary examination or implementation by lower levels, administrative acts requiring consultation, specific administrative acts and basic acts. Since the overall spatial management of PAs involves many complicated matters, more subjects are needed for cooperative management. Traditional management also exists under the need to cooperate administrative acts, but the existence of the mode of view, whether it is the cooperation of the upper and lower levels of administrative organs, or the cooperation of the same level of administrative organs, which is more of a linear cooperation, while the overall spatial governance of the PAs need to cooperate with the administrative acts of the PAs is more of a three-dimensional relationship between the administrative acts.

Secondly, the content of the overall spatial governance of PAs should be clarified. It is possible to integrate all kinds of matters of national park construction into five categories, including planning matters, basic constructive matters, management and execution matters, development and utilization matters, and safeguard matters. These authorities are basically designed around the content of national park management matters, and observing the policy practice and legal norms of China's PAs, the overall governance of spatial matters of PAs is also mainly centered on the content of spatial planning, construction and management, development and utilization, and development guarantee of PAs. In the horizontal exercise of administrative authority, the duties of ecological protection, natural resource asset management, concession management, social participation management, publicity and promotion within PAs need to be integrated and unified into the relevant PAs management functions. The functions of management organizations within PAs should not be limited to resource protection, law enforcement supervision, scientific research and monitoring, and infrastructure construction, but should also be expanded to the fields of environmental education, eco-tourism, franchising, livelihood protection, public services and social management, etc., and the mechanism for a single subject to fully undertake the management responsibilities of PAs should be implemented in order to ensure the unity and efficiency of the management.

Thirdly, improve the procedures and institutional requirements for cooperation between different departments in the overall management of PAs. Clearly stipulate the administrative collaboration system in the form of legislation. Administrative collaboration refers to an order of inter-departmental coordination and cooperation through systems and rules, and an attempt to improve the system of cross-departmental synergy, which refers to the horizontal joint management between parallel functional departments, based on the same objective due to the relevance of the management affairs of each department and the limitations of their responsibilities and powers. In this regard, China's revised Marine Environmental Protection Law in 2023 is a good example. In order to better realize the integration and coordination between land, sea and air, the newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law clearly states in Article 12 that ‘the State implements a land and sea integrated, regionally linked supervision and management system for the marine environment’, and calls for the strengthening of the articulation and coordination of the supervision and management systems of various departments in planning, standard-setting, monitoring and so on. Article 24 of the new law establishes the obligation of the relevant departments of the State Council, marine police agencies and the competent ecological and environmental authorities of the State Council to share information, and article 25 further clarifies the obligation of the relevant departments of the State Council, marine police agencies and local people's governments at or above the county level of the coastal areas and their relevant departments to conduct comprehensive monitoring, collaborative monitoring and information sharing. Based on such arrangements, synergies between the central and local, ecological and environmental departments and other departments of land and sea monitoring and management mechanisms have been realized. In the future, the procedures and mechanism requirements for the cooperation of the overall spatial governance of the legislation on PAs can also refer to the design of the integrated land and sea management mechanism of the Marine Environmental Protection Law. Of course, the horizontal collaboration of administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs is more than that, in addition to information sharing and monitoring matters, how to realize the collaboration of planning authority, asset management authority, and licensing authority is also a need for further improvement.

 

Comment 7: Your introduction clearly sets the specific context of your research (PA governance) but the geographical context (Chinese system of PAs) is scattered across the paper, including the methods and materials section. You do not formulate a clear aim of your paper. Your main theoretical framework is not exhaustively described, while connections between the main and the remaining frameworks presented in your manuscript are unclear. Descriptions of your methodological and terminological assumptions are, again, scattered across the article in a way that makes it difficult to understand your research procedure. Based on your description, I am unaware what were your actual methodological steps applied to the study.

Response: Thank you for your comments! We have answered this question by responding to your questions above article by article. In addition, the article has been reorganised and improved in the introductory and methodological material in the light of the topic under focus. It can be summarised as follows: in the theoretical framework section, the article clarifies that the ideal state of governance of PAs is to realise holistic spatial protection, and that the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be fulfilled by the configuration of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methods and materials section, it proposes the qualitative analysis methods of normative analysis and case study, and improves the steps of material sources and data analysis; in the methodology and materials section, it proposes the qualitative analysis methods of normative analysis and case study, and improves the steps of material sources and data analysis; and material sources and steps of data analysis; in the results section, the state and characteristics of the allocation and exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are described; and the discussion section focuses on the allocation and exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China, the obstacles it faces in realising holistic spatial protection, and the suggestions for improvement. Finally, we would also like to point out that a large number of papers using normative and quantitative analyses have been presented in journals in this field, which have the advantage of better analysing the problems of the administrative system in general and administrative authority in particular.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

1.Introduction

PAs have become the basis of biodiversity conservation strategies in countries around the world. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15) and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (Aichi 11) aim to curb the loss of biodiversity by increasing the coverage of PAs. A Protected Area is defined as ‘a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values ’. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has developed six categories of PAs based on the main management objectives of the land, and most countries have developed management norms for various types of PAs. According to the latest data from the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), 16.42% of the world's terrestrial areas (including inland waters) and 8.33% of the world's marine areas are already managed as PAs (accessible at https://www.protectedplanet.net/en).

However, with the rapid growth in the number of PAs, the management of PAs is facing additional challenges, particularly threats from species vulnerability, climate vulnerability and human genetic vulnerability. Whether management of PAs improves over time, and understanding which external factors affect management efficiency, are key benchmarks for addressing management challenges and achieving management goals. Many tools specific to the assessment of management efficiency in PAs have been invented in order to assess management strengths, weaknesses and needs. Effective management of PAs is influenced by a variety of factors, including decisions made at the time of establishment and subsequent management decisions. In order to increase the effectiveness of management of PAs, many countries have made certain improvements and efforts.

China has demonstrated sustained efforts to enhance the effectiveness of management of PAs. The development of PAs in China is in the midst of a reform process that is breaking down and building up at the same time. 1956 saw the establishment of China's first nature reserve, the Dinghu Mountain National Nature Reserve, which gave China's PAs management a formal start. In order to address the systematisation and comprehensive promotion of PAs legislation, China is actively building a PA system with national parks at its core.In 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on the Establishment of a PA system with National Parks as the Main Body, which classifies PAs into three categories, namely, national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks(accessible at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2019-06/26/content_5403497.htm). In fact, China's classification of PAs is also based on the IUCN's classification of PAs, as shown in Table 1.Furthermore, in 2022, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration drafted the National Parks Law (Draft) and widely solicited opinions and suggestions from the public. Subsequently, in September 2023, the Law on National Parks and the Law on PAs were formally incorporated into the legislative plan of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC).On 10 September 2024, the Draft Law on National Parks was submitted to the 11th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th NPC for first consideration. As of October 2024, after consolidation and optimisation, there were a total of 6,736 PAs in China, with a total area of 185,236,100 hectares. Among them, there are 5 national parks with a total area of 23,225,400 hectares; 1,527 nature reserves with a total area of 120,313,300 hectares; and 36,381,000 hectares of natural parks such as scenic spots, forest parks, geological parks, wetland parks, marine parks, and desert (rocky desert) parks.

In the management practice of PAs in China, we observe that the government, as an important subject, has made significant innovations to achieve the overall protection of PAs. Whether it is the integration of PAs management or the reform of institutions, the Chinese government has continuously optimised the management structure and the exercise of administrative authority, reflecting the pursuit of holistic spatial protection and systemic governance. In fact, theoretical research has been weaker than practical exploration in this area, and existing studies have not explored more about how administrative authority in PAs management can be adapted to the needs of holistic spatial governance. Currently, the literature on PAs management either focuses on analysing changes in PA governance in order to differentiate PAs management; analyses the differences in the way different subjects carry out PAs management as a way of arguing for an increase in the level of participation of other subjects in the management; provides criteria, indicators and methodologies on the evaluation of the effectiveness of PAs management, or, by taking into account the different factors related to the efficiency of PAs, either analysing the impact of PAs. It is valuable to observe and elaborate on China's innovative practices and the challenges it faces in achieving holistic spatial protection of PAs, especially as the system of PAs develops and the use of administrative authority for management and guiding multi-party participation will play an important role. Some of China's existing experiences can be of value for the construction and optimisation of PAs, and for the improvement of the organisational structure of cooperative global biodiversity management.

This paper takes the policy texts, legal texts and typical judicial cases related to the management of PAs as the object of study, and anchors the question of how to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs to meet the expectation of holistic spatial protection of PAs , and to promote the management of PAs from flat to three-dimensional, so as to realise the efficient management of PAs. This paper discusses the following aspects in each part: in the theoretical framework part, it is clear that the ideal state of PAs management is to achieve holistic spatial protection, and the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methodology and materials part, it proposes the methodology steps of normative analysis and case study analysis, and the methodology steps of qualitative analysis with the existing existing methods and methods of analysis. qualitative analysis methodological steps to sort out the practice of nature PAs management in China, using existing laws, policy documents, and case data as samples; in the results section, the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in China's nature PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are elaborated, including a description of the main body of PAs management, what reforms have been carried out by China's bureaucratic organisations in order to adapt to holistic protection, and what reforms have been carried out by the central government Based on this, the paper concludes with a discussion section that analyses whether the exercise of power in the management of PAs in China is in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and the dilemmas encountered in the process of practice and exploration of effective promotion of the management of PAs, as well as proposing corresponding strategies to solve the problems, in the hope of promoting the effective management of PAs and helping to achieve the goal of holistic spatial protection. The paper also proposes corresponding solution strategies, hoping to provide reference for promoting the effective management of nature reserves and helping to achieve the goals of holistic spatial protection as well as sustainable development. The analytical framework of this paper is shown in Figure 1.

3.Methods & Materials

3.1 Qualitative analysis

This paper adopts the method of qualitative analysis, combining normative analysis with typical case analysis to carry out relevant research on the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection. Through the normative analysis and case analysis method, the provisions and practices of legal norms, policy texts and judicial practices on the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs are clarified. The normative analysis in this paper is mainly based on policy texts and legal texts. The Chinese government has issued numerous policy documents and legal norms around the matter of administrative authority allocation in PAs management, and local provinces and municipalities have also issued numerous local policies. Through the qualitative analysis method based on the practice of PAs management, especially the analysis of laws and policy documents related to PAs, it is possible to sort out the implementation process, the evolution direction, and the promotion effect on the holistic spatial protection objectives of the innovations in the management of PAs in China. In terms of case analysis based on the management of PAs in China, after searching for cases involving the management of PAs, we conducted case analyses under the headings of implementation subjects and sources of administrative authority to illustrate the current status of judicial practice in the management of PAs in China, which can support the subsequent proposal of a globally meaningful path of the exercise of administrative authority over PAs.

In order to more comprehensively and accurately conduct an in-depth study of the operation of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China, after selecting the texts and cases mentioned above, and combining the theoretical framework of holistic spatial protection with the judging criteria, a qualitative analysis was conducted according to three steps: (1) Summarization. Summarize the facts of the cases related to administrative authority in the management of PAs, extract all the facts that affect the conclusions of the judges, and eliminate the facts that do not really affect the value judgment of the judges; when summarizing, this paper adopts the form of a table to present the relevant facts. (2) Comparison. When comparing the cases related to administrative authority in the management of PAs, it is done through two directions. The first direction is to put the cases with the same facts together and observe whether the judges reach the same conclusion with the same facts. The second direction is to compare cases that reach the same conclusion together and analyze whether the facts of the respective corresponding cases are consistent. Through generalization and comparison, certain rules of adjudication are extracted, and key points such as the source of administrative authority in the management of PAs can be initially identified. (3) Analysis. In the analysis, the factual elements related to administrative authority in the management of PAs are closely focused. By analyzing the source and operation process of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, the conditions that should be satisfied for the optimization of the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs are derived. It can be initially found that the exercise of administrative authority and management have a high degree of linkage, and management serves as the field and background for the distribution and exercise of administrative authority. Under the pursuit of holistic spatial protection objectives, the management of PAs is adjusted in terms of centralization and decentralization in the vertical relationship, and integration and cooperation in the horizontal relationship.

3.2 Materials

In order to obtain the literature on the exercise of administrative authority in PAs management as comprehensively as possible, we searched the literature published from 2015-2024 on databases such as CNKI, SpringerLink, Scopus, Web of Science, Wiley Online Library, etc., in both Chinese and English, using the search keywords ‘Protected Areas’; ‘National Parks’; ‘Nature Reserve’; ‘Nature parks’; ‘Protected Areas in China’; ‘The Administration of PAs’; ‘Effectiveness of PAs management’. The reason for adopting this time period is to explore more literature, and another reason is that since 2015, China's PAs have entered a period of consolidation and optimization, including the pilot national parks and the reform of national institutions, and other important practices are in this time period, and we would like to better observe the latest literature that is more relevant to the management of PAs in China.

In terms of the selection of research areas, we selected three types of PAs: national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks as the research areas and scopes of this paper. Among them, national parks, as the main body of China's PAs management system, refer to specific land or sea areas where the main purpose is to protect nationally representative natural ecosystems and to realize the scientific protection and rational use of natural resources. Nature reserves refer to specific territories designated for the specialized protection of representative natural ecosystems, natural distribution areas of rare and endangered species of wild animals and plants, and natural relics of special significance. As a supplementary protection area in the management system of PAs, nature parks aim to protect natural ecosystems, natural relics and natural landscapes with remarkable ecological, ornamental, cultural and scientific values. In order to learn more about the management practices of PAs in China, we conducted a study of the national parks of Sanjiangyuan, Giant Panda, Northeast Tiger and Leopard, Hainan Tropical Rainforest, and Wuyi Mountain, as well as the Liupanshan, Helanshan, and Luoshan National Nature Reserves of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Nanling National Nature Reserve, Zhangjiajie Badaigongshan National Nature Reserve, Nanji Liedao National Marine Nature Reserve of Zhejiang Province, Sedan Chair National Nature Reserve of Kunming City, and Inner Mongolia Dajiagongshan National Nature Reserve. National Nature Reserve, Inner Mongolia Daxing'anling Khanma National Nature Reserve, and Zhangjiajie Badaigongshan National Nature Reserve in Zhangjiajie City were studied.

In order to improve the accuracy of the study, we searched the websites of relevant government and PAs management organizations for data and information on basic information on nature reserve management and management organization setups in China from 2015-2024, and the reason for adopting this timeframe was that we wanted to observe the latest data, including: official websites of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration and the National Parks Administration (accessible at https://www.forestry.gov.cn). In addition, numerous policy documents and legal norms have been issued by the Chinese central government and numerous local policies have been issued by local provinces and municipalities around matters of administrative authority allocation for the management of PAs.The relevant policy documents of PAs are collected from the State Council Policy Document Library of the Chinese government website (accessible at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengcewenjiank/), the relevant administrative regulations and rules are collected from the the State Council Bulletin of People's Republic of China (PRC) (accessible at https://www. gov.cn/gongbao/2024/issue_11086), and the relevant laws and local regulations are collected from the national laws and regulations database.

In terms of the analysis of typical cases based on the management of PAs, we searched for judicial cases involving PAs in China's adjudication documents website (accessible at https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/). The adjudication documents are the legally binding legal documents made by the court on the entities and procedures of the case based on the facts and the law after the trial of the case is finalized. It is a binding legal document with more judicial openness, judicial fairness and judicial credibility. Therefore, the adjudication documents are the most complete and accurate source of data for this study to identify the operation of administrative authority in the management of PAs. All the texts and typical cases mentioned in the article are shown in the annex.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

（1）The explanation of the four classifications of protected area governance in lines 37 to 38 is not logically related to the following sentence 'PAs are an area based conservation measure'.

（2）How did the author come to the conclusion that 'government' investment in PAs and OECMs (other effective regional protection measures) is obviously insufficient 'on line 40? There is a lack of literature support.

（3）The explanation from lines 117 to 118 overlaps with the explanation from lines 123 to 124, emphasizing that this article studies from a spatial perspective. It is recommended to merge these two places.

（4）The description from lines 129 to 133 in the introduction should be placed in the suggestion section, and the logic before and after this section needs to be reorganized.

（5）The fourth paragraph of section 6.2.2 is too concise, it is suggested to add corresponding content.

（6）The sentence structure of the first and second sentences in the conclusion section is inconsistent with the last three paragraphs. It is recommended to revise it to a unified sentence structure.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript addresses an important topic with relevance to both policy and academic discussions in the field of spatial governance of Protected Areas. However, the quality of the English language needs significant improvement. Grammar issues, awkward phrasing, and overly complex sentences undermine the clarity and readability of the manuscript. By refining these aspects and ensuring consistency in word choice and sentence structure, the manuscript can be made more accessible and professional, thereby increasing its impact on the scientific community.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

 

Thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to revise our manuscript and we deeply appreciate for your positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “How to construct the governance structure of protected areas from a spatial perspective —— The China experience”. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper,and also have the important guiding significance to our researches.We studied your comments carefully and have made revision which marked in red in this paper. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to all the comments. Earnestly we hope you find the revised version attached, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration. The corrections in the paper and the responds to comments are as follows:

 

 

Responds to Reviewer #2’s Comments Point by Point

 

Comment 1: The explanation of the four classifications of protected area governance in lines 37 to 38 is not logically related to the following sentence 'PAs are an area based conservation measure'.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion! We agree with your suggestion, and we have reconstructed part of the introduction according to your suggestion. While revising the content of the sentence, we have taken your suggestion into account, further clarified the logical relationship between different parts and sentences with inspiration, and deleted some ambiguous words to enhance the readability of the article. On the basis of ensuring the accuracy and relevance of the presentation, we focus on how to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs to meet the expectation of holistic spatial protection under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, so as to promote the management of PAs from ‘flat’ to ‘three-dimensional’ and from ‘three-dimensional’ to ‘three-dimensional’. This will lead to the transformation of the management of PAs from ‘flat’ to ‘three-dimensional’ and from ‘two-dimensional’ to ‘three-dimensional’, so as to realise the efficient management of PAs. We streamline the parts of the article according to the following ideas: in the theoretical framework part, it is made clear that the ideal state of PAs management is to achieve holistic spatial protection, and that the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methodology and materials part, it is put forward the methodological steps of normative analysis and case study analysis, with a view to achieving efficient management of PAs in the light of the current situation. qualitative analysis methodological steps to sort out the practice of nature PAs management in China, using existing laws, policy documents, and case data as samples; in the results section, the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in China's nature PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are elaborated, including a description of the main body of PAs management, what reforms have been carried out by China's bureaucratic organisations in order to adapt to holistic protection, and what reforms have been carried out by the central government Based on this, the paper concludes with a discussion section that analyses whether the exercise of power in the management of PAs in China is in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, the dilemmas encountered in the process of effective promotion of the practice and exploration of the management of PAs, and proposes strategies to solve the problems accordingly. The analytical framework of the article is shown in this figure:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The specific modifications are made as follows：

PAs have become the basis of biodiversity conservation strategies in countries around the world. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15) and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (Aichi 11) aim to curb the loss of biodiversity by increasing the coverage of PAs. A Protected Area is defined as ‘a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values ’. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has developed six categories of PAs based on the main management objectives of the land, and most countries have developed management norms for various types of PAs. According to the latest data from the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), 16.42% of the world's terrestrial areas (including inland waters) and 8.33% of the world's marine areas are already managed as PAs (accessible at https://www.protectedplanet.net/en).

However, with the rapid growth in the number of PAs, the management of PAs is facing additional challenges, particularly threats from species vulnerability, climate vulnerability and human genetic vulnerability. Whether management of PAs improves over time, and understanding which external factors affect management efficiency, are key benchmarks for addressing management challenges and achieving management goals. Many tools specific to the assessment of management efficiency in PAs have been invented in order to assess management strengths, weaknesses and needs. Effective management of PAs is influenced by a variety of factors, including decisions made at the time of establishment and subsequent management decisions. In order to increase the effectiveness of management of PAs, many countries have made certain improvements and efforts.

China has demonstrated sustained efforts to enhance the effectiveness of management of PAs. The development of PAs in China is in the midst of a reform process that is breaking down and building up at the same time. 1956 saw the establishment of China's first nature reserve, the Dinghu Mountain National Nature Reserve, which gave China's PAs management a formal start. In order to address the systematisation and comprehensive promotion of PAs legislation, China is actively building a PA system with national parks at its core..In 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on the Establishment of a PA System with National Parks as the Main Body, which classifies PAs into three categories, namely, national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks(accessible at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2019-06/26/content_5403497.htm). In fact, China's classification of PAs is also based on the IUCN's classification of PAs, as shown in Table 1. Furthermore, in 2022, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration drafted the National Parks Law (Draft) and widely solicited opinions and suggestions from the public. Subsequently, in September 2023, the Law on National Parks and the Law on PAs were formally incorporated into the legislative plan of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC).On 10 September 2024, the Draft Law on National Parks was submitted to the 11th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th NPC for first consideration. As of October 2024, after consolidation and optimisation, there were a total of 6,736 PAs in China, with a total area of 185,236,100 hectares. Among them, there are 5 national parks with a total area of 23,225,400 hectares; 1,527 nature reserves with a total area of 120,313,300 hectares; and 36,381,000 hectares of natural parks such as scenic spots, forest parks, geological parks, wetland parks, marine parks, and desert (rocky desert) parks.

In the management practice of PAs in China, we observe that the government, as an important subject, has made significant innovations to achieve the overall protection of PAs. Whether it is the integration of PAs management or the reform of institutions, the Chinese government has continuously optimised the management structure and the exercise of administrative authority, reflecting the pursuit of holistic spatial protection and systemic governance. In fact, theoretical research has been weaker than practical exploration in this area, and existing studies have not explored more about how administrative authority in PAs management can be adapted to the needs of holistic spatial governance. Currently, the literature on PAs management either focuses on analysing changes in PA governance in order to differentiate PAs management; analyses the differences in the way different subjects carry out PAs management as a way of arguing for an increase in the level of participation of other subjects in the management; provides criteria, indicators and methodologies on the evaluation of the effectiveness of PAs management, or, by taking into account the different factors related to the efficiency of PAs, either analysing the impact of PAs. It is valuable to observe and elaborate on China's innovative practices and the challenges it faces in achieving holistic spatial protection of PAs, especially as the system of PAs develops and the use of administrative authority for management and guiding multi-party participation will play an important role. Some of China's existing experiences can be of value for the construction and optimisation of PAs, and for the improvement of the organisational structure of cooperative global biodiversity management.

This paper takes the policy texts, legal texts and typical judicial cases related to the management of PAs as the object of study, and anchors the question of how to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs to meet the expectation of holistic spatial protection of PAs , and to promote the management of PAs from flat to three-dimensional, so as to realise the efficient management of PAs. This paper discusses the following aspects in each part: in the theoretical framework part, it is clear that the ideal state of PAs management is to achieve holistic spatial protection, and the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methodology and materials part, it proposes the methodology steps of normative analysis and case study analysis, and the methodology steps of qualitative analysis with the existing existing methods and methods of analysis. qualitative analysis methodological steps to sort out the practice of nature PAs management in China, using existing laws, policy documents, and case data as samples; in the results section, the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in China's nature PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are elaborated, including a description of the main body of PAs management, what reforms have been carried out by China's bureaucratic organisations in order to adapt to holistic protection, and what reforms have been carried out by the central government Based on this, the paper concludes with a discussion section that analyses whether the exercise of power in the management of PAs in China is in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and the dilemmas encountered in the process of practice and explorationof effective promotion of the management of PAs, as well as proposing corresponding strategies to solve the problems, in the hope of promoting the effective management of PAs and helping to achieve the goal of holistic spatial protection. The paper also proposes corresponding solution strategies, hoping to provide reference for promoting the effective management of nature reserves and helping to achieve the goals of holistic spatial protection as well as sustainable development. The analytical framework of this paper is shown in Figure 1.

 

Comment 2: How did the author come to the conclusion that 'government' investment in PAs and OECMs (other effective regional protection measures) is obviously insufficient 'on line 40? There is a lack of literature support.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion! We are very grateful to you for pointing out this problem. In fact, after reorganising the article, we found that the content of this sentence was not very relevant to the article, so we have deleted it in the revision. At your suggestion, we have also re-examined the reference support for all the statements in the article, and stated the keywords, databases, and search time of the literature search in the section of material sources, so that each conclusion has a corresponding basis, especially in the introduction to add more support for the latest references that are more relevant to the research topic.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

PAs have become the basis of biodiversity conservation strategies in countries around the world. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15) and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (Aichi 11) aim to curb the loss of biodiversity by increasing the coverage of PAs. A Protected Area is defined as ‘a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values ’. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has developed six categories of PAs based on the main management objectives of the land, and most countries have developed management norms for various types of PAs. According to the latest data from the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), 16.42% of the world's terrestrial areas (including inland waters) and 8.33% of the world's marine areas are already managed as PAs (accessible at https://www.protectedplanet.net/en).

However, with the rapid growth in the number of PAs, the management of PAs is facing additional challenges, particularly threats from species vulnerability, climate vulnerability and human genetic vulnerability. Whether management of PAs improves over time, and understanding which external factors affect management efficiency, are key benchmarks for addressing management challenges and achieving management goals. Many tools specific to the assessment of management efficiency in PAs have been invented in order to assess management strengths, weaknesses and needs. Effective management of PAs is influenced by a variety of factors, including decisions made at the time of establishment and subsequent management decisions. In order to increase the effectiveness of management of PAs, many countries have made certain improvements and efforts.

China has demonstrated sustained efforts to enhance the effectiveness of management of PAs. The development of PAs in China is in the midst of a reform process that is breaking down and building up at the same time. 1956 saw the establishment of China's first nature reserve, the Dinghu Mountain National Nature Reserve, which gave China's PAs management a formal start. In order to address the systematisation and comprehensive promotion of PAs legislation, China is actively building a PA system with national parks at its core.In 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on the Establishment of a PA System with National Parks as the Main Body, which classifies PAs into three categories, namely, national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks(accessible at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2019-06/26/content_5403497.htm). In fact, China's classification of PAs is also based on the IUCN's classification of PAs, as shown in Table 1. Furthermore, in 2022, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration drafted the National Parks Law (Draft) and widely solicited opinions and suggestions from the public. Subsequently, in September 2023, the Law on National Parks and the Law on PAs were formally incorporated into the legislative plan of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC).On 10 September 2024, the Draft Law on National Parks was submitted to the 11th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th NPC for first consideration. As of October 2024, after consolidation and optimisation, there were a total of 6,736 PAs in China, with a total area of 185,236,100 hectares. Among them, there are 5 national parks with a total area of 23,225,400 hectares; 1,527 nature reserves with a total area of 120,313,300 hectares; and 36,381,000 hectares of natural parks such as scenic spots, forest parks, geological parks, wetland parks, marine parks, and desert (rocky desert) parks.

In the management practice of PAs in China, we observe that the government, as an important subject, has made significant innovations to achieve the overall protection of PAs. Whether it is the integration of PAs management or the reform of institutions, the Chinese government has continuously optimised the management structure and the exercise of administrative authority, reflecting the pursuit of holistic spatial protection and systemic governance. In fact, theoretical research has been weaker than practical exploration in this area, and existing studies have not explored more about how administrative authority in PAs management can be adapted to the needs of holistic spatial governance. Currently, the literature on PAs management either focuses on analysing changes in PA governance in order to differentiate PAs management; analyses the differences in the way different subjects carry out PAs management as a way of arguing for an increase in the level of participation of other subjects in the management; provides criteria, indicators and methodologies on the evaluation of the effectiveness of PAs management, or, by taking into account the different factors related to the efficiency of PAs, either analysing the impact of PAs.. It is valuable to observe and elaborate on China's innovative practices and the challenges it faces in achieving holistic spatial protection of PAs, especially as the system of PAs develops and the use of administrative authority for management and guiding multi-party participation will play an important role. Some of China's existing experiences can be of value for the construction and optimisation of PAs, and for the improvement of the organisational structure of cooperative global biodiversity management.

This paper takes the policy texts, legal texts and typical judicial cases related to the management of PAs as the object of study, and anchors the question of how to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs to meet the expectation of holistic spatial protection of PAs , and to promote the management of PAs from flat to three-dimensional, so as to realise the efficient management of PAs. This paper discusses the following aspects in each part: in the theoretical framework part, it is clear that the ideal state of PAs management is to achieve holistic spatial protection, and the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methodology and materials part, it proposes the methodology steps of normative analysis and case study analysis, and the methodology steps of qualitative analysis with the existing existing methods and methods of analysis. qualitative analysis methodological steps to sort out the practice of nature PAs management in China, using existing laws, policy documents, and case data as samples; in the results section, the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in China's nature PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are elaborated, including a description of the main body of PAs management, what reforms have been carried out by China's bureaucratic organisations in order to adapt to holistic protection, and what reforms have been carried out by the central government Based on this, the paper concludes with a discussion section that analyses whether the exercise of power in the management of PAs in China is in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and the dilemmas encountered in the process of practice and exploration of effective promotion of the management of PAs, as well as proposing corresponding strategies to solve the problems, in the hope of promoting the effective management of PAs and helping to achieve the goal of holistic spatial protection. The paper also proposes corresponding solution strategies, hoping to provide reference for promoting the effective management of nature reserves and helping to achieve the goals of holistic spatial protection as well as sustainable development.

 3.2 Materials

In order to obtain the literature on the exercise of administrative authority in PAs management as comprehensively as possible, we searched the literature published from 2015-2024 on databases such as CNKI, SpringerLink, Scopus, Web of Science, Wiley Online Library, etc., in both Chinese and English, using the search keywords ‘Protected Areas’; ‘National Parks’; ‘Nature Reserve’; ‘Nature parks’; ‘Protected Areas in China’; ‘The Administration of PAs’; ‘Effectiveness of PAs management’. The reason for adopting this time period is to explore more literature, and another reason is that since 2015, China's PAs have entered a period of consolidation and optimization, including the pilot national parks and the reform of national institutions, and other important practices are in this time period, and we would like to better observe the latest literature that is more relevant to the management of PAs in China.

 

Comment 3: The explanation from lines 117 to 118 overlaps with the explanation from lines 123 to 124, emphasizing that this article studies from a spatial perspective. It is recommended to merge these two places.

Response: We are grateful to you for pointing out the problem of overlapping interpretations here. In restructuring the article, we have merged all the spatial emphasis that appears in the article into the new theoretical framework section of the article, which on the one hand avoids the overlapping interpretations in the original article, and on the other hand better explains why the article is conducted in the context of holistic spatial protection.

 

The specific modifications are made as follows：

2.1 The ideal state of management of PAs is holistic spatial protection

The first ideal state of the management of PAs is to realize holistic spatial protection, which is determined by the holistic nature of the space and the negative externality of spatial behavior. On the one hand, the wholeness of PAs becomes the objective law that the spatial management of PAs should follow in the first place. Some scholars believe that the wholeness is a reflection of the form of interaction between man and man, man and nature, nature and society, and the wholeness covers the wholeness of the subject, the wholeness of the object and the wholeness of the relationship between the subject and the object . The wholeness of the space of PAs refers to its objective characteristics presented as a physical space object, including the completeness and indivisibility of the elements, the natural ecological space is an organic whole that interacts with each other and constrains each other, and it is a kind of mountain, water, forest, field, lake and grass life community. This objectivity is the law that cannot be violated in the process of spatial management of PAs, and if the space is reduced to individual elements, the meaning of the space itself will be diminished.

On the other hand, the negative externality of the spatial behavior of PAs determines the protection of this physical space as well as the constraints on the behavior within the space from a holistic perspective. The different forms and scales of social practice activities carried out by human beings in the natural space are spatial behaviors, and the spatial behaviors will produce certain ‘spillover effects’ to the outside, which may be ‘positive effects’. This ‘spillover effect’ may be ‘positive effect’ or ‘negative effect’. As the spatial behavior is carried out under the subjective will of the main body of the space, and the subjective will is more combined with their own needs to maximize the pursuit of the use of benefits, and does not fully follow the objective law, this self-interested and arbitrariness leads to the spatial behavior will have an adverse impact on the outside, damaging the social and public interests and the interests of the state. For example, disorderly mining activities in the space of PAs can cause problems such as the destruction of surface vegetation, increased soil erosion, and surface subsidence, and then the over-exploitation of natural resources such as land and forests in the space of PAs leads to the reduction of biodiversity. Although individual spatial behaviors may produce small negative externalities, these spatial behaviors negative externalities are often gradually accumulated and work together, ultimately making the space chaotic and disorderly, spatial interests are out of proportion, and the space is difficult to develop in a sustainable manner. It is difficult to achieve a better protection effect just by restraining and controlling individual subjects and behaviors, therefore, it is necessary to implement holistic spatial protection for the whole physical space and impose holistic spatial behavioral constraints.

China's Overall Program for the Reform of the Ecological Civilization System has refined the objectives of spatial management, focusing on solving the problems of over-occupation of high-quality arable land and ecological space, ecological damage, and environmental pollution caused by disorderly, excessive, and scattered development. The Measures for the Use Control of Natural Ecological Space breaks down the spatial management objectives into three major requirements: ensuring that the area of ecological space is not reduced, maintaining ecological functions without degradation, and gradually improving the capacity to guarantee ecological services, and states that the evaluation of the carrying capacity of resources and the environment and the appropriateness of territorial space development will be used as the basis for control. In addition, the general objective of the ‘Guidance on the Establishment of a PA system with National Parks as the Main Body’ also explicitly proposes to ‘enhance the carrying capacity of natural ecological space’. It can be seen that the overall area and quantity of ecological space, and the maintenance and improvement of overall ecological functions, have become an important criterion for the spatial management of PAs.

2.2 Exercise of administrative authority should be consistent with holistic spatial protection

As can be seen from China's existing environmental protection legislation, holistic spatial protection is often used as a guiding principle for the government's management. For example, article 3 of China's Yangtze River Protection Law emphasizes the principle of unified protection and systematic management. The Law on the Ecological Protection of the Tibetan Plateau also continues to require the implementation of the principles of overall coordination and systematic management in the protection of the Tibetan Plateau as a space through article 3. Article 4 of the Measures for the Use Control of Natural Ecological Space (for Trial Implementation) clearly stipulates that the use control of ecological space should follow the basic principles of regional integration and collaborative management. In practice, the holistic spatial protection has been refined into clear geospatial units, such as the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, national parks and PAs, etc. In terms of the attributes of the holistic spatial protection, the holistic spatial protection is also more often reflected as a combination of spatial planning, administrative licenses for spatial exploitation and utilization, and administrative authorities such as administrative levies, administrative penalties, and administrative coercive measures to achieve the spatial control objectives. Synthesis.

From the perspective of the relationship between the various control subjects, spatial management presents a characteristic of both differentiated management but also mutual cooperation and synergistic promotion. Different physical spaces have their own characteristics, coupled with the fact that different regions have different interests due to unbalanced economic and social development and unbalanced environmental obligations, thus requiring differentiated management. However, at the same time, due to the interconnectedness of space, spatial management emphasizes more on resource sharing and integration and linkage among various subjects. Throughout the framework and practice of management of PAs in various countries, it is also emphasized that the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection.

(1) U.S. national parks system National Park from the establishment of the first national parks in 1872 to the official establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the early days of the single national parks patrolled by the federal military, and can not guarantee that the national parks of the wild species resources and habitats are well protected until the National Park Service was formally established, the jurisdiction of the national parks are formally oil laws It was not until the National Park Service was formally established that the jurisdiction of national parks was formalized in law as direct federal management, enjoying federal financial support, and in the course of nearly 100 years of development, absorbing fresh types of protected areas, exploring cooperative models for different types of members, merging redundant agencies, improving the legal system, and consolidating the monitoring mechanism to ensure that the national park system can reflect the well-being of all people. The direct federal management of national parks indicates that the maintenance and improvement of the national park system is an important task of the government, and the significance of this is much greater than the ecological protection and resource utilization of a single element, but the national parks as a holistic spatial protection .

(2) One of the characteristics of the EU Natural 2000 is that the implementation of its strategic planning is based on a large regional perspective and cyclical planning, and also follows the requirements of holistic spatial protection, which evaluates the territory of the European Union as a whole, and, on the basis of respecting each member state's own biodiversity conservation laws and regulations, integrates the whole region and proposes the protection strategies that each country needs to implement. The plan is a comprehensive and integrated approach, respecting each Member State's own biodiversity conservation laws and regulations. This is conducive to increasing the internal connectivity of Natura 2000 and improving the overall quality of conservation; it can also avoid some unnecessary conservation measures and reduce the cost of conservation .

(3) Germany in the PAs legislation will be the federal and state are entitled to set up a certain legislative power, generally including the federal exclusive legislative power and competing legislative power two parts, national parks belong to the scope of competing legislative power, that is, the federal only on the construction of national parks to put forward a guiding framework for the provisions of the specific by the state through the laws and regulations to be stipulated and protected. At the state level, each state ‘one area, one law’, that is, each PAs (national parks or biosphere reserves, etc.) combined with their own actual situation to put forward specific regulatory requirements, through the legislation from the federal and state level to regulate the operation of administrative authority in the overall scope of the space of nature reserves .

 (4) In Russia, direct management is practiced in the mode of management of PAs. Special nature reserves at the federal level are directly managed by federal state bodies; special nature reserves at the regional level are directly managed by the state power bodies of the constituent entities of the Federation; and special nature reserves at the local level are directly managed by the local self-governing bodies of the municipal administration districts in which they are located. Moreover, specialized management bodies have been established within the different levels of protected areas. This management system clarifies the administrative authority and responsibility of all levels of government, and is conducive to the adjustment and control of personnel and funding for PAs at all levels. As a result, it prevents the occurrence of the phenomenon of ‘complicated management’ .

(5) France in the exercise of administrative resources in the PAs are also more subject to the constraints of administrative divisions, but in the board of directors, the charter, the park brand value-added system of these measures, France's regional parks across the provinces or even across the region of the integrated management is easy to realize, so that the various regions within an ecosystem can comply with the unified planning and coordination of the relationship between protection and utilization by a unified body. This is actually a kind of contractual federal management mode, which also embodies holistic spatial protection .

2.3 Conditions to be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection

The management of PAs from dispersion to integration, and from single government management to shared governance by multiple subjects requires that the exercise of administrative authority should take full account of space as a whole, and take the realization of holistic spatial protection as a criterion for judging behavior. Under this perspective, the governing bodies are not in a state of doing their own thing under single-factor governance, but a mode of coordination as far as possible, i.e., despite the need to realize the protection of the whole space, the different governing bodies will not conflict in their powers and duties, on the contrary, the different governing bodies also have the willingness to cooperate collectively and support each other for the common goal. The focus of holistic spatial protection of PAs is to realize the synergy of the governing bodies, but this synergy is not to realize the simple cooperation of different governmental agencies, but to truly connect different levels of government, synergize with the cross-space government, and at the same time, expand the participating bodies of governance, forming a synergistic, three-dimensional governance network .

(1) The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs urgently needs to coordinate the relationship between the central and local governments, coordinate and integrate various management forces and management resources, and ultimately form a state of unity of purpose, common mission, up and down linkage, and synergistic operation between the central and local governments in the management of PAs. The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs should closely follow the ideal state of holistic spatial protection, i.e., striving to realize holistic spatial protection of PAs, including the granting of administrative authority to the authority that is most likely to make wise decisions in terms of organization, structure, procedures and staffing. At the same time, authorities exercising administrative authority need to adapt their organization, structure, procedures and staffing accordingly to ensure that they adapt and perform their functions effectively. The overall management of the space of PAs requires not only clarification of the characteristics and ecological laws of the space under management, but also collaboration and cooperation of different spaces, as well as the same cooperation of the relevant subjects in the space altogether.

(2) The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs needs to be adapted to the multiple attributes of the management content. The management of PAs belongs to the category of ecological civilization construction. As a brand-new form of human civilization, ecological civilization is not only limited to economic development or environmental protection, but also involves the whole situation of economic and social development, and presents a more prominent integration and comprehensiveness in the management content. Since the behavior of individuals is from the perspective of self-interest, it is difficult to consider the protection of the whole space, so this requirement is more for the government body. The overall management of the space of PAs includes both the management of public property and the management of public affairs, which is a mixture of several contents. If understood from a narrow perspective, administrative authority in the overall management of spatial management of PAs is mainly manifested in the control power exercised by the government. The control power includes three specific forms of goal-setting power, inspection and acceptance power, and incentive distribution power . Among them, the goal-setting right is the core of the hierarchical authority relationship, refers to the organization of the commissioner through the unilateral formulation, top-down implementation or both sides of the negotiation for the subordinates to set goals and tasks of the right of control; inspection and acceptance of the right of the commissioner or the management to check the completion of the set goals of the right of control; incentives to distribute the right of the commissioner or the management of the management of the subordinates of the agent's incentives to set the power to assess rewards and punishments As well as the organization and implementation of the target implementation, resource allocation and other control rights.

(3) The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs needs to be in line with the holistic nature of governance results. The object of the exercise of administrative authority in the management of existing PAs is more of a single element, while the holistic spatial protection requires that the legal nature of the entire PAs space must be responded to, so as to make the corresponding adjustments. The premise of the independent existence of the overall management of the space of PAs is that the object of the overall management of the space of PAs is an independent spatial unit of PAs, in other words, the space of PAs as a whole should be the object of management in terms of the object of the role of administrative authority. If the object of the overall management of PAs space is still the traditional environmental elements and individual natural resources, then it seems unnecessary to emphasize the overall management of the space, and there is no way to talk about the wholeness of the exercise of administrative authority dependent on the object of management. Overall protection and systematic management put higher requirements on the management object, and only when PAs become an independent management unit can overall protection and systematic management be better realized.

 

Comment 4:The description from lines 129 to 133 in the introduction should be placed in the suggestion section, and the logic before and after this section needs to be reorganized.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion! The part you mentioned should indeed be put in the Recommendations section. We have made a big adjustment to the Introduction and Discussion sections and rearranged the contents of these two sections, in which the Introduction section focuses on a general description of the topic in focus, the progress of the study, the basic situation in China, the value and significance of the study, and the research framework, especially the last paragraph of the Introduction section, which is mainly the expression of the article's objectives and the analytical framework, and the Recommendations section of the Discussion section is more concerned with the solution of the problems and the proposal of improvement measures. The recommendation part of the discussion focuses more on the solution of the problem and the improvement measures.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

This paper takes the policy texts, legal texts and typical judicial cases related to the management of PAs as the object of study, and anchors the question of how to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs to meet the expectation of holistic spatial protection of PAs , and to promote the management of PAs from flat to three-dimensional, so as to realise the efficient management of PAs. This paper discusses the following aspects in each part: in the theoretical framework part, it is clear that the ideal state of PAs management is to achieve holistic spatial protection, and the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methodology and materials part, it proposes the methodology steps of normative analysis and case study analysis, and the methodology steps of qualitative analysis with the existing existing methods and methods of analysis. qualitative analysis methodological steps to sort out the practice of nature PAs management in China, using existing laws, policy documents, and case data as samples; in the results section, the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in China's nature PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are elaborated, including a description of the main body of PAs management, what reforms have been carried out by China's bureaucratic organisations in order to adapt to holistic protection, and what reforms have been carried out by the central government Based on this, the paper concludes with a discussion section that analyses whether the exercise of power in the management of PAs in China is in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and the dilemmas encountered in the process of practice and exploration of effective promotion of the management of PAs, as well as proposing corresponding strategies to solve the problems, in the hope of promoting the effective management of PAs and helping to achieve the goal of holistic spatial protection. The paper also proposes corresponding solution strategies, hoping to provide reference for promoting the effective management of nature reserves and helping to achieve the goals of holistic spatial protection as well as sustainable development. The analytical framework of this paper is shown in Figure 1.

5  Discussion

This paper attempts to observe the progress of management of PAs in China, especially the practice of exercising administrative authority, and to study how administrative authority fits the requirements of spatially holistic conservation in China's laws and policy documents, promotes nature conservation, and realizes the goals of management of PAs. Therefore, the observational study focuses on two aspects: first, whether the current management mechanism of China's PAs fits the requirements for managing the exercise of administrative authority under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; and second, if the practices and reforms of PAs' management institutions do not meet the requirements for holistic spatial protection, how to improve the measures and alleviate the obstacles to respond to the challenges faced by the exercise of administrative authority of PAs in realizing the goals of holistic spatial protection. Elucidating China's practices and challenges in achieving spatial management of PAs is valuable because, as PAs develop, management through administrative authority and guiding multi-party participation will play an important role, and these experiences are important lessons for the construction and optimization of the PA system and the improvement of the organizational structure of the cooperative management of global biodiversity.

5.1 Hierarchical management mode is difficult to fully adapt to the needs of holistic spatial protection

Closely related to scalability, the management of nature PAs under holistic spatial protection reflects holistic protection, which is different from decentralized protection. The holistic protection of nature PAs in space emphasizes the integration of the protection of various elements, and needs to address the difficulty of the organizational structure under functional decentralization to respond to the problems of communication and coordination between upper and lower levels of government, and between different government departments. Therefore, post-transition management of PAs requires rethinking the relationship between upper and lower levels to ensure that the central government is able to play its leadership role, while also effectively integrating local resources in order to solve the problems faced in the management of PAs. Under the current management of PAs in China, administrative authority is mainly distributed under the hierarchical government model, and the government's organizational management and personnel system is designed for the hierarchical government model rather than the chemical government model. And the current hierarchical management mechanism is difficult to meet the management needs of PAs. In certain pilot national parks, direct management bodies have not yet been established at the provincial level, which is not conducive to the formation of effective management entities. Therefore, in the future, it is necessary to further optimize the management system and establish a supervision system combining vertical management and law enforcement stationing, as well as an operational mechanism of provincial-ministerial cooperation and multilevel linkage, in order to give full play to the advantages and functions of vertical management.

Whether adopting centralized direct management or local government supervision, a single model does not meet the spatial management needs of PAs. Looking at the exercise of vertical administrative authority in the management of natural resources in various countries from a global perspective, although decentralization-led central-land relations are common, the ultimate effectiveness of decentralization is subject to significant uncertainty, given that it involves multi-level and multi-dimensional institutional innovation. Decentralization may weaken the central government's overall control over natural resources in PAs, and the incentives for local governments are unclear; Véron et al. show that in India, despite decentralization reforms in the area of forest protection, the state forest department retains central control over resources. Meanwhile, Sauquet et al. suggest that the incentive effects of fiscal decentralization in Brazil's ecological sector may be weakened by local government interactions. Crucially, Maia et al.'s study of national parks in the Netherlands suggests that decentralization of administrative authority may lead to a weakening of local responsibility for environmental protection, which in turn affects the effectiveness of environmental policy implementation and potentially threatens the resilience of ecosystems in PAs. Therefore, in the vertical distribution of administrative authority, the central and local governments are not in an either/or relationship, and this paper argues that a mechanism for joint cooperation between the central and local governments should be established from the perspective of the implementation effect of management policies, combining the observation of the two in terms of whether their concerns and actions are coordinated or not. On the one hand, the concerns of the central and local governments should be clarified, the spatial advantages of the localities should be fully utilized, and the localities should be stimulated to carry out nature conservation, while the authority of the central government as the agent of the ownership of natural resources owned by all people should be guaranteed; on the other hand, the coordination of the actions of the central and local governments in the spatial management of PAs should be realized, in terms of objectives, distribution of powers and responsibilities. Generally speaking, the central government and local governments jointly exercise administrative authority in management, emphasizing the cooperation, coordination and unified exercise of administrative authority in management at different levels of government. In special cases, the central government directly exercises administrative authority to ensure the efficiency of the management of PAs of special significance or value.

5.2 Cross-regional collaboration mechanisms have not been fully established

The distribution of administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs is affected by physical space and administrative divisions. The core quality of holistic spatial protection lies in crossing the boundaries of administrative regions and constructing and optimizing the management structure based on the boundaries of ecosystems or ecological spaces. In China's practice, cross-regional PAs face difficulties in integration, obstacles in coordination, and cumbersome procedures. Most of their management activities and funding channels follow the old system, and the nature of their subordinate organizations is different, which may easily lead to the phenomenon of “one park, two systems” in management. In addition, the overall planning and layout of different PAs are not synchronized and coordinated. In some pilot areas, the differences between internal and external management policies also bring challenges to management. Therefore, it can be said that the working mechanism for cross-regional collaboration has not yet been fully established.

In order to achieve the holistic spatial protection, in many cases Networks of PAs (NPAs) emerged as a governance instrument in the framework of territorial sustainable development. For the synergistic integration of administrative authority in the management of interconnected boundary spaces, this paper suggests that there are two paths: one is the establishment of a unified management body, whereby a single management body will uniformly exercise administrative authority in the overall governance of multiple spatial PAs connected by boundaries, for example, Section 38(4) of the South African Protected Areas Act stipulates that marine and terrestrial PAs with common boundaries must be managed in an integrated manner by a single management body for integrated management. In France, the exercise of administrative resources in PAs is also more subject to the constraints of administrative boundaries, but under the board of directors, charters, and value-added park product branding system, the integrated management of the French regional parks across provinces and even regions is easy to realize, allowing the various regions within an ecosystem to comply with a unified plan and the coordination of the relationship between conservation and utilization by a unified body. This is in fact a contractual federal management model, which also reflects holistic spatial protection.

Another approach is to establish collaborative mechanisms for territory management and planning. From the viewpoint of management practice, the synergy of administrative authorities in the management of spatial planning, supervision and investigation is a problem that needs to be solved urgently in the management of the boundaries of PAs,including the coordination of national parks and nature reserves, natural park management, cross-border coordination of PAs. One of the characteristics of the European Union's Natura 2000 is that the implementation of its strategic planning is based on a large regional vision and cyclical planning, which also follows the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and this plan evaluates the territory of the European Union as a holistic spatial protection, and, on the basis of respecting each member state's own biodiversity protection laws and regulations, it integrates the whole territory and proposes the protection strategies that need to be implemented by each country. This will help to increase the internal connectivity of Natura 2000 and improve the overall quality of conservation; it will also reduce the cost of conservation by avoiding unnecessary conservation measures.

Specific paths include, on the one hand, the establishment of a joint meeting mechanism for the right to spatial planning of protected area boundaries. Joint meeting generally refers to the convening of a special meeting between multiple government departments at a higher level to communicate on a certain matter. There are already some provisions on joint meetings in Chinese laws, and they are mostly found in ecological environmental protection behaviors and legal norms that require cooperation, which can be adopted for the coordination of spatial planning rights of PAs across administrative regions. On the other hand, a joint enforcement mechanism for the boundary space of protected areas has been established. Joint law enforcement provisions are more often found in China's general environmental pollution prevention and ecological protection laws and norms. For example, according to Article 29(3) of China's Marine Environmental Protection Law, departments and agencies exercising the right to supervise and manage the marine environment are granted the legal administrative authority to carry out joint law enforcement at sea. Article 80 of China's Law on the Protection of the Yangtze River and Article 105 of the Law on the Protection of the Yellow River expressly provide that the relevant departments of the State Council, local people's governments at all levels of the river basins and their relevant departments shall carry out joint law enforcement in accordance with the law in respect of cross-administrative areas, ecologically sensitive areas, areas with high incidence of ecological and environmental violations, and cases of major violations of the law. Article 35, paragraph 3, of China's Wildlife Protection Law clearly states that the State shall establish a coordination mechanism for joint wildlife law enforcement led by the competent departments of the State Council in charge of forestry, grassland and fisheries, with the participation of other relevant departments. At the same time, local people's governments should also establish corresponding joint law enforcement coordination mechanisms. Therefore, in the future, the improvement of the spatial law enforcement coordination mechanism for PAs should also pay attention to the connection and coordination with the existing joint law enforcement mechanism, so as to fill the legislative gaps in the joint law enforcement mechanism for the specialized spatial protection of PAs in the existing legislation on wildlife protection, marine environmental protection and natural ecological space.

5.3 The horizontal connection of administrative authority in PAs needs to be further strengthened.

China's ‘Overall Program for Reform of Ecological Civilization System’ explicitly proposes to ‘establish a system of unified authority and hierarchical management’, where the unified authority is more concerned with the distribution of horizontal administrative authority, for two reasons: firstly, the integration of the functions of ecological protection, natural resource asset management, concession management, social participation in the management, and publicity and promotion, essentially reflecting a horizontal unification across departments; secondly, the ‘hierarchical exercise of ownership’ in the context of the program needs to be further strengthened. First, the integration of functions such as ecological protection, natural resource asset management, concession management, social participation management, and publicity and promotion is essentially a horizontal unification across departments; second, in the context of the program, the ‘hierarchical exercise of ownership’ and the emphasis on the rational division of authority between the central government and the local government, as well as the synergistic management of the program emphasize the distribution of administrative authority in a vertical manner. China's subsequent reform of the major ministry system realized this policy design. China's 2018 ministerial reform has realized this policy design. After the institutional reform, the fragmentation of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China has been improved to a certain extent, but it is more of a preliminary macro-design, and the solution to the problem of fragmentation of authority and responsibility in the management of PAs must be achieved through a unified and stable institutional system to play a legal role.

As to how administrative authority in the management of PAs is distributed and exercised at the inter-ministerial level, there are two main practices, one is to unify the administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs to a certain department to centralize the exercise of administrative authority, and the other is to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs in sub-departments. In the United States, the management and protection of PAs are mainly carried out by the National Park Service (NPS), the National Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the Department of Agriculture (DOA) under the Ministry of the Interior. Management (BLM), and the National Forest Service (US Forest Service, USFS) under the Department of Agriculture. In the United Kingdom, the National Park Authority was established to fulfill the responsibility of conservancy stewardship. At the management level, based on the diversity of protected areas, the Heritage Department, the Department of Agriculture and Forestry, and other resource management departments have adopted a multi-agency model to share management responsibilities.

Firstly, the types and contents of administrative acts requiring cooperation in the overall spatial governance of PAs should be clarified. The administrative acts requiring cooperation refer to the administrative acts implemented by administrative organs in cooperation with each other on the same matter due to the division of functions. According to the relationship between different administrative organs, administrative acts requiring cooperation can be broadly divided into administrative acts requiring supplementation, administrative acts requiring preliminary examination or implementation by lower levels, administrative acts requiring consultation, specific administrative acts and basic acts. Since the overall spatial management of PAs involves many complicated matters, more subjects are needed for cooperative management. Traditional management also exists under the need to cooperate administrative acts, but the existence of the mode of view, whether it is the cooperation of the upper and lower levels of administrative organs, or the cooperation of the same level of administrative organs, which is more of a linear cooperation, while the overall spatial governance of the PAs need to cooperate with the administrative acts of the PAs is more of a three-dimensional relationship between the administrative acts.

Secondly, the content of the overall spatial governance of PAs should be clarified. It is possible to integrate all kinds of matters of national park construction into five categories, including planning matters, basic constructive matters, management and execution matters, development and utilization matters, and safeguard matters. These authorities are basically designed around the content of national park management matters, and observing the policy practice and legal norms of China's PAs, the overall governance of spatial matters of PAs is also mainly centered on the content of spatial planning, construction and management, development and utilization, and development guarantee of PAs. In the horizontal exercise of administrative authority, the duties of ecological protection, natural resource asset management, concession management, social participation management, publicity and promotion within PAs need to be integrated and unified into the relevant nature reserve management functions. The functions of management organizations within PAs should not be limited to resource protection, law enforcement supervision, scientific research and monitoring, and infrastructure construction, but should also be expanded to the fields of environmental education, eco-tourism, franchising, livelihood protection, public services and social management, etc., and the mechanism for a single subject to fully undertake the management responsibilities of PAs should be implemented in order to ensure the unity and efficiency of the management.

Thirdly, improve the procedures and institutional requirements for cooperation between different departments in the overall management of PAs. Clearly stipulate the administrative collaboration system in the form of legislation. Administrative collaboration refers to an order of inter-departmental coordination and cooperation through systems and rules, and an attempt to improve the system of cross-departmental synergy, which refers to the horizontal joint management between parallel functional departments, based on the same objective due to the relevance of the management affairs of each department and the limitations of their responsibilities and powers. In this regard, China's revised Marine Environmental Protection Law in 2023 is a good example. In order to better realize the integration and coordination between land, sea and air, the newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law clearly states in Article 12 that ‘the State implements a land and sea integrated, regionally linked supervision and management system for the marine environment’, and calls for the strengthening of the articulation and coordination of the supervision and management systems of various departments in planning, standard-setting, monitoring and so on. Article 24 of the new law establishes the obligation of the relevant departments of the State Council, marine police agencies and the competent ecological and environmental authorities of the State Council to share information, and article 25 further clarifies the obligation of the relevant departments of the State Council, marine police agencies and local people's governments at or above the county level of the coastal areas and their relevant departments to conduct comprehensive monitoring, collaborative monitoring and information sharing. Based on such arrangements, synergies between the central and local, ecological and environmental departments and other departments of land and sea monitoring and management mechanisms have been realized. In the future, the procedures and mechanism requirements for the cooperation of the overall spatial governance of the legislation on PAs can also refer to the design of the integrated land and sea management mechanism of the Marine Environmental Protection Law. Of course, the horizontal collaboration of administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs is more than that, in addition to information sharing and monitoring matters, how to realize the collaboration of planning authority, asset management authority, and licensing authority is also a need for further improvement.

Comment 5: The fourth paragraph of section 6.2.2 is too concise, it is suggested to add corresponding content.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion! We have revised the original ‘6.2.2 Power coordination mechanism of boundary space governance’ to ‘5.2 Cross-regional collaboration mechanisms have not been fully established’ in the discussion section, and added the analysis and recommendations section, so as to have a better dialogue and exchange with different scholars. regional collaboration mechanisms have not been fully established’ in the original text, put it into the Discussion section, and added the content of Analysis and Recommendation section, in addition to adding some management practices in foreign countries, so as to have a better dialogue and exchange with different scholars.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

5.2 Cross-regional collaboration mechanisms have not been fully established

The distribution of administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs is affected by physical space and administrative divisions. The core quality of holistic spatial protection lies in crossing the boundaries of administrative regions and constructing and optimizing the management structure based on the boundaries of ecosystems or ecological spaces. In China's practice, cross-regional PAs face difficulties in integration, obstacles in coordination, and cumbersome procedures. Most of their management activities and funding channels follow the old system, and the nature of their subordinate organizations is different, which may easily lead to the phenomenon of “one park, two systems” in management. In addition, the overall planning and layout of different PAs are not synchronized and coordinated. In some pilot areas, the differences between internal and external management policies also bring challenges to management. Therefore, it can be said that the working mechanism for cross-regional collaboration has not yet been fully established.

In order to achieve the holistic spatial protection, in many cases Networks of PAs (NPAs) emerged as a governance instrument in the framework of territorial sustainable development. For the synergistic integration of administrative authority in the management of interconnected boundary spaces, this paper suggests that there are two paths: one is the establishment of a unified management body, whereby a single management body will uniformly exercise administrative authority in the overall governance of multiple spatial PAs connected by boundaries, for example, Section 38(4) of the South African Protected Areas Act stipulates that marine and terrestrial PAs with common boundaries must be managed in an integrated manner by a single management body for integrated management. In France, the exercise of administrative resources in PAs is also more subject to the constraints of administrative boundaries, but under the board of directors, charters, and value-added park product branding system, the integrated management of the French regional parks across provinces and even regions is easy to realize, allowing the various regions within an ecosystem to comply with a unified plan and the coordination of the relationship between conservation and utilization by a unified body. This is in fact a contractual federal management model, which also reflects holistic spatial protection.

Another approach is to establish collaborative mechanisms for territory management and planning. From the viewpoint of management practice, the synergy of administrative authorities in the management of spatial planning, supervision and investigation is a problem that needs to be solved urgently in the management of the boundaries of PAs,including the coordination of national parks and nature reserves, natural park management, cross-border coordination of PAs. One of the characteristics of the European Union's Natura 2000 is that the implementation of its strategic planning is based on a large regional vision and cyclical planning, which also follows the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and this plan evaluates the territory of the European Union as a holistic spatial protection, and, on the basis of respecting each member state's own biodiversity protection laws and regulations, it integrates the whole territory and proposes the protection strategies that need to be implemented by each country. This will help to increase the internal connectivity of Natura 2000 and improve the overall quality of conservation; it will also reduce the cost of conservation by avoiding unnecessary conservation measures.

Specific paths include, on the one hand, the establishment of a joint meeting mechanism for the right to spatial planning of protected area boundaries. Joint meeting generally refers to the convening of a special meeting between multiple government departments at a higher level to communicate on a certain matter. There are already some provisions on joint meetings in Chinese laws, and they are mostly found in ecological environmental protection behaviors and legal norms that require cooperation, which can be adopted for the coordination of spatial planning rights of PAs across administrative regions. On the other hand, a joint enforcement mechanism for the boundary space of protected areas has been established. Joint law enforcement provisions are more often found in China's general environmental pollution prevention and ecological protection laws and norms. For example, according to Article 29(3) of China's Marine Environmental Protection Law, departments and agencies exercising the right to supervise and manage the marine environment are granted the legal administrative authority to carry out joint law enforcement at sea. Article 80 of China's Law on the Protection of the Yangtze River and Article 105 of the Law on the Protection of the Yellow River expressly provide that the relevant departments of the State Council, local people's governments at all levels of the river basins and their relevant departments shall carry out joint law enforcement in accordance with the law in respect of cross-administrative areas, ecologically sensitive areas, areas with high incidence of ecological and environmental violations, and cases of major violations of the law. Article 35, paragraph 3, of China's Wildlife Protection Law clearly states that the State shall establish a coordination mechanism for joint wildlife law enforcement led by the competent departments of the State Council in charge of forestry, grassland and fisheries, with the participation of other relevant departments. At the same time, local people's governments should also establish corresponding joint law enforcement coordination mechanisms. Therefore, in the future, the improvement of the spatial law enforcement coordination mechanism for PAs should also pay attention to the connection and coordination with the existing joint law enforcement mechanism, so as to fill the legislative gaps in the joint law enforcement mechanism for the specialized spatial protection of PAs in the existing legislation on wildlife protection, marine environmental protection and natural ecological space.

 

Comment 6:  The sentence structure of the first and second sentences in the conclusion section is inconsistent with the last three paragraphs. It is recommended to revise it to a unified sentence structure.

Response:Thank you for your suggestions! We have made major adjustments to the structure and content of the article in this round of revisions, so for the conclusion section, we have also made corresponding changes to enhance the response to the previous article, making the conclusion more prominent, in addition, we have also touched up the language of the conclusion section in the hope of enhancing readability.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

This paper analyses in depth how the allocation and implementation of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China can be coordinated with domestic laws and policy documents in order to more effectively achieve the goal of spatially holistic conservation of PAs. Thanks to the support of laws and national policies, as well as the active practice and exploration of several pilot areas, China has made significant progress in improving the effectiveness of PAs management.

In the management of PAs in China, the government still dominates the management of PAs, although there has been a certain shift in the management mode to enhance the effective management of PAs, from the government as the single management body to the synergistic cooperation between the market, social organisations and the public. In pursuit of the goal of holistic spatial protection, the Chinese government carried out a reform of state institutions in 2018, with the Ministry of Natural Resources achieving centralised and unified supervision of natural resources, and the newly established State Forestry and Grassland Bureau taking charge of specific matters related to the management of PAs. However, at the legal level, a unified understanding of the specific authorities in charge of PAs management has yet to be formed. As for the distribution of administrative authority between the central and local governments in the management of PAs, there is a co-existence of three modes: direct management by the central government, management by the local government, and co-management by the central and local governments. In addition, in practice, different administrative authorities in the management of PAs have been centralised and decentralised at the same time, in particular, the distinction between the ownership and supervision of governmental public property, and the centralisation of the exercise of administrative authority to impose penalties.

It is observed that the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China still faces certain challenges in achieving the goal of holistic spatial protection: firstly, the hierarchical management structure is difficult to fully meet the needs of holistic spatial protection; secondly, the mechanism of inter-regional collaboration has not yet been sufficiently established; and thirdly, co-operation between different departments in terms of administrative authority remains at the preliminary macro level.

Therefore, if the exercise of administrative authority in the management of China's PAs is to play a better role in the future, and to promote the realisation of holistic spatial protection objectives, the following efforts are needed: first, further optimise the management system, and set up a supervisory system combining vertical management and law enforcement stationing, as well as an operational mechanism of provincial-ministerial level cooperation and multi-level linkage; second, set up a unified management organisation in the border area, and improve the collaboration mechanism of regional management and planning; third, set up an inter-regional collaboration mechanism of regional management and planning; and third, establish a unified management organisation in the border area, and improve the collaboration mechanism of regional management and planning. and planning; third, clarify the content of matters of overall spatial governance of PAs, and improve the procedures and institutional requirements for cooperation among different departments in the overall spatial governance of PAs.

It should be further noted that China is currently in the process of compiling an ecological and environmental code, and the efficient allocation and exercise of power in the management of PAs will also be affected by this. How the objectives, management system, management institutions and the allocation and exercise of power in the management of PAs will interface with the ecological and environmental code, so as to jointly promote the effective management of PAs, requires continuous observation, as well as follow-up research.

Comment 7: However, the quality of the English language needs significant improvement. Grammar issues, awkward phrasing, and overly complex sentences undermine the clarity and readability of the manuscript.

Response: Thank you for your suggestions! In this round of revision, in addition to focusing and enhancing the problems of the article, we have mainly improved the language expression, including establishing a glossary to unify all relevant expressions, checking the specific statements of the article one by one and changing the use of long and difficult sentences as much as possible, so that the relevant expressions can be more easily comprehended and appreciated by readers on the basis of guaranteeing the accuracy of the expressions, so as to enhance the readability of the article.

 

Additional work

We found that there is some confusion in the original article in the content expression of the methodological materials, data analysis and results part, in order to make the research scope, research methodology and conclusions of the article clearer and more explicit, we supplemented and improved the methodological materials, merged the part of the data analysis into the results, and sorted out the content of the results, so that the research materials can better verify the theoretical assumptions and support the conclusions.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

3.Methods & Materials

3.1 Qualitative analysis

This paper adopts the method of qualitative analysis, combining normative analysis with typical case analysis to carry out relevant research on the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection. Through the normative analysis and case analysis method, the provisions and practices of legal norms, policy texts and judicial practices on the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs are clarified. The normative analysis in this paper is mainly based on policy texts and legal texts. The Chinese government has issued numerous policy documents and legal norms around the matter of administrative authority allocation in PAs management, and local provinces and municipalities have also issued numerous local policies. Through the qualitative analysis method based on the practice of PAs management, especially the analysis of laws and policy documents related to PAs, it is possible to sort out the implementation process, the evolution direction, and the promotion effect on the holistic spatial protection objectives of the innovations in the management of PAs in China. In terms of case analysis based on the management of PAs in China, after searching for cases involving the management of PAs, we conducted case analyses under the headings of implementation subjects and sources of administrative authority to illustrate the current status of judicial practice in the management of PAs in China, which can support the subsequent proposal of a globally meaningful path of the exercise of administrative authority over PAs.

In order to more comprehensively and accurately conduct an in-depth study of the operation of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China, after selecting the texts and cases mentioned above, and combining the theoretical framework of holistic spatial protection with the judging criteria, a qualitative analysis was conducted according to three steps: (1) Summarization. Summarize the facts of the cases related to administrative authority in the management of PAs, extract all the facts that affect the conclusions of the judges, and eliminate the facts that do not really affect the value judgment of the judges; when summarizing, this paper adopts the form of a table to present the relevant facts. (2) Comparison. When comparing the cases related to administrative authority in the management of PAs, it is done through two directions. The first direction is to put the cases with the same facts together and observe whether the judges reach the same conclusion with the same facts. The second direction is to compare cases that reach the same conclusion together and analyze whether the facts of the respective corresponding cases are consistent. Through generalization and comparison, certain rules of adjudication are extracted, and key points such as the source of administrative authority in the management of PAs can be initially identified. (3) Analysis. In the analysis, the factual elements related to administrative authority in the management of PAs are closely focused. By analyzing the source and operation process of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, the conditions that should be satisfied for the optimization of the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs are derived. It can be initially found that the exercise of administrative authority and management have a high degree of linkage, and management serves as the field and background for the distribution and exercise of administrative authority. Under the pursuit of holistic spatial protection objectives, the management of PAs is adjusted in terms of centralization and decentralization in the vertical relationship, and integration and cooperation in the horizontal relationship.

3.2 Materials

In order to obtain the literature on the exercise of administrative authority in PAs management as comprehensively as possible, we searched the literature published from 2015-2024 on databases such as CNKI, SpringerLink, Scopus, Web of Science, Wiley Online Library, etc., in both Chinese and English, using the search keywords ‘Protected Areas’; ‘National Parks’; ‘Nature Reserve’; ‘Nature parks’; ‘Protected Areas in China’; ‘The Administration of PAs’; ‘Effectiveness of PAs management’. The reason for adopting this time period is to explore more literature, and another reason is that since 2015, China's PAs have entered a period of consolidation and optimization, including the pilot national parks and the reform of national institutions, and other important practices are in this time period, and we would like to better observe the latest literature that is more relevant to the management of PAs in China.

In terms of the selection of research areas, we selected three types of PAs: national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks as the research areas and scopes of this paper. Among them, national parks, as the main body of China's PAs management system, refer to specific land or sea areas where the main purpose is to protect nationally representative natural ecosystems and to realize the scientific protection and rational use of natural resources. Nature reserves refer to specific territories designated for the specialized protection of representative natural ecosystems, natural distribution areas of rare and endangered species of wild animals and plants, and natural relics of special significance. As a supplementary protection area in the management system of PAs, nature parks aim to protect natural ecosystems, natural relics and natural landscapes with remarkable ecological, ornamental, cultural and scientific values.

In order to learn more about the management practices of PAs in China, we conducted a study of the national parks of Sanjiangyuan, Giant Panda, Northeast Tiger and Leopard, Hainan Tropical Rainforest, and Wuyi Mountain, as well as the Liupanshan, Helanshan, and Luoshan National Nature Reserves of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Nanling National Nature Reserve, Zhangjiajie Badaigongshan National Nature Reserve, Nanji Liedao National Marine Nature Reserve of Zhejiang Province, Sedan Chair National Nature Reserve of Kunming City, and Inner Mongolia Dajiagongshan National Nature Reserve. National Nature Reserve, Inner Mongolia Daxing'anling Khanma National Nature Reserve, and Zhangjiajie Badaigongshan National Nature Reserve in Zhangjiajie City were studied.

In order to improve the accuracy of the study, we searched the websites of relevant government and PAs management organizations for data and information on basic information on nature reserve management and management organization setups in China from 2015-2024, and the reason for adopting this timeframe was that we wanted to observe the latest data, including: official websites of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration and the National Parks Administration (accessible at https://www.forestry.gov.cn). In addition, numerous policy documents and legal norms have been issued by the Chinese central government and numerous local policies have been issued by local provinces and municipalities around matters of administrative authority allocation for the management of PAs.The relevant policy documents of PAs are collected from the State Council Policy Document Library of the Chinese government website (accessible at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengcewenjiank/), the relevant administrative regulations and rules are collected from the the State Council Bulletin of People's Republic of China (PRC) (accessible at https://www. gov.cn/gongbao/2024/issue_11086), and the relevant laws and local regulations are collected from the national laws and regulations database.

In terms of the analysis of typical cases based on the management of PAs, we searched for judicial cases involving PAs in China's adjudication documents website (accessible at https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/). The adjudication documents are the legally binding legal documents made by the court on the entities and procedures of the case based on the facts and the law after the trial of the case is finalized. It is a binding legal document with more judicial openness, judicial fairness and judicial credibility. Therefore, the adjudication documents are the most complete and accurate source of data for this study to identify the operation of administrative authority in the management of PAs. All the texts and typical cases mentioned in the article are shown in the annex.

4  Results

4.1 Spatial scale expression in the texts of laws and policies on PAs in China

At present, China does not have a specialized law on PAs, and is more dominated by policy documents, administrative regulations, departmental rules and normative documents issued by the two offices. For example, the policy basis for providing guidance for the integration of the existing system of nature reserves is the Guidance on Establishing a Nature Reserve System with National Parks as the Main Body. Currently, the norms for nature reserve management mainly originate from administrative regulations such as the Regulations on Nature Reserves and the Regulations on Scenic and Historic Areas issued by the State Council, as well as the Interim Measures for the Management of National Parks formulated by the State Forestry and Grassland Administration (SFGA). Also included are the Measures for the Administration of Forest Parks, the Measures for the Administration of National Wetland Parks and the Measures for the Administration of National Desert Parks issued by the former State Forestry Administration, as well as departmental regulations such as the Measures for the Administration of Marine Specially Protected Areas issued by the former State Oceanic Administration, which together constitute the legal framework for the management of PAs. In addition, some regions that have launched pilot national park systems have also begun to carry out local legislation, including both unified local legislation, such as the Yunnan Provincial National Park Management Regulations formulated by Yunnan Province for national parks in the whole province, as well as the Protection and Management Regulations of Shangri-La Pudacuo National Park of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province, the Regulations of Wuyi Mountain National Park (Trial), the Protection Regulations of Shennongjia National Park, and the Regulations of Sanjiangyuan National Park. Regulations”, ‘Sanjiangyuan National Park Regulations’, ‘Sichuan Giant Panda National Park Management Regulations’, and other ‘one park, one law’, all of these norms provide innovative local experiences for the actual management of PAs.Observing the legal and policy texts of China's PAs, there are expressions of spatial scale, as shown in Table 2, which lays the foundation for the exercise of administrative power.

4.2 Government-led management of China's PAs

PAs management is a government-led model with the participation of the market, social organizations and the public. China's ‘Guiding Opinions on the Establishment of a PA system with National Parks as the Main Body’ clearly puts forward ‘exploring public welfare management, community management, co-management and other conservation methods’, and community management, public welfare management and co-management are in fact new management modes proposed in response to the limitations of the government's single management mode, and provide a new way for the government to manage the PAs. In the judicial case study on the management of protected areas, we also found that the main structure of the management of PAs has changed from the government as a single management subject to the coordination of the market, social organizations and the public,as shown in Table 3.

However, it should be noted that despite the transition from a single subject to a multi-subject participation, the government still has a dominant role in the management of PAs. Not only are legal and policy texts filled with descriptions of government-led management of PAs, but judicial cases also emphasize the legitimacy basis of government management of PAs through various forms of expression. The judicial case study on the management of PAs found that the basis of legitimacy for the government as the dominant party to manage PAs mainly includes the government's public property right and the right to manage public affairs, as shown in Table 4. These two kinds of administrative powers not only reflect the maintenance of order, but also cover the protection and management of public property, and they play an important role in the management of PAs.

4.3 Reform of the bureaucratic organization in China under holistic spatial protection

4.3.1 Reform of state organizations in 2018

PAs management is aimed at realizing holistic protection, and it should emphasize the realization of the overall effectiveness of PAs management, be result-oriented, and not be biased in favor of a particular local or sectoral interest. PAs management should be centered on a coordination and integration mechanism, through which it can better utilize synergistic effects and promote the unity and cooperation of various departments and professional institutions to realize the comprehensive management of PAs space.China's reform of the major ministry system in 2018 is actually a holistic and systematic transformation of the management structure, and against the backdrop of the 2018 national institutional reform, the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has succeeded in realizing the centralized and unified supervision of natural resources. The supervisory and management functions of the former State Forestry Administration and the Ministry of Agriculture regarding grasslands, as well as the management responsibilities of the former Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the State Oceanic Administration with respect to nature reserves, scenic spots, natural heritages, and geoparks have all been consolidated and integrated into the newly-established State Forestry and Grassland Administration (SAGA), thereby realizing a more efficient and coordinated management of these natural resources. This impact also extends to the management of PAs, as shown in table 5.

 

4.3.2 Specific authorities in the management of PAs

The specific competent authorities in the management of PAs are not clear in the law and have not formed a unified perception. For example, regarding the competent authorities of nature reserves, the Regulations only generally stipulate in Article 21 that nature reserves of different levels shall be managed by their corresponding competent administrative authorities of the nature reserves concerned, but it is not clear what is meant by ‘competent administrative authorities of the nature reserves concerned’. At present, there are three main approaches in practice: (1) the competent forestry department is in charge. For example, Article 3 of the Regulations on the Liupanshan, Helanshan and Luoshan National Nature Reserves of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region stipulates that the competent authority of the nature reserve is the competent authority of the forestry administration, and that the comprehensive management of the nature reserve shall be undertaken by the governmental administrative authority of environmental protection; (2) the competent authority of environmental protection. For example, Article 6 of the Regulations on Nature Reserves of Hainan Province stipulates that the competent department of environmental protection of the people's government at or above the county level is the competent department of the nature reserve; (3) the competent department of natural resources administration. For example, the Regulations on Nature Reserves of Gansu Province stipulate that the competent department is the administrative department of natural resources of the people's government at or above the county level, and also stipulate that the main responsibility for ecological environmental protection and restoration of nature reserves shall be borne by the people's government at or above the county level.

4.4 Patterns of administrative authority of central and local governments in the management of PAs in China

At present, the distribution mode of administrative power between central and local governments in the management of PAs areas is generally divided into three categories according to the different leading government subjects and the difference in the degree of discretion enjoyed by different governments: the direct management mode of central government, the supervisor mode of local government and the co-management mode of central and local government..

Central government direct management type. In the actual construction and management of national parks, for the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park, the Giant Panda National Park, the Qilian Mountain National Park and the Sanjiangyuan National Park, which have a high proportion of state-owned land, forest land and other natural resources in the space, China has indeed adopted this model of direct management by the central government, which exercises decision-making, implementation and supervision powers, as well as bears the financial expenditures, as shown in Figure 2. According to the authorization of the central government, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration has added the logo of Qilian Mountain National Park Administration to the Office of the Commissioner for Forest Resources Supervision in Xi'an, which then exercises administrative authority over the management of PAs such as national parks under the direct management of the central government in accordance with the law. Article 11 of the Sanjiangyuan National Park Regulations also clearly stipulates the establishment of a centralized and unified vertical management mechanism for the national park.

Local government competent type. Under the local government competent model, the central government is responsible for legislation and macro policy making, while administrative authorities in the establishment and adjustment of PAs, planning and approval, natural resource asset management, supervision and punishment, dispute coordination, etc. are mainly the responsibility of the local government, which has a large amount of discretionary power over the management of PAs. For a long time, due to the objective status of PAs, the ambiguous division of affairs and powers, and the mismatch of centralized finance, the management of PAs in China has actually shown a state of administrative outsourcing. In this state, local governments, as the specific implementers of the objectives and affairs of PAs entrusted by the central government, actually have greater discretionary power over the management of PAs. China's Shennongjia National Park and Wuyi Mountain National Park has adopted this model.

Centralized co-management model. This model synthesizes the advantages of the sectional system and the administrative outsourcing system, in which the central government and the local government jointly exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs affairs. Among them, the central government exercises legislative power, decision-making power on major issues and supervisory power, and plays a coordinating role, while the local government exercises specific management power and implementation power, with certain discretionary power, and in terms of financial expenditure, it is co-financed by the central government and the local government. China to take the model of the national park is mainly Hainan tropical rainforest national park. The park's administrative authority in the management of the central government and local governments to exercise, including the park's planning and approval, the establishment of management bodies and other important matters such as decision-making by the central government, the exercise of the government at all levels is mainly the comprehensive coordination, public services, social management, market supervision, and other administrative authority, the financial input is by the provincial government and the central government in accordance with the division of power between the central and local affairs.

Further analysis of the relevant judicial cases shows that the administrative authority in the spatial management of PAs is mainly embodied in the administrative authority of environmental protection. From the physical point of view, the administrative authority of national environmental protection mainly originates from the two major aspects of order management and public property rights. This administrative authority not only embodies the maintenance of order, but also covers the protection and management of public property. Space, as a dependent carrier of natural resources, covers natural resources such as water flow, forest, grassland, land (including mountains, wasteland), mudflat, sea and mineral deposits, etc., which are mainly dependent on the three types of spatial carriers, namely, land, water (fresh water) and sea (sea area). Since space cannot exist independently of these natural resources, the legal basis for government-led spatial management is closely related to public property rights, especially since the government often acts as a representative exerciser of state ownership of natural resources. Generally speaking, the state's management and control of space and natural resources is based on the acquisition and establishment of sovereignty over land and sea territories, plus the fact that natural resources are different from other materials in that they carry multiple functions such as economic, ecological, and social values, and that they are related to the interests of the entire population and the fulfillment of public purposes, so China's Constitution explicitly stipulates that the state owns all natural resources such as mineral deposits, streams of water, forests, mountains, grasslands, wastelands, and mud flats, etc., and establishes that the state owns all natural resources. Therefore, the Constitution of China explicitly stipulates that natural resources such as mineral deposits, water flows, forests, mountains, grasslands, wasteland, mudflats, etc. are owned by the State, establishing the State's ownership of natural resources. And when other right holders carry out activities such as mining, excavating, and packaging the above natural resources, they enter, develop, utilize, and influence these space carriers, which is directly related to the state of ownership of natural resources in the space, and the two are to some extent two sides of the same coin. Globally, residential space is protected by property law, and property owners have the right to decide whether or not those within the space stay or leave, and the extent of this control over the space often also means the extent to which property rights are protected. Through the management and control of various types of space, such as land, sea, and water, based on the public good, the state draws boundaries for other non-rights holders, and the theoretical basis for spatial management that involves the content of the above behaviors is the ownership of natural resources. It should be noted, however, that the subject of certain natural resource rights in space is not the State, for example, collective land resources in space do not belong to the State, and the legitimacy of spatial control over them is not based on ownership, but on the Government's right to manage public affairs.

4.5 Relationship between different administrative authorities in the management of PAs in China

4.5.1 Relationship between governmental public property ownership and regulatory authority

The existing management mechanism of PAs is designed based on the government's public affairs management function, but under the reform of natural resource assets property right system, its management mechanism is faced with the conflict and adjustment of the supervision and ownership functions. In order to focus on solving problems such as the lack of natural resource owners, unclear ownership boundaries, and difficulties in implementing the rights and interests of owners, in September 2015, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council jointly issued the Overall Program for the Reform of the Ecological Civilization System, which establishes the goal of ‘constructing a property right system of natural resource assets with clear property rights, clear division of rights and responsibilities, and powerful supervision ‘.This marks the official launch of the reform of the property rights system for natural resource assets. To further deepen this reform, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the General Office of the State Council jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Coordinating and Promoting the Reform of the Property Rights System of Natural Resource Assets in 2019, which explicitly stipulates that the State Council authorizes the Ministry of Natural Resources to unify the exercise of the ownership of all natural resource assets on behalf of the State, and explores the implementation of the system of entrusting the exercise of ownership of natural resources to the provincial and municipal (prefectural) levels of government as an agent on a graded Framework. Based on the above policy documents, in 2022, China formally promulgated the Pilot Program on Ownership Delegation Mechanism for Nationally Owned Natural Resource Assets, which aims to comprehensively carry out a pilot program of ownership delegation for the eight core categories of nationally owned natural resource assets (including natural ecological space), including land, minerals, oceans, forests, grasslands, wetlands, water, and national parks. With the further separation of ownership and use rights in the reform of the property right system of natural resource assets, the clarification of the ownership subject, and the implementation of the ownership entrustment agency mechanism, the original management mechanism of PAs will also be affected to some extent. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed in the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reform that ‘the national natural resource asset management system should be improved, and the duties of owners of all natural resource assets should be exercised in a unified manner; the natural resource regulatory system should be improved, and the duties of the use and control of all territorial space should be exercised in a unified manner.’. This makes it clear that the reform idea of separating the rights of owners and the exercise of administrative supervision rights is clear.

However, in the practice of PAs management, there are also practices in which the natural resources departments and PAs management organizations uniformly exercise the responsibilities of asset management and administrative supervision. For example, Article 15 of the Regulations of Sanjiangyuan National Park clearly stipulates that the county people's government in the management of natural resources assets in specific matters characterized as the performance of its statutory administrative responsibilities, and authorizes the management body of the national park to exercise the same. Articles 5 and 22 of the Regulations on Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park (for Trial Implementation) clearly stipulate that the management of natural resource assets in the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park shall be undertaken by the national park management organization. Article 10 of the Wuyi Mountain National Park Regulations further specifies that the responsibility for the protection and management of natural resource assets owned by all people within the scope of the national park will be carried out by the national park management organization. According to Article 30 of the Regulations on the Management of Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan Province, the provincial people's government will fulfill the responsibility of the owner of the nationally owned natural resource assets in the Sichuan Area of the Giant Panda National Park in accordance with the national regulations, and the management organization of the national park will be specifically responsible for the management of the natural resource assets, and the implementation of the system of compensated use of natural resources.

4.5.2 Circulation of administrative punishment power among different departments

From the perspective of institutional reform and ecological civilization system, the current management structure of ecological environmental protection in China presents a trend of upward collection of monitoring power and downward sinking of law enforcement power. In the Provisions on the Exercise of Functions, Internal Institutions and Staffing of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, jointly issued by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council, it is explicitly pointed out that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment is responsible for organizing the formulation of the ecological environment regulatory system of various types of PAs, and for exercising the The Ministry of Ecology and Environment is responsible for organizing the formulation of ecological environment regulatory systems for various types of PAs, and exercising relevant law enforcement and supervisory powers, while the supervisory powers of PAs are mainly taken care of by the Office of Biodiversity Conservation of the Department of Natural Ecology Conservation and the National Biosafety Management Office, and the Department of Management of PAs of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration is responsible for the supervision and management of various types of PAs. This, together with the doubts about the right to penalize PAs in practice, has led to the discussion of the exercise of the right to penalize within the space of nature reserves to become extremely necessary. In practice, the subjects of the exercise of the right to impose administrative penalties in PAs include the competent nature authorities, the public security organs within the PAs and the management organizations of the PAs.

1. Exercise of administrative penalty power by competent departments of PAs

From the provisions of the existing administrative regulations and local regulations of PAs, most of the competent departments of PAs are forestry and grassland departments, and in practice, the law enforcement authority of forestry and grassland departments in PAs mainly focuses on investigating and dealing with the ecological damage of ecological space caused by illegal mining, road building, dam building and construction activities. For example, Article 18 of the Measures for the Management of Minjiang River Estuary Wetland Nature Reserve in Fuzhou City clearly stipulates that the duty of the management organization of the protected area is only to inform the relevant competent department in time when it finds out the illegal acts affecting the nature reserve, and the relevant competent department has the right to penalize the illegal acts, and the relevant competent department in the Act refers to the municipal forestry department.

1. Public security organs in PAs exercise the right to impose administrative penalties

For example, the regulations on nature reserves in Hainan Province make it clear in a general sense that administrative penalties and other administrative enforcement powers may be delegated by the competent department of the nature reserve to the management organization of the nature reserve, and also stipulate that the investigation and handling of violations of laws and regulations within the protected area may be the responsibility of the public security police agency set up within the protected area. For some spaces of PAs where mountain ranges are the main ecosystem, the subject of exercising the right to impose administrative penalties is further clarified to be the forest public security agency. For example, the management regulations of Liupan Mountain, Helan Mountain and Luoshan National Nature Reserve in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Sedan Chair Mountain National Nature Reserve in Kunming City, Khanma National Nature Reserve in Daxing'anling, Inner Mongolia, and Badaigong Mountain National Nature Reserve in Zhangjiajie City, etc., also stipulate that forest public security departments of the protected areas are responsible for investigating and punishing cases of crimes and offences damaging natural resources and natural ecosystems of the protected areas.

1. Unified exercise of the right to impose penalties by management agencies of PAs

By explicitly authorizing the necessary comprehensive resource and environmental law enforcement duties within the boundaries of national parks to be performed by national park management agencies when the time is ripe, the Overall Program has in fact begun to explore the unified exercise of spatial administrative punitive powers in this category of PAs. Local legislation has also explored this program in practice, one approach is to centralize the exercise by the management agency of the nature PAs, for example, Article 8, paragraph 2 of the Regulations on the Protection of Shennongjia National Park stipulates that within the jurisdiction of the Shennongjia National Park, the management agency of the national park is responsible for the full performance of the duties of comprehensive law enforcement of the resources and environment, and centralizes the exercise of the relevant administrative penalty power in accordance with the law; the other is to set up a special nature Another practice is to set up specialized law enforcement agencies for protected areas.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic is complex but the paper is so much long and extremely detailed to understand well what is the scope. Some parts could be synthesised to make more easy the reading. Some suggestion in order to simplify are in the attached file (e.g. to use annexes).

The paper seams to divided into two parts:

- one devoted to illustrate the literature  supporting the thesis Authors want to prove. PAs topic is dominant as well the general governance one. This last dimentiopn (governance) is not well understood by the Authors and it is sometime confused with a government activity at local level. "governance" means "whole of rules" permitting to create a management model. In the management model, a board can be created to address spatial choices. there is not a unique governance model. The PAs one are several and studied. This part needs to be revisited in deep and integrate with a closer reading of the quoted references useful to clarify the issue of governance in PAs. The global and European literature and experiences produced several models (no methods). Also the space governance in the planning of the PAs is advanced and I suggest something in my comments.

- the second part is completely devoted to the China's. The legislative set-up approach is dominant as well as the not ever clear relationship between government and governance. The role of PAs is generic and the analysis of laws is preferred. This vision comes back also in the results and discussion.

In addition: PAs are emerged as a governance instrument of the sustainable development in Europe and in the world. PAs has to be investigate focusing on the relationships between the different PAs and the territorial system, analysing existing institutional contexts and governance models adopted. This aspect is missing in the paper.

I suggest to revisit the papaer in deep, starting from: Lockwood M. (2010) “Good governance for terrestrial PAs; A framework, principles and performance outcomes”, in Journal of Environmental Management, 91, pp. 754-766; Lockwood M., Worboys G., and Kothari A. (eds.)( 2006) Managing Protected Areas: A Global Guide. Earthscan, London; Abrams P., Borrini-Feyerabend G., Gardner J. and Heylings P. (2003) Evaluating Governance — A Handbook to Accompany a Participatory Process for a Protected Area,. Report for Parks Canada and CEESP/CMWG/TILCEPA, http://www.iccaforum.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95&Itemid=109; etc....

Some useful case studies are also in the ESPON project LinkPas.

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

 

Thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to revise our manuscript and we deeply appreciate for your positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “How to construct the governance structure of protected areas from a spatial perspective —— The China experience”. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper,and also have the important guiding significance to our researches.We studied your comments carefully and have made revision which marked in red in this paper. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to all the comments. Earnestly we hope you find the revised version attached, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration. The corrections in the paper and the responds to comments are as follows:

 

 

Responds to Reviewer #3’s Comments Point by Point

 

Comment 1: The topic is complex but the paper is so much long and extremely detailed to understand well what is the scope. Some parts could be synthesised to make more easy the reading.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion! We very much agree with your suggestion to streamline the presentation of the article and the related statements. We have checked the specific phrases in the article and tried to change the use of long and difficult sentences to make them easier for readers to understand and appreciate on the basis of accuracy. On the basis of checking the accuracy of the statements, we focused on reducing the volume of the article, adjusting some tables to annexes, merging the original data analysis and results sections of the article, and optimising the structure of the article, so as to make the research scope of the article clearer and enhance the readability of the article. On this basis, we focus on how to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs to meet the expectation of holistic spatial protection under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, and to promote the management of PAs from ‘flat’ to ‘three-dimensional’ and from ‘three-dimensional’ to ‘three-dimensional’. This will lead to the transformation of the management of PAs from ‘flat’ to ‘three-dimensional’ and from ‘two-dimensional’ to ‘three-dimensional’, so as to realise the efficient management of PAs. We streamline the parts of the article according to the following ideas: in the theoretical framework part, it is made clear that the ideal state of PAs management is to achieve holistic spatial protection, and that the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methodology and materials part, it is put forward the methodological steps of normative analysis and case study analysis, with a view to achieving efficient management of PAs in the light of the current situation. qualitative analysis methodological steps to sort out the practice of nature PAs management in China, using existing laws, policy documents, and case data as samples; in the results section, the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in China's nature PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are elaborated, including a description of the main body of PAs management, what reforms have been carried out by China's bureaucratic organisations in order to adapt to holistic protection, and what reforms have been carried out by the central government Based on this, the paper concludes with a discussion section that analyses whether the exercise of power in the management of PAs in China is in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, the dilemmas encountered in the process of effective promotion of the practice and exploration of the management of PAs, and proposes strategies to solve the problems accordingly. The analytical framework of the article is shown in this figure:

 

 

 

 

Comment 2: One devoted to illustrate the literature supporting the thesis Authors want to prove. PAs topic is dominant as well the general governance one. This last dimentiopn (governance) is not well understood by the Authors and it is sometime confused with a government activity at local level.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion! We agree with your point about clarifying the connotation of governance. In fact, the network of governance of PAs is only a field for analysing the problem, and the real purpose of the study is the allocation of administrative authority over PAs in the perspective of holistic spatial protection, which is indeed ambiguous in the original article, and we have corrected this point. We have reorganised the content of the article to further define the scope of the study as PAs management, with a strong emphasis on the operation of administrative authority, in the hope of avoiding confusion between governance and the administrative activities of local-level governments. We believe that the power allocation mechanism of the subjects and inter-subjects of PAs management shapes the practice pattern of PAs management, which is directly related to the state of balance and stability of natural resource elements and the whole ecosystem within PAs. PAs itself is a special kind of ecological space, and the operation of its administrative authority must be able to guarantee the shaping of the order of this special ecological space. On this basis, this paper builds up an analytical framework on the effective allocation of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection, and with the help of this analytical framework and the use of normative analyses and case study methods, combines the qualitative analysis of policy texts, legal texts and typical judicial cases related to the governance of PAs to sort out and review the mechanism of allocating administrative authority in the management of PAs, and clarifies how the administrative authority can be allocated in the management of PAs, and how to ensure the stability of the natural resources elements and the whole ecosystem. It clarifies how to centralise and synergise administrative authority in PAs management, so as to meet the expectation of comprehensive, synergistic and three-dimensional holistic protection of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection. As a result, we have made significant changes to the introductory section, highlighting the responses to this question.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

1. Introduction

PAs have become the basis of biodiversity conservation strategies in countries around the world. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15) and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (Aichi 11) aim to curb the loss of biodiversity by increasing the coverage of PAs. A Protected Area is defined as ‘a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values ’. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has developed six categories of PAs based on the main management objectives of the land, and most countries have developed management norms for various types of PAs. According to the latest data from the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), 16.42% of the world's terrestrial areas (including inland waters) and 8.33% of the world's marine areas are already managed as PAs (accessible at https://www.protectedplanet.net/en).

However, with the rapid growth in the number of PAs, the management of PAs is facing additional challenges, particularly threats from species vulnerability, climate vulnerability and human genetic vulnerability. Whether management of PAs improves over time, and understanding which external factors affect management efficiency, are key benchmarks for addressing management challenges and achieving management goals. Many tools specific to the assessment of management efficiency in PAs have been invented in order to assess management strengths, weaknesses and needs. Effective management of PAs is influenced by a variety of factors, including decisions made at the time of establishment and subsequent management decisions. In order to increase the effectiveness of management of PAs, many countries have made certain improvements and efforts.

China has demonstrated sustained efforts to enhance the effectiveness of management of PAs. The development of PAs in China is in the midst of a reform process that is breaking down and building up at the same time. 1956 saw the establishment of China's first nature reserve, the Dinghu Mountain National Nature Reserve, which gave China's PAs management a formal start. In order to address the systematisation and comprehensive promotion of PAs legislation, China is actively building a PA system with national parks at its core.In 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on the Establishment of a PA System with National Parks as the Main Body, which classifies PAs into three categories, namely, national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks(accessible at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2019-06/26/content_5403497.htm). In fact, China's classification of PAs is also based on the IUCN's classification of PAs, as shown in Table 1. Furthermore, in 2022, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration drafted the National Parks Law (Draft) and widely solicited opinions and suggestions from the public. Subsequently, in September 2023, the Law on National Parks and the Law on PAs were formally incorporated into the legislative plan of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC).On 10 September 2024, the Draft Law on National Parks was submitted to the 11th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th NPC for first consideration. As of October 2024, after consolidation and optimisation, there were a total of 6,736 PAs in China, with a total area of 185,236,100 hectares. Among them, there are 5 national parks with a total area of 23,225,400 hectares; 1,527 nature reserves with a total area of 120,313,300 hectares; and 36,381,000 hectares of natural parks such as scenic spots, forest parks, geological parks, wetland parks, marine parks, and desert (rocky desert) parks.

In the management practice of PAs in China, we observe that the government, as an important subject, has made significant innovations to achieve the overall protection of PAs. Whether it is the integration of PAs management or the reform of institutions, the Chinese government has continuously optimised the management structure and the exercise of administrative authority, reflecting the pursuit of holistic spatial protection and systemic governance. In fact, theoretical research has been weaker than practical exploration in this area, and existing studies have not explored more about how administrative authority in PAs management can be adapted to the needs of holistic spatial governance. Currently, the literature on PAs management either focuses on analysing changes in PA governance in order to differentiate PAs management; analyses the differences in the way different subjects carry out PAs management as a way of arguing for an increase in the level of participation of other subjects in the management; provides criteria, indicators and methodologies on the evaluation of the effectiveness of PAs management, or, by taking into account the different factors related to the efficiency of PAs, either analysing the impact of PAs.  It is valuable to observe and elaborate on China's innovative practices and the challenges it faces in achieving holistic spatial protection of PAs, especially as the system of PAs develops and the use of administrative authority for management and guiding multi-party participation will play an important role. Some of China's existing experiences can be of value for the construction and optimisation of PAs, and for the improvement of the organisational structure of cooperative global biodiversity management.

This paper takes the policy texts, legal texts and typical judicial cases related to the management of PAs as the object of study, and anchors the question of how to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs to meet the expectation of holistic spatial protection of PAs , and to promote the management of PAs from flat to three-dimensional, so as to realise the efficient management of PAs. This paper discusses the following aspects in each part: in the theoretical framework part, it is clear that the ideal state of PAs management is to achieve holistic spatial protection, and the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, as well as the conditions that should be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection; in the methodology and materials part, it proposes the methodology steps of normative analysis and case study analysis, and the methodology steps of qualitative analysis with the existing existing methods and methods of analysis. qualitative analysis methodological steps to sort out the practice of nature PAs management in China, using existing laws, policy documents, and case data as samples; in the results section, the current situation and characteristics of the exercise of administrative authority in China's nature PAs management under the perspective of holistic spatial protection are elaborated, including a description of the main body of PAs management, what reforms have been carried out by China's bureaucratic organisations in order to adapt to holistic protection, and what reforms have been carried out by the central government Based on this, the paper concludes with a discussion section that analyses whether the exercise of power in the management of PAs in China is in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and the dilemmas encountered in the process of practice and exploration of effective promotion of the management of PAs, as well as proposing corresponding strategies to solve the problems, in the hope of promoting the effective management of PAs and helping to achieve the goal of holistic spatial protection. The paper also proposes corresponding solution strategies, hoping to provide reference for promoting the effective management of nature reserves and helping to achieve the goals of holistic spatial protection as well as sustainable development. The analytical framework of this paper is shown in Figure 1.

 

Comment 3:  PAs are emerged as a governance instrument of the sustainable development in Europe and in the world. PAs has to be investigate focusing on the relationships between the different PAs and the territorial system, analysing existing institutional contexts and governance models adopted. This aspect is missing in the paper.

Response: We agree with your suggestion that there are indeed different strategies for managing PAs in different institutional contexts, and we have therefore supplemented our theoretical framework with new sections on the management of PAs in the United States, the European Union, Germany, Russia, and France. Due to the size of the article, it would be inconvenient to include more explanations on this section, so we would like to give you a detailed account of our investigations on this issue:

When countries classify protected areas, they adopt different classification criteria according to their own resources and cultural characteristics, and construct a protected area classification system that is diverse in type, complex in classification, and in line with the characteristics of their own national conditions. These classification standards have obvious differences in terms of protection objects, protection objectives, grade levels, legal basis, management subjects and geographical ownership. Among them, the United States, according to the different objects of protection, will be divided into eight systems of protected areas, including the national park system, national forest system (including national grasslands), national wildlife refuge system, national landscape protection system, national marine protected area system, national wilderness protection system, national wilderness and scenic river system and biosphere reserve (international protected areas), while the classification system under the further At the same time, each classification system is further subdivided into different categories, ultimately forming a system of PAs that includes 32 types of PAs (including international types of PAs). Australia has also subdivided the ‘protected areas’ in its system of protected areas into subcategories such as conservation reserves, forest reserves, sport reserves, historic reserves, game reserves and karst reserves. In Brazil, according to the different conservation objectives, protected areas are divided into two major types, including ‘fully protected protected areas’ for strict conservation and ‘sustainable use protected areas’ for both conservation and use. On the basis of these two major types of PAs, five and seven sub-categories are set up according to the protection object and protection objective, forming a total of 12 types of PAs. In the United Kingdom, according to the hierarchy of protected areas, protected areas are classified into four levels, namely, international level, European level, UK national level (Sub-UK) and UK member state level (Sub-UK), with a total of 36 types of protected areas (including international types of protected areas). Among them, the international and European levels aim at biodiversity and ecosystem conservation, while the national and member state levels mostly aim at landscape protection and public recreation. Although the importance and intensity of protection decreases from the international, European to the UK domestic level, there is no difference in the intensity of protection between the national and member state levels. In Spain, according to the constraints and protection of the legal framework, PAs are divided into three main categories, including nature reserves protected by Spanish legislation, the network of nature reserves established by the Natura 2000 programme, and protected areas identified by international organisations (excluding the Natura 2000 programme), which are in turn subdivided into subcategories according to the object of protection to form a total of 15 categories (including international PAs) of protected sites These three categories are further subdivided into different subcategories according to the different protection objects, forming a total of 15 categories (including international types of PAs) of PAs. In Australia, according to the different management subjects, the protected areas are divided into the federal government management, state/territory management and state/territory management.

In Australia, according to the different management bodies, there are 33 types of protected areas (including international protected area types) managed by the federal government, state/territory governments, as well as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and private organisations. However, regardless of the criteria for classifying PAs and the system for classifying PAs adopted by each country, the starting point for the construction of PAs is the same, that is, the protection of PAs and the maintenance of biodiversity, so as to achieve the objectives of sustainable use and sustainable development.In order to better protect the integrity of ecosystems, large-scale transnational and transregional types of protected areas are emerging internationally with the aim of achieving holistic spatial protection. EU member States have jointly established cross-national and cross-regional types of PAs, such as the Natura 2000 network of PAs and the Ramsar Wetlands (Wetlands of International Importance), in order to protect all types of natural resources on the European continent as a whole. Among them, the Natura 2000 network of PAs is an ecological corridor established on the European continent as an important area for the protection of species of wild fauna and flora, threatened natural habitats and migration routes of species, and at present, 17 per cent of the total territorial area of the 27 member States of the European Union has been included in this type of PA, and more than 1,000 species of fauna and flora and more than 200 habitats are under the protection of the network. At the same time, France, Sweden, Poland, Spain and Germany have set up Ramsar sites to protect Europe's wetland resources as a whole, with a view to their sustainable use without damaging their ecosystems. There is a wetland of international importance in the Upper Rhine River, which straddles Germany and France. Glacier National Park in Montana, USA was established in 1910 and covers an area of 4,100km2 known for its ice-covered mountaintops, turquoise rocks, lakes, rich flora and fauna and U-shaped canyons. The 505km2 Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada, established in 1895, is closely linked to the park. The ecosystems of the two parks are inextricably linked, as Waterton Lakes originates in Glacier Park in the United States, and many rivers in the eastern foothills of Glacier Park flow north into Canada, while rivers in the western foothills of Waterton Lakes Park flow south into the United States. Based on the nature conservation needs of the entire region, and in order to express the desire of the two peoples to coexist peacefully and share the common wealth of mankind, in 1932, the two parks belonging to different countries signed a resolution to establish the world's first international peace park - Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, which effectively protects the ecosystem integrity of the park, and becomes the ‘Rocky Mountain Park’. The park effectively protects the integrity of the park's ecosystem and has become the ‘Crown of the Rockies’, and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1995.

In classifying protected areas, countries also pay great attention to their own natural resources and history and culture, and have established many special types of protected areas that are in line with their own national conditions and have been effective. For example, the United States has established the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) and the National Wilderness and Scenic Rivers System (NWSRS) in order to protect the large areas of western wilderness in its territory as well as a number of rivers of recreational, historical and cultural value. Among them, the National Wilderness Preservation System is a large, interstate preserve type established on federal public lands, named by the U.S. Congress and managed by a federal agency; while the National Wilderness and Scenic Rivers System is a linear, interstate preserve type on U.S. soil, designed to protect rivers with outstanding scenic, recreational, geologic, wildlife, historical, cultural, and similar values. The background of its development is due to the over-exploitation, destruction and pollution of river resources in the U.S. in the mid-20th century triggered widespread governmental and social concerns at the time, so in 1968 the U.S. enacted the world's first law with the primary goal of scenic river protection - The Wild and Scenic River Act (WSRA), the first law in the world whose primary goal was to protect scenic rivers from irreversible damage caused by development. It also states that no federal agency may approve or fund water resource construction projects on native natural and scenic rivers. Currently, there are 72 rivers or segments of rivers in the United States that have been designated as Native Natural and Scenic Rivers. These linear reserves are an effective complement to the traditional surface and point reserves, and the National Scenic Trail was established for the same purpose. In order to protect its rustic and romantic countryside, the United Kingdom has set up semi-rural types of PAs such as country parks and regional parks, while South Korea has set up small-scale, culture-integrated PAs such as royal tombs, relics, natural monuments, and scenic spots in accordance with its historical and cultural characteristics. The scenic spots, in particular, are small-scale PAs that were first established in 1970 to better protect PAs that are natural, cultural or a blend of the two on the national territory, and there are 124 of them to date.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

Throughout the framework and practice of management of PAs in various countries, it is also emphasized that the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection.

(1) U.S. national parks system National Park from the establishment of the first national parks in 1872 to the official establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the early days of the single national parks patrolled by the federal military, and can not guarantee that the national parks of the wild species resources and habitats are well protected until the National Park Service was formally established, the jurisdiction of the national parks are formally oil laws It was not until the National Park Service was formally established that the jurisdiction of national parks was formalized in law as direct federal management, enjoying federal financial support, and in the course of nearly 100 years of development, absorbing fresh types of protected areas, exploring cooperative models for different types of members, merging redundant agencies, improving the legal system, and consolidating the monitoring mechanism to ensure that the national park system can reflect the well-being of all people. The direct federal management of national parks indicates that the maintenance and improvement of the national park system is an important task of the government, and the significance of this is much greater than the ecological protection and resource utilization of a single element, but the national parks as a holistic spatial protection .

(2) One of the characteristics of the EU Natural 2000 is that the implementation of its strategic planning is based on a large regional perspective and cyclical planning, and also follows the requirements of holistic spatial protection, which evaluates the territory of the European Union as a whole, and, on the basis of respecting each member state's own biodiversity conservation laws and regulations, integrates the whole region and proposes the protection strategies that each country needs to implement. The plan is a comprehensive and integrated approach, respecting each Member State's own biodiversity conservation laws and regulations. This is conducive to increasing the internal connectivity of Natura 2000 and improving the overall quality of conservation; it can also avoid some unnecessary conservation measures and reduce the cost of conservation .

(3) Germany in the PAs legislation will be the federal and state are entitled to set up a certain legislative power, generally including the federal exclusive legislative power and competing legislative power two parts, national parks belong to the scope of competing legislative power, that is, the federal only on the construction of national parks to put forward a guiding framework for the provisions of the specific by the state through the laws and regulations to be stipulated and protected. At the state level, each state ‘one area, one law’, that is, each PAs (national parks or biosphere reserves, etc.) combined with their own actual situation to put forward specific regulatory requirements, through the legislation from the federal and state level to regulate the operation of administrative authority in the overall scope of the space of nature reserves .

 (4) In Russia, direct management is practiced in the mode of management of PAs. Special nature reserves at the federal level are directly managed by federal state bodies; special nature reserves at the regional level are directly managed by the state power bodies of the constituent entities of the Federation; and special nature reserves at the local level are directly managed by the local self-governing bodies of the municipal administration districts in which they are located. Moreover, specialized management bodies have been established within the different levels of protected areas. This management system clarifies the administrative authority and responsibility of all levels of government, and is conducive to the adjustment and control of personnel and funding for PAs at all levels. As a result, it prevents the occurrence of the phenomenon of ‘complicated management’ .

(5) France in the exercise of administrative resources in the PAs are also more subject to the constraints of administrative divisions, but in the board of directors, the charter, the park brand value-added system of these measures, France's regional parks across the provinces or even across the region of the integrated management is easy to realize, so that the various regions within an ecosystem can comply with the unified planning and coordination of the relationship between protection and utilization by a unified body. This is actually a kind of contractual federal management mode, which also embodies holistic spatial protection .

 

Comment 4: I suggest to revisit the papaer in deep, starting from: Lockwood M. (2010) “Good governance for terrestrial PAs; A framework, principles and performance outcomes”, in Journal of Environmental Management, 91, pp. 754-766; Lockwood M., Worboys G., and Kothari A. (eds.)( 2006) Managing Protected Areas: A Global Guide. Earthscan, London; Abrams P., Borrini-Feyerabend G., Gardner J. and Heylings P. (2003) Evaluating Governance — A Handbook to Accompany a Participatory Process for a Protected Area,. Report for Parks Canada and CEESP/CMWG/TILCEPA, http://www.iccaforum.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95&Itemid=109; etc....Some useful case studies are also in the ESPON project LinkPas.

Response: Thank you for the valuable references you have provided! We have read all the literature in detail, and comparing several of the literature you have provided, we have found that the original article had some gaps in the theoretical framework section, so we have added a new theoretical framework section to address this issue, and added case studies on the practices of India, the Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa, France, the European Union, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom in holistic conservation of PAs in the theoretical framework and discussion. 

The specific modifications are made as follows：

2.1 The ideal state of management of PAs is holistic spatial protection

The first ideal state of the management of PAs is to realize holistic spatial protection, which is determined by the holistic nature of the space and the negative externality of spatial behavior. On the one hand, the wholeness of PAs becomes the objective law that the spatial management of PAs should follow in the first place. Some scholars believe that the wholeness is a reflection of the form of interaction between man and man, man and nature, nature and society, and the wholeness covers the wholeness of the subject, the wholeness of the object and the wholeness of the relationship between the subject and the object . The wholeness of the space of PAs refers to its objective characteristics presented as a physical space object, including the completeness and indivisibility of the elements, the natural ecological space is an organic whole that interacts with each other and constrains each other, and it is a kind of mountain, water, forest, field, lake and grass life community. This objectivity is the law that cannot be violated in the process of spatial management of PAs, and if the space is reduced to individual elements, the meaning of the space itself will be diminished.

On the other hand, the negative externality of the spatial behavior of PAs determines the protection of this physical space as well as the constraints on the behavior within the space from a holistic perspective. The different forms and scales of social practice activities carried out by human beings in the natural space are spatial behaviors, and the spatial behaviors will produce certain ‘spillover effects’ to the outside, which may be ‘positive effects’. This ‘spillover effect’ may be ‘positive effect’ or ‘negative effect’. As the spatial behavior is carried out under the subjective will of the main body of the space, and the subjective will is more combined with their own needs to maximize the pursuit of the use of benefits, and does not fully follow the objective law, this self-interested and arbitrariness leads to the spatial behavior will have an adverse impact on the outside, damaging the social and public interests and the interests of the state. For example, disorderly mining activities in the space of PAs can cause problems such as the destruction of surface vegetation, increased soil erosion, and surface subsidence, and then the over-exploitation of natural resources such as land and forests in the space of PAs leads to the reduction of biodiversity. Although individual spatial behaviors may produce small negative externalities, these spatial behaviors negative externalities are often gradually accumulated and work together, ultimately making the space chaotic and disorderly, spatial interests are out of proportion, and the space is difficult to develop in a sustainable manner. It is difficult to achieve a better protection effect just by restraining and controlling individual subjects and behaviors, therefore, it is necessary to implement holistic spatial protection for the whole physical space and impose holistic spatial behavioral constraints.

China's Overall Program for the Reform of the Ecological Civilization System has refined the objectives of spatial management, focusing on solving the problems of over-occupation of high-quality arable land and ecological space, ecological damage, and environmental pollution caused by disorderly, excessive, and scattered development. The Measures for the Use Control of Natural Ecological Space breaks down the spatial management objectives into three major requirements: ensuring that the area of ecological space is not reduced, maintaining ecological functions without degradation, and gradually improving the capacity to guarantee ecological services, and states that the evaluation of the carrying capacity of resources and the environment and the appropriateness of territorial space development will be used as the basis for control. In addition, the general objective of the ‘Guidance on the Establishment of a PA system with National Parks as the Main Body’ also explicitly proposes to ‘enhance the carrying capacity of natural ecological space’. It can be seen that the overall area and quantity of ecological space, and the maintenance and improvement of overall ecological functions, have become an important criterion for the spatial management of PAs.

2.2 Exercise of administrative authority should be consistent with holistic spatial protection

As can be seen from China's existing environmental protection legislation, holistic spatial protection is often used as a guiding principle for the government's management. For example, article 3 of China's Yangtze River Protection Law emphasizes the principle of unified protection and systematic management. The Law on the Ecological Protection of the Tibetan Plateau also continues to require the implementation of the principles of overall coordination and systematic management in the protection of the Tibetan Plateau as a space through article 3. Article 4 of the Measures for the Use Control of Natural Ecological Space (for Trial Implementation) clearly stipulates that the use control of ecological space should follow the basic principles of regional integration and collaborative management. In practice, the holistic spatial protection has been refined into clear geospatial units, such as the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, national parks and PAs, etc. In terms of the attributes of the holistic spatial protection, the holistic spatial protection is also more often reflected as a combination of spatial planning, administrative licenses for spatial exploitation and utilization, and administrative authorities such as administrative levies, administrative penalties, and administrative coercive measures to achieve the spatial control objectives. Synthesis.

From the perspective of the relationship between the various control subjects, spatial management presents a characteristic of both differentiated management but also mutual cooperation and synergistic promotion. Different physical spaces have their own characteristics, coupled with the fact that different regions have different interests due to unbalanced economic and social development and unbalanced environmental obligations, thus requiring differentiated management. However, at the same time, due to the interconnectedness of space, spatial management emphasizes more on resource sharing and integration and linkage among various subjects. Throughout the framework and practice of management of PAs in various countries, it is also emphasized that the exercise of administrative authority should be in line with the requirements of holistic spatial protection.

(1) U.S. national parks system National Park from the establishment of the first national parks in 1872 to the official establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the early days of the single national parks patrolled by the federal military, and can not guarantee that the national parks of the wild species resources and habitats are well protected until the National Park Service was formally established, the jurisdiction of the national parks are formally oil laws It was not until the National Park Service was formally established that the jurisdiction of national parks was formalized in law as direct federal management, enjoying federal financial support, and in the course of nearly 100 years of development, absorbing fresh types of protected areas, exploring cooperative models for different types of members, merging redundant agencies, improving the legal system, and consolidating the monitoring mechanism to ensure that the national park system can reflect the well-being of all people. The direct federal management of national parks indicates that the maintenance and improvement of the national park system is an important task of the government, and the significance of this is much greater than the ecological protection and resource utilization of a single element, but the national parks as a holistic spatial protection .

(2) One of the characteristics of the EU Natural 2000 is that the implementation of its strategic planning is based on a large regional perspective and cyclical planning, and also follows the requirements of holistic spatial protection, which evaluates the territory of the European Union as a whole, and, on the basis of respecting each member state's own biodiversity conservation laws and regulations, integrates the whole region and proposes the protection strategies that each country needs to implement. The plan is a comprehensive and integrated approach, respecting each Member State's own biodiversity conservation laws and regulations. This is conducive to increasing the internal connectivity of Natura 2000 and improving the overall quality of conservation; it can also avoid some unnecessary conservation measures and reduce the cost of conservation .

(3) Germany in the PAs legislation will be the federal and state are entitled to set up a certain legislative power, generally including the federal exclusive legislative power and competing legislative power two parts, national parks belong to the scope of competing legislative power, that is, the federal only on the construction of national parks to put forward a guiding framework for the provisions of the specific by the state through the laws and regulations to be stipulated and protected. At the state level, each state ‘one area, one law’, that is, each PAs (national parks or biosphere reserves, etc.) combined with their own actual situation to put forward specific regulatory requirements, through the legislation from the federal and state level to regulate the operation of administrative authority in the overall scope of the space of nature reserves .

 (4) In Russia, direct management is practiced in the mode of management of PAs. Special nature reserves at the federal level are directly managed by federal state bodies; special nature reserves at the regional level are directly managed by the state power bodies of the constituent entities of the Federation; and special nature reserves at the local level are directly managed by the local self-governing bodies of the municipal administration districts in which they are located. Moreover, specialized management bodies have been established within the different levels of protected areas. This management system clarifies the administrative authority and responsibility of all levels of government, and is conducive to the adjustment and control of personnel and funding for PAs at all levels. As a result, it prevents the occurrence of the phenomenon of ‘complicated management’ .

(5) France in the exercise of administrative resources in the PAs are also more subject to the constraints of administrative divisions, but in the board of directors, the charter, the park brand value-added system of these measures, France's regional parks across the provinces or even across the region of the integrated management is easy to realize, so that the various regions within an ecosystem can comply with the unified planning and coordination of the relationship between protection and utilization by a unified body. This is actually a kind of contractual federal management mode, which also embodies holistic spatial protection .

2.3 Conditions to be met by the exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs under the perspective of holistic spatial protection

The management of PAs from dispersion to integration, and from single government management to shared governance by multiple subjects requires that the exercise of administrative authority should take full account of space as a whole, and take the realization of holistic spatial protection as a criterion for judging behavior. Under this perspective, the governing bodies are not in a state of doing their own thing under single-factor governance, but a mode of coordination as far as possible, i.e., despite the need to realize the protection of the whole space, the different governing bodies will not conflict in their powers and duties, on the contrary, the different governing bodies also have the willingness to cooperate collectively and support each other for the common goal. The focus of holistic spatial protection of PAs is to realize the synergy of the governing bodies, but this synergy is not to realize the simple cooperation of different governmental agencies, but to truly connect different levels of government, synergize with the cross-space government, and at the same time, expand the participating bodies of governance, forming a synergistic, three-dimensional governance network .

(1) The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs urgently needs to coordinate the relationship between the central and local governments, coordinate and integrate various management forces and management resources, and ultimately form a state of unity of purpose, common mission, up and down linkage, and synergistic operation between the central and local governments in the management of PAs. The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs should closely follow the ideal state of holistic spatial protection, i.e., striving to realize holistic spatial protection of PAs, including the granting of administrative authority to the authority that is most likely to make wise decisions in terms of organization, structure, procedures and staffing. At the same time, authorities exercising administrative authority need to adapt their organization, structure, procedures and staffing accordingly to ensure that they adapt and perform their functions effectively. The overall management of the space of PAs requires not only clarification of the characteristics and ecological laws of the space under management, but also collaboration and cooperation of different spaces, as well as the same cooperation of the relevant subjects in the space altogether.

(2) The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs needs to be adapted to the multiple attributes of the management content. The management of PAs belongs to the category of ecological civilization construction. As a brand-new form of human civilization, ecological civilization is not only limited to economic development or environmental protection, but also involves the whole situation of economic and social development, and presents a more prominent integration and comprehensiveness in the management content. Since the behavior of individuals is from the perspective of self-interest, it is difficult to consider the protection of the whole space, so this requirement is more for the government body. The overall management of the space of PAs includes both the management of public property and the management of public affairs, which is a mixture of several contents. If understood from a narrow perspective, administrative authority in the overall management of spatial management of PAs is mainly manifested in the control power exercised by the government. The control power includes three specific forms of goal-setting power, inspection and acceptance power, and incentive distribution power . Among them, the goal-setting right is the core of the hierarchical authority relationship, refers to the organization of the commissioner through the unilateral formulation, top-down implementation or both sides of the negotiation for the subordinates to set goals and tasks of the right of control; inspection and acceptance of the right of the commissioner or the management to check the completion of the set goals of the right of control; incentives to distribute the right of the commissioner or the management of the management of the subordinates of the agent's incentives to set the power to assess rewards and punishments As well as the organization and implementation of the target implementation, resource allocation and other control rights.

(3) The exercise of administrative authority in the management of PAs needs to be in line with the holistic nature of governance results. The object of the exercise of administrative authority in the management of existing PAs is more of a single element, while the holistic spatial protection requires that the legal nature of the entire PAs space must be responded to, so as to make the corresponding adjustments. The premise of the independent existence of the overall management of the space of PAs is that the object of the overall management of the space of PAs is an independent spatial unit of PAs, in other words, the space of PAs as a whole should be the object of management in terms of the object of the role of administrative authority. If the object of the overall management of PAs space is still the traditional environmental elements and individual natural resources, then it seems unnecessary to emphasize the overall management of the space, and there is no way to talk about the wholeness of the exercise of administrative authority dependent on the object of management. Overall protection and systematic management put higher requirements on the management object, and only when PAs become an independent management unit can overall protection and systematic management be better realized.

 

5.1 Hierarchical management mode is difficult to fully adapt to the needs of holistic spatial protection

 

Whether adopting centralized direct management or local government supervision, a single model does not meet the spatial management needs of PAs. Looking at the exercise of vertical administrative authority in the management of natural resources in various countries from a global perspective, although decentralization-led central-land relations are common, the ultimate effectiveness of decentralization is subject to significant uncertainty, given that it involves multi-level and multi-dimensional institutional innovation. Decentralization may weaken the central government's overall control over natural resources in PAs, and the incentives for local governments are unclear; Véron et al. show that in India, despite decentralization reforms in the area of forest protection, the state forest department retains central control over resources. Meanwhile, Sauquet et al. suggest that the incentive effects of fiscal decentralization in Brazil's ecological sector may be weakened by local government interactions. Crucially, Maia et al.'s study of national parks in the Netherlands suggests that decentralization of administrative authority may lead to a weakening of local responsibility for environmental protection, which in turn affects the effectiveness of environmental policy implementation and potentially threatens the resilience of ecosystems in PAs. Therefore, in the vertical distribution of administrative authority, the central and local governments are not in an either/or relationship, and this paper argues that a mechanism for joint cooperation between the central and local governments should be established from the perspective of the implementation effect of management policies, combining the observation of the two in terms of whether their concerns and actions are coordinated or not. On the one hand, the concerns of the central and local governments should be clarified, the spatial advantages of the localities should be fully utilized, and the localities should be stimulated to carry out nature conservation, while the authority of the central government as the agent of the ownership of natural resources owned by all people should be guaranteed; on the other hand, the coordination of the actions of the central and local governments in the spatial management of PAs should be realized, in terms of objectives, distribution of powers and responsibilities. Generally speaking, the central government and local governments jointly exercise administrative authority in management, emphasizing the cooperation, coordination and unified exercise of administrative authority in management at different levels of government. In special cases, the central government directly exercises administrative authority to ensure the efficiency of the management of PAs of special significance or value.

5.2 Cross-regional collaboration mechanisms have not been fully established

The distribution of administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs is affected by physical space and administrative divisions. The core quality of holistic spatial protection lies in crossing the boundaries of administrative regions and constructing and optimizing the management structure based on the boundaries of ecosystems or ecological spaces. In China's practice, cross-regional PAs face difficulties in integration, obstacles in coordination, and cumbersome procedures. Most of their management activities and funding channels follow the old system, and the nature of their subordinate organizations is different, which may easily lead to the phenomenon of “one park, two systems” in management. In addition, the overall planning and layout of different PAs are not synchronized and coordinated. In some pilot areas, the differences between internal and external management policies also bring challenges to management. Therefore, it can be said that the working mechanism for cross-regional collaboration has not yet been fully established.

In order to achieve the holistic spatial protection, in many cases Networks of PAs (NPAs) emerged as a governance instrument in the framework of territorial sustainable development. For the synergistic integration of administrative authority in the management of interconnected boundary spaces, this paper suggests that there are two paths: one is the establishment of a unified management body, whereby a single management body will uniformly exercise administrative authority in the overall governance of multiple spatial PAs connected by boundaries, for example, Section 38(4) of the South African Protected Areas Act stipulates that marine and terrestrial PAs with common boundaries must be managed in an integrated manner by a single management body for integrated management. In France, the exercise of administrative resources in PAs is also more subject to the constraints of administrative boundaries, but under the board of directors, charters, and value-added park product branding system, the integrated management of the French regional parks across provinces and even regions is easy to realize, allowing the various regions within an ecosystem to comply with a unified plan and the coordination of the relationship between conservation and utilization by a unified body. This is in fact a contractual federal management model, which also reflects holistic spatial protection.

Another approach is to establish collaborative mechanisms for territory management and planning. From the viewpoint of management practice, the synergy of administrative authorities in the management of spatial planning, supervision and investigation is a problem that needs to be solved urgently in the management of the boundaries of PAs,including the coordination of national parks and nature reserves, natural park management, cross-border coordination of PAs. One of the characteristics of the European Union's Natura 2000 is that the implementation of its strategic planning is based on a large regional vision and cyclical planning, which also follows the requirements of holistic spatial protection, and this plan evaluates the territory of the European Union as a holistic spatial protection, and, on the basis of respecting each member state's own biodiversity protection laws and regulations, it integrates the whole territory and proposes the protection strategies that need to be implemented by each country. This will help to increase the internal connectivity of Natura 2000 and improve the overall quality of conservation; it will also reduce the cost of conservation by avoiding unnecessary conservation measures.

Specific paths include, on the one hand, the establishment of a joint meeting mechanism for the right to spatial planning of protected area boundaries. Joint meeting generally refers to the convening of a special meeting between multiple government departments at a higher level to communicate on a certain matter. There are already some provisions on joint meetings in Chinese laws, and they are mostly found in ecological environmental protection behaviors and legal norms that require cooperation, which can be adopted for the coordination of spatial planning rights of PAs across administrative regions. On the other hand, a joint enforcement mechanism for the boundary space of protected areas has been established. Joint law enforcement provisions are more often found in China's general environmental pollution prevention and ecological protection laws and norms. For example, according to Article 29(3) of China's Marine Environmental Protection Law, departments and agencies exercising the right to supervise and manage the marine environment are granted the legal administrative authority to carry out joint law enforcement at sea. Article 80 of China's Law on the Protection of the Yangtze River and Article 105 of the Law on the Protection of the Yellow River expressly provide that the relevant departments of the State Council, local people's governments at all levels of the river basins and their relevant departments shall carry out joint law enforcement in accordance with the law in respect of cross-administrative areas, ecologically sensitive areas, areas with high incidence of ecological and environmental violations, and cases of major violations of the law. Article 35, paragraph 3, of China's Wildlife Protection Law clearly states that the State shall establish a coordination mechanism for joint wildlife law enforcement led by the competent departments of the State Council in charge of forestry, grassland and fisheries, with the participation of other relevant departments. At the same time, local people's governments should also establish corresponding joint law enforcement coordination mechanisms. Therefore, in the future, the improvement of the spatial law enforcement coordination mechanism for PAs should also pay attention to the connection and coordination with the existing joint law enforcement mechanism, so as to fill the legislative gaps in the joint law enforcement mechanism for the specialized spatial protection of PAs in the existing legislation on wildlife protection, marine environmental protection and natural ecological space.

5.3 The horizontal connection of administrative authority in PAs needs to be further strengthened.

China's ‘Overall Program for Reform of Ecological Civilization System’ explicitly proposes to ‘establish a system of unified authority and hierarchical management’, where the unified authority is more concerned with the distribution of horizontal administrative authority, for two reasons: firstly, the integration of the functions of ecological protection, natural resource asset management, concession management, social participation in the management, and publicity and promotion, essentially reflecting a horizontal unification across departments; secondly, the ‘hierarchical exercise of ownership’ in the context of the program needs to be further strengthened. First, the integration of functions such as ecological protection, natural resource asset management, concession management, social participation management, and publicity and promotion is essentially a horizontal unification across departments; second, in the context of the program, the ‘hierarchical exercise of ownership’ and the emphasis on the rational division of authority between the central government and the local government, as well as the synergistic management of the program emphasize the distribution of administrative authority in a vertical manner. China's subsequent reform of the major ministry system realized this policy design. China's 2018 ministerial reform has realized this policy design. After the institutional reform, the fragmentation of administrative authority in the management of PAs in China has been improved to a certain extent, but it is more of a preliminary macro-design, and the solution to the problem of fragmentation of authority and responsibility in the management of PAs must be achieved through a unified and stable institutional system to play a legal role.

As to how administrative authority in the management of PAs is distributed and exercised at the inter-ministerial level, there are two main practices, one is to unify the administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs to a certain department to centralize the exercise of administrative authority, and the other is to exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs in sub-departments. In the United States, the management and protection of PAs are mainly carried out by the National Park Service (NPS), the National Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the Department of Agriculture (DOA) under the Ministry of the Interior. Management (BLM), and the National Forest Service (US Forest Service, USFS) under the Department of Agriculture. In the United Kingdom, the National Park Authority was established to fulfill the responsibility of conservancy stewardship. At the management level, based on the diversity of protected areas, the Heritage Department, the Department of Agriculture and Forestry, and other resource management departments have adopted a multi-agency model to share management responsibilities.

Firstly, the types and contents of administrative acts requiring cooperation in the overall spatial governance of PAs should be clarified. The administrative acts requiring cooperation refer to the administrative acts implemented by administrative organs in cooperation with each other on the same matter due to the division of functions. According to the relationship between different administrative organs, administrative acts requiring cooperation can be broadly divided into administrative acts requiring supplementation, administrative acts requiring preliminary examination or implementation by lower levels, administrative acts requiring consultation, specific administrative acts and basic acts. Since the overall spatial management of PAs involves many complicated matters, more subjects are needed for cooperative management. Traditional management also exists under the need to cooperate administrative acts, but the existence of the mode of view, whether it is the cooperation of the upper and lower levels of administrative organs, or the cooperation of the same level of administrative organs, which is more of a linear cooperation, while the overall spatial governance of the PAs need to cooperate with the administrative acts of the PAs is more of a three-dimensional relationship between the administrative acts.

Secondly, the content of the overall spatial governance of PAs should be clarified. It is possible to integrate all kinds of matters of national park construction into five categories, including planning matters, basic constructive matters, management and execution matters, development and utilization matters, and safeguard matters. These authorities are basically designed around the content of national park management matters, and observing the policy practice and legal norms of China's PAs, the overall governance of spatial matters of PAs is also mainly centered on the content of spatial planning, construction and management, development and utilization, and development guarantee of PAs. In the horizontal exercise of administrative authority, the duties of ecological protection, natural resource asset management, concession management, social participation management, publicity and promotion within PAs need to be integrated and unified into the relevant nature reserve management functions. The functions of management organizations within PAs should not be limited to resource protection, law enforcement supervision, scientific research and monitoring, and infrastructure construction, but should also be expanded to the fields of environmental education, eco-tourism, franchising, livelihood protection, public services and social management, etc., and the mechanism for a single subject to fully undertake the management responsibilities of PAs should be implemented in order to ensure the unity and efficiency of the management.

Thirdly, improve the procedures and institutional requirements for cooperation between different departments in the overall management of PAs. Clearly stipulate the administrative collaboration system in the form of legislation. Administrative collaboration refers to an order of inter-departmental coordination and cooperation through systems and rules, and an attempt to improve the system of cross-departmental synergy, which refers to the horizontal joint management between parallel functional departments, based on the same objective due to the relevance of the management affairs of each department and the limitations of their responsibilities and powers. In this regard, China's revised Marine Environmental Protection Law in 2023 is a good example. In order to better realize the integration and coordination between land, sea and air, the newly revised Marine Environmental Protection Law clearly states in Article 12 that ‘the State implements a land and sea integrated, regionally linked supervision and management system for the marine environment’, and calls for the strengthening of the articulation and coordination of the supervision and management systems of various departments in planning, standard-setting, monitoring and so on. Article 24 of the new law establishes the obligation of the relevant departments of the State Council, marine police agencies and the competent ecological and environmental authorities of the State Council to share information, and article 25 further clarifies the obligation of the relevant departments of the State Council, marine police agencies and local people's governments at or above the county level of the coastal areas and their relevant departments to conduct comprehensive monitoring, collaborative monitoring and information sharing. Based on such arrangements, synergies between the central and local, ecological and environmental departments and other departments of land and sea monitoring and management mechanisms have been realized. In the future, the procedures and mechanism requirements for the cooperation of the overall spatial governance of the legislation on PAs can also refer to the design of the integrated land and sea management mechanism of the Marine Environmental Protection Law. Of course, the horizontal collaboration of administrative authority in the overall spatial governance of PAs is more than that, in addition to information sharing and monitoring matters, how to realize the collaboration of planning authority, asset management authority, and licensing authority is also a need for further improvement.

 

Comment 5:The second part is completely devoted to the China's. The legislative set-up approach is dominant as well as the not ever clear relationship between government and governance.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion! In order to answer this point of your doubt, we have added a description of why we chose the management practices of Chinese PAs as our research sample in the introduction. In addition, on the basis of deleting the redundant content of the original text, we focus on clarifying how the government leads the management of PAs in China and how the administrative authority under the government's leadership operates in the results section through the analyses of legal texts and judicial cases.

The specific modifications are made as follows：

1.Introduction

China has demonstrated sustained efforts to enhance the effectiveness of management of PAs. The development of PAs in China is in the midst of a reform process that is breaking down and building up at the same time. 1956 saw the establishment of China's first nature reserve, the Dinghu Mountain National Nature Reserve, which gave China's PAs management a formal start. In order to address the systematisation and comprehensive promotion of PAs legislation, China is actively building a PA system with national parks at its core.In 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on the Establishment of a PA System with National Parks as the Main Body, which classifies PAs into three categories, namely, national parks, nature reserves, and nature parks(accessible at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2019-06/26/content_5403497.htm). In fact, China's classification of PAs is also based on the IUCN's classification of PAs, as shown in Table 1. Furthermore, in 2022, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration drafted the National Parks Law (Draft) and widely solicited opinions and suggestions from the public. Subsequently, in September 2023, the Law on National Parks and the Law on PAs were formally incorporated into the legislative plan of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC).On 10 September 2024, the Draft Law on National Parks was submitted to the 11th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th NPC for first consideration. As of October 2024, after consolidation and optimisation, there were a total of 6,736 PAs in China, with a total area of 185,236,100 hectares. Among them, there are 5 national parks with a total area of 23,225,400 hectares; 1,527 nature reserves with a total area of 120,313,300 hectares; and 36,381,000 hectares of natural parks such as scenic spots, forest parks, geological parks, wetland parks, marine parks, and desert (rocky desert) parks.

In the management practice of PAs in China, we observe that the government, as an important subject, has made significant innovations to achieve the overall protection of PAs. Whether it is the integration of PAs management or the reform of institutions, the Chinese government has continuously optimised the management structure and the exercise of administrative authority, reflecting the pursuit of holistic spatial protection and systemic governance. In fact, theoretical research has been weaker than practical exploration in this area, and existing studies have not explored more about how administrative authority in PAs management can be adapted to the needs of holistic spatial governance. Currently, the literature on PAs management either focuses on analysing changes in PA governance in order to differentiate PAs management; analyses the differences in the way different subjects carry out PAs management as a way of arguing for an increase in the level of participation of other subjects in the management; provides criteria, indicators and methodologies on the evaluation of the effectiveness of PAs management, or, by taking into account the different factors related to the efficiency of PAs, either analysing the impact of PAs.  It is valuable to observe and elaborate on China's innovative practices and the challenges it faces in achieving holistic spatial protection of PAs, especially as the system of PAs develops and the use of administrative authority for management and guiding multi-party participation will play an important role. Some of China's existing experiences can be of value for the construction and optimisation of PAs, and for the improvement of the organisational structure of cooperative global biodiversity management.

 

4.2 Government-led management of China's PAs

PAs management is a government-led model with the participation of the market, social organizations and the public. China's ‘Guiding Opinions on the Establishment of a PA system with National Parks as the Main Body’ clearly puts forward ‘exploring public welfare management, community management, co-management and other conservation methods’, and community management, public welfare management and co-management are in fact new management modes proposed in response to the limitations of the government's single management mode, and provide a new way for the government to manage the PAs. In the judicial case study on the management of protected areas, we also found that the main structure of the management of PAs has changed from the government as a single management subject to the coordination of the market, social organizations and the public,as shown in Table 3.

However, it should be noted that despite the transition from a single subject to a multi-subject participation, the government still has a dominant role in the management of PAs. Not only are legal and policy texts filled with descriptions of government-led management of PAs, but judicial cases also emphasize the legitimacy basis of government management of PAs through various forms of expression. The judicial case study on the management of PAs found that the basis of legitimacy for the government as the dominant party to manage PAs mainly includes the government's public property right and the right to manage public affairs, as shown in Table 4. These two kinds of administrative powers not only reflect the maintenance of order, but also cover the protection and management of public property, and they play an important role in the management of PAs.

4.3 Reform of the bureaucratic organization in China under holistic spatial protection

4.3.1 Reform of state organizations in 2018

PAs management is aimed at realizing holistic protection, and it should emphasize the realization of the overall effectiveness of PAs management, be result-oriented, and not be biased in favor of a particular local or sectoral interest. PAs management should be centered on a coordination and integration mechanism, through which it can better utilize synergistic effects and promote the unity and cooperation of various departments and professional institutions to realize the comprehensive management of PAs space.China's reform of the major ministry system in 2018 is actually a holistic and systematic transformation of the management structure, and against the backdrop of the 2018 national institutional reform, the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has succeeded in realizing the centralized and unified supervision of natural resources. The supervisory and management functions of the former State Forestry Administration and the Ministry of Agriculture regarding grasslands, as well as the management responsibilities of the former Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the State Oceanic Administration with respect to nature reserves, scenic spots, natural heritages, and geoparks have all been consolidated and integrated into the newly-established State Forestry and Grassland Administration (SAGA), thereby realizing a more efficient and coordinated management of these natural resources. This impact also extends to the management of PAs, as shown in table 5.

4.3.2 Specific authorities in the management of PAs

The specific competent authorities in the management of PAs are not clear in the law and have not formed a unified perception. For example, regarding the competent authorities of nature reserves, the Regulations only generally stipulate in Article 21 that nature reserves of different levels shall be managed by their corresponding competent administrative authorities of the nature reserves concerned, but it is not clear what is meant by ‘competent administrative authorities of the nature reserves concerned’. At present, there are three main approaches in practice: (1) the competent forestry department is in charge. For example, Article 3 of the Regulations on the Liupanshan, Helanshan and Luoshan National Nature Reserves of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region stipulates that the competent authority of the nature reserve is the competent authority of the forestry administration, and that the comprehensive management of the nature reserve shall be undertaken by the governmental administrative authority of environmental protection; (2) the competent authority of environmental protection. For example, Article 6 of the Regulations on Nature Reserves of Hainan Province stipulates that the competent department of environmental protection of the people's government at or above the county level is the competent department of the nature reserve; (3) the competent department of natural resources administration. For example, the Regulations on Nature Reserves of Gansu Province stipulate that the competent department is the administrative department of natural resources of the people's government at or above the county level, and also stipulate that the main responsibility for ecological environmental protection and restoration of nature reserves shall be borne by the people's government at or above the county level.

4.4 Patterns of administrative authority of central and local governments in the management of PAs in China

At present, the distribution mode of administrative power between central and local governments in the management of PAs areas is generally divided into three categories according to the different leading government subjects and the difference in the degree of discretion enjoyed by different governments: the direct management mode of central government, the supervisor mode of local government and the co-management mode of central and local government..

Central government direct management type. In the actual construction and management of national parks, for the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park, the Giant Panda National Park, the Qilian Mountain National Park and the Sanjiangyuan National Park, which have a high proportion of state-owned land, forest land and other natural resources in the space, China has indeed adopted this model of direct management by the central government, which exercises decision-making, implementation and supervision powers, as well as bears the financial expenditures, as shown in Figure 2. According to the authorization of the central government, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration has added the logo of Qilian Mountain National Park Administration to the Office of the Commissioner for Forest Resources Supervision in Xi'an, which then exercises administrative authority over the management of PAs such as national parks under the direct management of the central government in accordance with the law. Article 11 of the Sanjiangyuan National Park Regulations also clearly stipulates the establishment of a centralized and unified vertical management mechanism for the national park.

Local government competent type. Under the local government competent model, the central government is responsible for legislation and macro policy making, while administrative authorities in the establishment and adjustment of PAs, planning and approval, natural resource asset management, supervision and punishment, dispute coordination, etc. are mainly the responsibility of the local government, which has a large amount of discretionary power over the management of PAs. For a long time, due to the objective status of PAs, the ambiguous division of affairs and powers, and the mismatch of centralized finance, the management of PAs in China has actually shown a state of administrative outsourcing. In this state, local governments, as the specific implementers of the objectives and affairs of PAs entrusted by the central government, actually have greater discretionary power over the management of PAs. China's Shennongjia National Park and Wuyi Mountain National Park has adopted this model.

Centralized co-management model. This model synthesizes the advantages of the sectional system and the administrative outsourcing system, in which the central government and the local government jointly exercise administrative authority in the management of PAs affairs. Among them, the central government exercises legislative power, decision-making power on major issues and supervisory power, and plays a coordinating role, while the local government exercises specific management power and implementation power, with certain discretionary power, and in terms of financial expenditure, it is co-financed by the central government and the local government. China to take the model of the national park is mainly Hainan tropical rainforest national park. The park's administrative authority in the management of the central government and local governments to exercise, including the park's planning and approval, the establishment of management bodies and other important matters such as decision-making by the central government, the exercise of the government at all levels is mainly the comprehensive coordination, public services, social management, market supervision, and other administrative authority, the financial input is by the provincial government and the central government in accordance with the division of power between the central and local affairs.

Further analysis of the relevant judicial cases shows that the administrative authority in the spatial management of PAs is mainly embodied in the administrative authority of environmental protection. From the physical point of view, the administrative authority of national environmental protection mainly originates from the two major aspects of order management and public property rights. This administrative authority not only embodies the maintenance of order, but also covers the protection and management of public property. Space, as a dependent carrier of natural resources, covers natural resources such as water flow, forest, grassland, land (including mountains, wasteland), mudflat, sea and mineral deposits, etc., which are mainly dependent on the three types of spatial carriers, namely, land, water (fresh water) and sea (sea area). Since space cannot exist independently of these natural resources, the legal basis for government-led spatial management is closely related to public property rights, especially since the government often acts as a representative exerciser of state ownership of natural resources. Generally speaking, the state's management and control of space and natural resources is based on the acquisition and establishment of sovereignty over land and sea territories, plus the fact that natural resources are different from other materials in that they carry multiple functions such as economic, ecological, and social values, and that they are related to the interests of the entire population and the fulfillment of public purposes, so China's Constitution explicitly stipulates that the state owns all natural resources such as mineral deposits, streams of water, forests, mountains, grasslands, wastelands, and mud flats, etc., and establishes that the state owns all natural resources. Therefore, the Constitution of China explicitly stipulates that natural resources such as mineral deposits, water flows, forests, mountains, grasslands, wasteland, mudflats, etc. are owned by the State, establishing the State's ownership of natural resources. And when other right holders carry out activities such as mining, excavating, and packaging the above natural resources, they enter, develop, utilize, and influence these space carriers, which is directly related to the state of ownership of natural resources in the space, and the two are to some extent two sides of the same coin. Globally, residential space is protected by property law, and property owners have the right to decide whether or not those within the space stay or leave, and the extent of this control over the space often also means the extent to which property rights are protected. Through the management and control of various types of space, such as land, sea, and water, based on the public good, the state draws boundaries for other non-rights holders, and the theoretical basis for spatial management that involves the content of the above behaviors is the ownership of natural resources. It should be noted, however, that the subject of certain natural resource rights in space is not the State, for example, collective land resources in space do not belong to the State, and the legitimacy of spatial control over them is not based on ownership, but on the Government's right to manage public affairs.

4.5 Relationship between different administrative authorities in the management of PAs in China

4.5.1 Relationship between governmental public property ownership and regulatory authority

The existing management mechanism of PAs is designed based on the government's public affairs management function, but under the reform of natural resource assets property right system, its management mechanism is faced with the conflict and adjustment of the supervision and ownership functions. In order to focus on solving problems such as the lack of natural resource owners, unclear ownership boundaries, and difficulties in implementing the rights and interests of owners, in September 2015, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council jointly issued the Overall Program for the Reform of the Ecological Civilization System, which establishes the goal of ‘constructing a property right system of natural resource assets with clear property rights, clear division of rights and responsibilities, and powerful supervision ‘.This marks the official launch of the reform of the property rights system for natural resource assets. To further deepen this reform, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the General Office of the State Council jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Coordinating and Promoting the Reform of the Property Rights System of Natural Resource Assets in 2019, which explicitly stipulates that the State Council authorizes the Ministry of Natural Resources to unify the exercise of the ownership of all natural resource assets on behalf of the State, and explores the implementation of the system of entrusting the exercise of ownership of natural resources to the provincial and municipal (prefectural) levels of government as an agent on a graded Framework. Based on the above policy documents, in 2022, China formally promulgated the Pilot Program on Ownership Delegation Mechanism for Nationally Owned Natural Resource Assets, which aims to comprehensively carry out a pilot program of ownership delegation for the eight core categories of nationally owned natural resource assets (including natural ecological space), including land, minerals, oceans, forests, grasslands, wetlands, water, and national parks. With the further separation of ownership and use rights in the reform of the property right system of natural resource assets, the clarification of the ownership subject, and the implementation of the ownership entrustment agency mechanism, the original management mechanism of PAs will also be affected to some extent. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed in the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reform that ‘the national natural resource asset management system should be improved, and the duties of owners of all natural resource assets should be exercised in a unified manner; the natural resource regulatory system should be improved, and the duties of the use and control of all territorial space should be exercised in a unified manner.’. This makes it clear that the reform idea of separating the rights of owners and the exercise of administrative supervision rights is clear.

However, in the practice of PAs management, there are also practices in which the natural resources departments and PAs management organizations uniformly exercise the responsibilities of asset management and administrative supervision. For example, Article 15 of the Regulations of Sanjiangyuan National Park clearly stipulates that the county people's government in the management of natural resources assets in specific matters characterized as the performance of its statutory administrative responsibilities, and authorizes the management body of the national park to exercise the same. Articles 5 and 22 of the Regulations on Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park (for Trial Implementation) clearly stipulate that the management of natural resource assets in the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park shall be undertaken by the national park management organization. Article 10 of the Wuyi Mountain National Park Regulations further specifies that the responsibility for the protection and management of natural resource assets owned by all people within the scope of the national park will be carried out by the national park management organization. According to Article 30 of the Regulations on the Management of Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan Province, the provincial people's government will fulfill the responsibility of the owner of the nationally owned natural resource assets in the Sichuan Area of the Giant Panda National Park in accordance with the national regulations, and the management organization of the national park will be specifically responsible for the management of the natural resource assets, and the implementation of the system of compensated use of natural resources.

4.5.2 Circulation of administrative punishment power among different departments

From the perspective of institutional reform and ecological civilization system, the current management structure of ecological environmental protection in China presents a trend of upward collection of monitoring power and downward sinking of law enforcement power. In the Provisions on the Exercise of Functions, Internal Institutions and Staffing of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, jointly issued by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council, it is explicitly pointed out that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment is responsible for organizing the formulation of the ecological environment regulatory system of various types of PAs, and for exercising the The Ministry of Ecology and Environment is responsible for organizing the formulation of ecological environment regulatory systems for various types of PAs, and exercising relevant law enforcement and supervisory powers, while the supervisory powers of PAs are mainly taken care of by the Office of Biodiversity Conservation of the Department of Natural Ecology Conservation and the National Biosafety Management Office, and the Department of Management of PAs of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration is responsible for the supervision and management of various types of PAs. This, together with the doubts about the right to penalize PAs in practice, has led to the discussion of the exercise of the right to penalize within the space of nature reserves to become extremely necessary. In practice, the subjects of the exercise of the right to impose administrative penalties in PAs include the competent nature authorities, the public security organs within the PAs and the management organizations of the PAs.

1. Exercise of administrative penalty power by competent departments of PAs

From the provisions of the existing administrative regulations and local regulations of PAs, most of the competent departments of PAs are forestry and grassland departments, and in practice, the law enforcement authority of forestry and grassland departments in PAs mainly focuses on investigating and dealing with the ecological damage of ecological space caused by illegal mining, road building, dam building and construction activities. For example, Article 18 of the Measures for the Management of Minjiang River Estuary Wetland Nature Reserve in Fuzhou City clearly stipulates that the duty of the management organization of the protected area is only to inform the relevant competent department in time when it finds out the illegal acts affecting the nature reserve, and the relevant competent department has the right to penalize the illegal acts, and the relevant competent department in the Act refers to the municipal forestry department.

1. Public security organs in PAs exercise the right to impose administrative penalties

For example, the regulations on nature reserves in Hainan Province make it clear in a general sense that administrative penalties and other administrative enforcement powers may be delegated by the competent department of the nature reserve to the management organization of the nature reserve, and also stipulate that the investigation and handling of violations of laws and regulations within the protected area may be the responsibility of the public security police agency set up within the protected area. For some spaces of PAs where mountain ranges are the main ecosystem, the subject of exercising the right to impose administrative penalties is further clarified to be the forest public security agency. For example, the management regulations of Liupan Mountain, Helan Mountain and Luoshan National Nature Reserve in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Sedan Chair Mountain National Nature Reserve in Kunming City, Khanma National Nature Reserve in Daxing'anling, Inner Mongolia, and Badaigong Mountain National Nature Reserve in Zhangjiajie City, etc., also stipulate that forest public security departments of the protected areas are responsible for investigating and punishing cases of crimes and offences damaging natural resources and natural ecosystems of the protected areas.

1. Unified exercise of the right to impose penalties by management agencies of PAs

By explicitly authorizing the necessary comprehensive resource and environmental law enforcement duties within the boundaries of national parks to be performed by national park management agencies when the time is ripe, the Overall Program has in fact begun to explore the unified exercise of spatial administrative punitive powers in this category of PAs. Local legislation has also explored this program in practice, one approach is to centralize the exercise by the management agency of the nature PAs, for example, Article 8, paragraph 2 of the Regulations on the Protection of Shennongjia National Park stipulates that within the jurisdiction of the Shennongjia National Park, the management agency of the national park is responsible for the full performance of the duties of comprehensive law enforcement of the resources and environment, and centralizes the exercise of the relevant administrative penalty power in accordance with the law; the other is to set up a special nature Another practice is to set up specialized law enforcement agencies for protected areas.

 

Additional work

In the revision of the article, we focus on the issue of administrative authority in the governance network of PAs under holistic spatial protection, and one of the opportunities for focusing on this point also stems from an interview we did before. We have not included the interviews in this article because they are not directly related to the content of the article.

 

Investigation and interview records of Nanling National Nature Reserve in Guangdong Province

 

Research topic: Understand and exchange the management and protection related work of Guangdong Nanling National Nature Reserve/Nanling National Forest Park.

Research time: August 25th, 2023.

Location: Guangdong Nanling National Nature Reserve/Nanling National Forest Park

Interviewing units: Guangdong Nanling National Nature Reserve Administration and Ruyang Farm of Guangdong Province.

The list of interviewers will be treated anonymously.

 

• Research outline
• What are the existing management subjects of Nanling National Forest Park? What are the differences between the management subjects in Nanling management? Is there any overlap or blank in the setting of authority and responsibility?
• The proportion of collective forest land in the park is high. How to bring this part into the protection and management in the process of planning to build a national park? What is the compensation system for ecological public welfare forests? What's the innovation? What obstacles are encountered in the implementation?
• What is the specific situation of the differential protection management mode of zoning control?
• Is there a mechanism to realize the value of ecological products and a franchise system? What is the main mode? What are the difficulties?
• What are the main obstacles to solve the historical problems such as small hydropower stations and mining rights in the park? Are there any innovative measures at present?
• Will the park have the problem of overlapping nature reserves? Are there any spatial differences between the existing parks and the proposed national parks and Nanling National Nature Reserve? Measures for spatial integration and optimization of nature reserves?
• The proposed Nanling National Park involves Shaoguan and Qingyuan. Are there any obstacles to the overall protection of nature reserve space? Is there a coordination mechanism between different local governments and different administrative departments?
• What is the financial guarantee mechanism for the construction and management of parks? What improvements do you want to make?
• Which department is responsible for the space renovation and restoration of the park at present? Construction of ecological restoration manager system after "Nanling national forest park public interest litigation case"
• What are the obstacles to taking artificial restoration measures in the core protected areas? How to deal with it? Will alternative restoration measures be considered when carrying out artificial restoration of parks?
• What are the obstacles to taking artificial restoration measures in the core protected areas? How to deal with it? Will alternative restoration measures be considered when carrying out artificial restoration of parks?
• What is the jurisdiction distribution of cross-regional ecological destruction events?
• Are there any incidents of personal or property damage caused by wild animals? What is the corresponding ecological compensation standard?
• What role does the local Yao nationality play in the ecological management of nature reserves? How to deal with the relationship with indigenous residents and Yao nationality in the construction and management of nature reserves?

Second, the investigation interview record

Q: What are the existing management subjects of Nanling National Forest Park?

A: The forest farm was established in 1958, formerly known as Guangdong Ruyuan Forestry Bureau. It was once a large-scale state-owned forest industry enterprise in Guangdong Province, and its primary business was timber harvesting. In the 1980s, small hydropower was transformed and developed. With the enhancement of protection consciousness, the development of small hydropower is gradually restricted and turned to ecological protection. In 1993, the forest farm area became a part of Nanling National Forest Park, and in 1994, Nanling National Nature Reserve was established, including Ruyuan Forest Farm, Tianjing Forest Farm and some areas in Lianzhou, with its jurisdiction area of about 876,867 mu, much larger than the forest farm itself of 467,700 mu. Forest farms and protected areas are both directly under the provincial level institutions, belonging to the public welfare category, and have experienced the process of changing from enterprise management to public welfare. The management scope of the reserve covers the forest farm, and in some areas it exceeds the scope of the forest farm. Although the two sides have overlapping functions, the nature reserve is mainly protected at present, while the forest farm mainly focuses on resource development and utilization in the early days, but in actual operation, the two sides supervise each other and will cooperate with each other when the project lands to achieve joint supervision.

 

Q: How to deal with the problem of forest land ownership?

A: Most of the forest land ownership in the reserve is concentrated in Ruyuan Forest Farm, and the collective forest land accounts for a relatively small proportion. Protected areas are mainly established on the basis of the original forest farms, so many forest lands in protected areas are not all state-owned, and there are collective forest lands. For collective forest land to be included in the management of protected areas, the current policy tends to take the form of redemption or lease, but it is difficult to implement it at the grassroots level because it involves the interests of farmers.

 

Q: Will all the land in Nanling National Park be nationalized?

A: I hope so in theory, but it is difficult to achieve it in grass-roots practice unless the problems of land acquisition and residents' migration are solved. At present, the core problem is the dispute over forest ownership, which has always existed and is the biggest focus that nature reserves in China generally face.

This problem not only stems from the problems left over from history, but also is related to China's land management system. Although the constitution stipulates that forest resources are owned by the state, in the grass-roots implementation, because many land reforms have not completely solved the ownership problem, farmers think they have ownership of long-term residence. There is a conflict between this concept and the concept of rule of law, especially in ethnic minority areas.

Nanling National Park adopts the mode of differential protection and zoning management of aggregation area, with core area, experimental area and office area. The core area has basically stopped the function of human activities, and some forest parks have been closed and no longer open to the public. However, in reality, personnel activities are still unavoidable, and residents still live in the core area. This is mainly due to the extensive early planning and lack of field research.

 

Q: What is the main protection of the core area?

A: The core area mainly protects rare and endangered animal and plant species, including Guangdong pine, hemlock and other rare plants and a variety of rare animals. It is the most representative concentrated distribution area of wild animals and plants in Guangdong and even Greater Bay Area.

National parks are actively exploring ways to realize the value of three ecological products, such as carbon sink trading and water resources value realization, to transform and compensate the value of eco-environmental products in protected areas economically. However, how to balance the contradiction between development, protection and utilization, especially how to realize value transformation at the same time of ecological protection, is still in the exploration stage, and no comprehensive investigation has been carried out.

 

Q: Why did you close the Forest Park in 2018?

A: The forest park was closed in 2018 because of the requirements of the central environmental protection inspector. This area is a national nature reserve. According to the Regulations on Nature Reserves, all human activities are prohibited in the core area. However, the core area of forest park overlaps with the jurisdiction of forest civil servants, which involves several main problems: first, the road leading to the highest peak has been built inside forest park; Second, there is the development of large-scale tourism supporting facilities (such as scenic spots, hotels and conference centers). The central environmental protection inspector believes that such tourism activities in nature reserves violate relevant regulations, so he ordered the closure of forest parks.

After 2018, relevant departments have been trying to apply to the National Bureau to adjust the functional zoning of the reserve, with the intention of transferring densely populated areas out of the core area, so as to make rational use of resources and avoid affecting the core area. At present, the functional area adjustment scheme has been approved by national research and expert review. However, due to the planned construction of national parks in this area, the approval procedures are synchronized with the construction of national parks, resulting in the temporary suspension of the functional area adjustment of forest parks.

 

Q: Will the planning of the National Forest Park connect the surrounding nature reserves?

A: The planning purpose of Nanling National Park is to integrate dozens of protected areas around it, which are mainly divided into two areas, and connect them through ecological corridors, such as Nanshui, Loukeng, Grand Canyon and Shimentai in Qingyuan, to form an integrated protection network.

 

Q: How is the tourism opening in the park?

A: At present, there are some problems in the construction and management of Nanling National Forest Park that are difficult to break away from the management mode of nature reserves, and there are deep-seated problems such as land ownership, the contradiction between community residents and management departments.

 

Q: What are the main obstacles to solving historical problems such as small hydropower stations?

A: The existence of small hydropower in national parks is one of the focuses. In the early 1980s, small hydropower made great contributions to the finance of forest areas and local governments, but from the ecological point of view, it did have a certain impact on river flow. Although its influence is relatively stable now, some experts still insist on the withdrawal of small hydropower. However, in practice, the withdrawal of small hydropower involves local fiscal revenue, people's vital interests and other issues. Taking Ruyuan County as an example, the withdrawal of small hydropower needs huge compensation funds, but there is no clear answer as to whether the compensation mechanism and financial support are in place. During the period of environmental protection supervision, most small hydropower stations have been required to close, but the property rights and compensation problems left over from history are still outstanding, which has become a major problem in the process of park management and reform.

 

Q: Does Dabaoshan belong to Nanling National Forest Park?

A: Dabaoshan does not belong to Nanling National Park, but is located in Qujiang.

 

Q: What is the approximate area of the national park?

A: The original planned area of Nanling National Park is about 1,800 square kilometers, but it has been adjusted later and the area has been reduced. The data displayed on the internet may be 1900 square kilometers planned in the early stage.

 

Q: Is there any spatial overlap between parks and other nature reserves?

A: The core area of Nanling National Park mainly includes Ruyuan Forest Farm, Tianjing Forest Farm and Nanshui Reservoir, which are connected with the Grand Canyon area. The park covers Shaoguan and Qingyuan, of which Shaoguan is mainly concentrated in Ruyuan County. In the process of integration and optimization of nature reserves, there is indeed a problem of spatial overlap. There is some overlap between Nanling National Park and the original Nanling Reserve and other local protected areas such as Nanshui Wetland Park and Grand Canyon Reserve.

 

Q: Can you introduce the general situation of integration and optimization?

A: Due to the consideration of political achievements and local economic development, the local government sometimes fails to plan from a scientific point of view, which leads to the integration result being unscientific and unreasonable. Although the planning of national parks is made by higher authorities, in the specific implementation stage, local governments are unwilling to give up the original institutions and staffing of nature reserves easily based on their own interests, which leads to difficulties in the process of integration and optimization.

 

Q: Are there any ecological compensation measures?

A: At present, ecological compensation is mainly embodied in ecological supply, which is a nationwide policy. Although it is not specifically aimed at a certain project, there will be some supporting facilities and financial compensation in the process of project promotion. In the past, there was a situation that excavation was forbidden and compensation was needed. This is a form of transfer payment, that is, financial transfer from developed areas to underdeveloped areas, and the provincial government level allocated funds to the municipal government or a lower level.

 

Q: Why hasn't the relevant compensation been issued this year?

A: It may be because of the epidemic situation and other factors, resulting in poor financial situation and overall economic situation, which further affected the timely payment of compensation funds. The establishment and promotion of projects like Nanling National Park need the financial support of the government, and there are some difficulties under the current economic conditions, but the provincial government has special funds to support the construction of national parks.

 

Q: Which department is responsible for the space renovation and restoration of the park at present? What is the construction of the ecological restoration manager system after the public interest litigation case in Nanling National Forest Park?

A: The road repair work involved in the public interest litigation case of Nanling National Park before is now repaired by the scenic spot development company, and it is subject to technical guidance and supervision from us and scientific research institutions in the province to ensure the repair quality. Although the development company is no longer operating in the local area, the investment before the closure exceeded 1 billion yuan, and the related supporting facilities and damaged roads have been basically repaired. At present, it is mainly managed and supervised by protected areas.

In the core area, we repair it manually, mainly through the cooperation between forest farms and protected areas, aiming at the damage caused by geological disasters such as landslides and other non-natural disasters. At present, there is little man-made destruction in the nature reserve, and there is no vegetation destruction caused by large-scale logging. Most areas have been effectively protected and restored.

 

Q: Are there some key areas for restoration?

A: The key restoration areas mainly include forest farm areas damaged by natural disasters (such as drought, landslide and ice disaster), and no large-scale artificial restoration areas have been set. At present, the management concept of national parks in China is not to insist on a completely natural state, but to avoid man-made destruction and let the ecosystem within the whole protected area recover naturally through control.

 

Q: Has a specific natural restoration area been designated?

A: Actually, we don't divide the nature reserve into specific natural restoration areas and artificial restoration areas, but adopt intelligent management and compensation mechanism for the whole nature reserve, with the main goal of preventing external damage and allowing the whole nature reserve to realize the process of natural restoration by reducing human interference.

 

Q: What specific recovery targets have we set for natural recovery?

A: The goal of natural restoration is to promote the growth of wild animal and plant population in the nature reserve, especially to pay attention to and protect star species, and enhance biodiversity and the quantity of various biological resources.

 

Q: What is the effect of natural recovery at present?

A: Since it was closed for 18 years, the natural recovery effect has been obvious. Wild animal populations gradually return to lower altitude areas, and common animals, such as silver pheasants, snakes, wild boar, etc., become more common, sometimes even within 50 meters near the park entrance. With the decrease of people's activities, protectors can often capture the pictures of large birds' activities, which is more frequent than before.

 

Q: Does the nature reserve belong to the main habitat of migratory birds?

A: Although some routes of the nature reserve belong to the places where migratory birds pass, because of the high altitude and special climate of the nature reserve, a large number of birds can not be seen in the typical plain migratory places. Birds here mainly pass by during the flight, and rarely stay in the treetops, so the protection achievements of the reserve are more reflected in the star species shown in the promotional film, such as some rare birds and mammals such as pangolins. However, these sensitive information are generally not made public, so as not to increase the difficulty of protection.

 

Q: Can the nature reserve be completely closed?

A: Although the reserve is closed to the public in principle, it is difficult to set up a blockade on every road because of its wide geographical distribution and complicated roads. Coupled with farmers' access and the demand of local governments to develop rural tourism, it is impossible to be absolutely closed in practice. Protected areas and local governments have different development concepts. Protected areas seek to minimize human interference, while local governments hope to promote economic development by attracting tourists.

According to the country's long-term planning of national parks, an appointment system may be implemented in the future to allow tourists to visit. However, as a protected area, we will carry out strict cross-border demarcation and management of specific areas, and may adopt franchise mode instead of full opening up. As for the previous closed state, there is no plan to reopen the tour after it has recovered to a certain level.

 

Q: Will the overlapping functions of protected areas and national parks lead to management conflicts?

A: There are indeed functional contradictions. Once the two are integrated, the nature reserve and the forest farm will no longer exist separately, but become a whole. At that time, it will be operated in accordance with the management mode of national parks, allowing tourism to be carried out within the limited range of ecologically affordable human activities, and managed by appointment system. The original regulations on protected areas were more restrictive, which is why there is a need to amend the regulations.

 

Q: Who is responsible for local environmental protection?

A: The local forest police said that they were responsible for local environmental protection, but for protected areas, it may be difficult for provincial departments to directly manage them because of their large geographical span.

 

Q: Has the reserve been entrusted with law enforcement?

A: The reserve will be entrusted to local governments for law enforcement.

 

Q: In the process of preparing for the national park, what is the future vision?

A: There will definitely be national parks. It is envisaged that the law enforcement forces will be integrated into relevant local departments with reference to the previous experience. For example, referring to the practice of Sanjiangyuan, the original law enforcement forces such as forest public security in counties and cities will be integrated into the national park management system. However, the current system is scattered and needs to be optimized.

 

Q: How to deal with the current case?

A: For criminal cases, the forest police will handle them; For general administrative cases, due to the difficulty in handling them, it is usually necessary to rely on the strength of local administrative agencies and rely on them for management.

 

Q: Is the leadership of the forest farm held by local and municipal leaders?

A: Forest farms do have cross-regional management. Although the jurisdiction of ownership is relatively clear, there may be problems in the implementation of specific responsibilities. For example, the affairs of Ruyuan Forest Farm should be managed by the forest farm in theory, but in fact, it is often difficult for the forest farm to directly manage farmers' behavior and it needs to be coordinated by local governments.

 

Q: What is the number of employees in the forest farm?

A: There are about 200 employees in the forest farm, and more than 100 employees outside the park, making a total of about 300. Among them, more than 100 retired workers are mainly engaged in forest management and hydropower maintenance, including 9 inspection teams and 7 control stations. Their main duties are to drive patrol vehicles to check forest pests and diseases, forest fires and acts of destroying forest resources.

 

Q: How many employees are there in the reserve?

A: There are 29 employees in the establishment of the reserve, and about 60 employees are employed, totaling about 100 people. The overlapping part with Ruyuan Forest Farm is mainly managed by the forest farm, and there are also overlapping management areas with Tianjingshan and other units, each of which is responsible for the corresponding protection station and nursing staff.

 

Q: Do local residents participate in the work of forest farms and protected areas?

A: There are contract eco-rangers among the local residents, which are recommended by the local government women's federations and other departments or hired by a third party. Wild animals sometimes destroy crops and fruit trees in Ruyuan forest farm and nature reserve. There are no clear ecological compensation measures for this, but we have learned that there are related attempts to compensate ecological damage in Huizhou and other places, and cooperated with insurance companies to compensate.

 

Q: In the face of ecological damage, how to deal with and solve the contradiction with local farmers?

A: When farmers suffer losses due to wild animals, there is no special compensation fund at present, so they can only be persuaded to take protective measures to avoid planting crops vulnerable to wild animals. Protected areas and forest farms have been actively seeking funds to ease conflicts by supporting the construction of local communities and providing employment opportunities, and at the same time encouraging local villagers to participate in the construction of fire lines and ecological restoration projects, so as to achieve harmonious coexistence in communities. However, due to the limited state investment and insufficient funds, it is difficult to fully meet the needs of all parties, so it is still in the stage of gradual exploration and development.

 

Q: What is the application and effect of natural restoration in forestry?

A: Natural restoration is called "closing hillsides to facilitate afforestation" in the forestry field, which refers to the closed management of specific areas, stopping various human intervention measures such as cutting down trees and weeding, and allowing forests to recover naturally. Although the promotion of this practice to plant growth is not easy to perceive intuitively, it has a significant effect on the increase of the number of wild animals. The data collected by the infrared camera installed in the reserve show that the species and quantity of animals have been significantly improved compared with before. In addition, many large herbivores, such as water deer and wild boar, and small animals, such as squirrels, monkeys, Tibetan Emirates monkeys, silver pheasants and other national protected animals, have been observed to increase.

 

Q: What do we mean by flagship species?

A: The flagship species here is the yellow-bellied pheasant, which is reflected in the publicity materials of the reserve.

 

Q: Is it possible to give birth to a new and sound flagship species?

A: Due to the high similarity of geographical conditions in southern China, the species differences between many protected areas are not very significant, and there is a lack of unique species like giant pandas or Hainan gibbons. Recently, I learned that national parks may need representative flagship species, but the existence of similar species in different regions makes it challenging to find unique flagship species.

 

Q: Is Nanling National Park close to Wuyishan in terms of protection function?

A: Although the biodiversity may not be as good as Wuyi Mountain, Nanling National Park is particularly important in ecological location. Located at the junction of Guangdong and Hunan, it is the birthplace of the Pearl River system and has a great impact on the climate and atmospheric environment in Guangdong. Nanling National Park is not only reflected in species diversity, but more importantly, its unique geographical location and its adjustment to the ecological environment. At present, a national meteorological observatory has been established in Nanling area to monitor the changes of atmospheric circulation and other important indicators, which largely reflects the uniqueness and important role of Nanling National Park.

At present, national parks are mainly established in Guangdong Province. When discussing the establishment plan, an expert review team suggested that the naming of Guangdong Nanling National Park may not be appropriate, because Nanling Mountain Range spans many provinces, and if it is named only in Guangdong Province, it may not be widely recognized by other provinces, especially in the case that other provinces may establish national parks in Nanling area in the future, the name problem needs to be properly solved. We can learn from the practice of Minjiang source national park and coordinate the cooperation between provinces through relevant state departments.

 

Q: Effects of artificial afforestation on ecological diversity and restoration measures.

A: The existing artificial forests, such as mountain forests and masson pine plantations, are not original vegetation from the ecological point of view, which has a long-term impact on biodiversity and ecological balance. In order to restore the original vegetation, large-scale capital investment and long-term artificial transformation are needed. The carbon sink forest project and the afforestation project of precious tree species have been put forward, aiming at gradually replacing the original pure plantation. Specifically, it is necessary to cut down the plantation and replant broad-leaved trees. This process may last for ten or even twenty years, which is costly and difficult to implement. In view of the importance of Nanling National Park, priority should be given to policy and financial support. However, the reserve management bureau is mainly responsible for protection, scientific research, monitoring and education, and does not directly carry out large-scale ecological restoration and stand transformation projects. Such work is mainly undertaken by forest farms.

 

Q: How much renovation work has been done so far?

A: The specific transformation area and progress are not clear, so you need to ask the forest farm department. Because there are many overlapping areas between the nature reserve and the forest farm, due to the consideration of dual management, this part of the area may not be easily transformed. However, in Tianjingshan and other areas, with the change of ecological protection concept and the guarantee of financial funds in place, economic benefits are no longer pursued, and now the transformation is started year by year, and it will continue as long as there is special funds.

 

Q: What are the soil conditions in Nanling area?

A: There used to be a large area of virgin forest in Nanling area, where trees grew luxuriantly. However, after large-scale development in 1960s and 1970s, forests were cut down, and it took decades or even hundreds of years for vegetation restoration. In some areas, the mountain structure is dominated by large rocks, and the soil layer is relatively thin, which has certain restrictions on plant growth.

 

Q: How about the exploration of realizing the value of ecological products?

A: At present, although we haven't done much substantive work, we have tried to hold bird watching festivals and other activities to attract tourists to watch birds and drive consumption such as accommodation and catering, so as to explore the mechanism of realizing the value of ecological products under specific business routes. The Bird Watching Festival has been held for two consecutive years, and the participants mainly spend on accommodation, catering and transportation.

 

Q: Will ticket fees be charged to birdwatchers who attend the Bird Watching Festival?

A: Bird-watching enthusiasts don't need to buy tickets, they just need to submit an application and enter the reserve after proper examination and approval. Now the nature reserve is also doing nature education, and will meet the needs of the nature education and research team and accept visitors moderately.

 

Q: What kind of policy support is needed to realize the value of eco-products?

A: The present situation is rather awkward. In the initial stage of national park construction, I am worried that relevant policies and regulations will be integrated or changed in the future. Local governments hope to realize value transformation by relying on existing resources, but they are faced with the contradiction between development and protection. At present, the nature reserve mainly receives a small number of bird watchers, and has not carried out large-scale tourism development.

As for the feasibility of collecting tickets, the parties have different views. Collecting tickets can not only earn a certain income, but also limit the flow of people, which is a kind of support for the protection work by citizens and conforms to the habits accepted by the public. However, at present, the reserve does not charge tickets, but only adopts the way of approval to enter.

In addition, in addition to the traditional ticket revenue, we can also refer to the practice of other mature national parks and use Internet technology to make an appointment for ticket sales to ensure the transparent flow of funds. At the same time, we can provide professional services and charge corresponding fees by expanding natural education, research and travel, and realize the value transformation of ecological products. It is worth noting that this transformation is not only limited to economic benefits, but also includes diversified social benefits such as providing a healthy leisure and wellness environment. However, at present, supporting policies are needed in actual operation to ensure that the protection institutions of public institutions can carry out business activities under the premise of complying with relevant regulations.

 

Q: Supplement to the problems existing in the retreat of small hydropower and the closure of mining industry

A: It is more difficult to retreat small hydropower plants than to close the mining industry, because they have different degrees of environmental damage. Mining has seriously damaged the surface vegetation and the environment, so it is necessary to pay a number of fees including forest land compensation fee, vegetation restoration fee and resettlement compensation fee, and settle them before obtaining the mining license. These expenses will enter the financial fund pool and be allocated for use when the mine is restored. If there is any shortage, there is still a tracing mechanism. The fees paid by mining enterprises enter the local or provincial finance respectively according to the nature of the land occupied.

 

Q: Which department is responsible for the follow-up and implementation of the restoration work?

A: The follow-up and fund receiving department of the restoration work is determined according to the ownership nature of the occupied land. If it is county collective land, the expenses will be paid to the county government finance, and if it is provincial unit land, it will be paid to the provincial finance.

 

Q: Are there clear standards and deadlines for restoration activities? What is the evaluation and acceptance process?

A: At present, the restoration activities are mainly designed for the damaged surface, such as planting trees and ensuring the survival rate reaches the standard. However, to evaluate the overall ecological effect of restoration, it is necessary to carry out scientific research and monitoring, such as biodiversity survey and carbon sink increment survey. The evaluation and acceptance of the restoration effect is a relatively complicated process, which needs to consider the time and space scales, including the acceptance of the completion of the restoration project itself and the scientific evaluation of the overall effect of ecological restoration. Although the two are separated, it is necessary to comprehensively consider various ecological indicators when evaluating the restoration status.

 

Q: Can monitoring help to evaluate the effect of ecological restoration?

A: The monitoring work is mainly carried out by relying on the third-party scientific research institutions or university teams. Because the expenses and funds required for follow-up monitoring are usually not included in the budget when applying for restoration projects, the monitoring link will often be affected due to funding problems after the project is implemented. Because the financial fund management system requires that the funds be used in the same year, it is not allowed to apply for multi-year monitoring funds in advance, and the unused funds will be recovered, and the same project funds can only be carried forward once.

 

Q: In the process of forestry restoration, will there be contradictions caused by ownership problems? What should farmers do if they want to cut down diseased trees and plant cash crops?

A: From the perspective of forestry prevention and control, it is really necessary to cut down trees if they are infected, but cutting down native vegetation and planting cash crops may destroy the local ecological balance. The native vegetation grows in the local area for a long time, with high water content, and has formed a stable ecological environment to resist mountain fires and large-scale pests and diseases. Once it is cut down and replaced by flammable artificially planted tree species (such as fir and pine), it may not only lead to ownership disputes, but also break the ecological balance and increase the possibility of fire risk and pests and diseases.

 

Q: Can the natural vegetation be restored naturally after being cut down?

A: It is difficult to restore natural vegetation, which usually depends on birds or mammals carrying seeds to spread, or the original tree species have the ability of stump germination and regeneration, that is, secondary regeneration. However, if it has been replaced by a single tree species pure forest (such as three needles forest), artificial intervention measures must be taken to restore to the state of broad-leaved mixed forest.

 

Q: Is there a phenomenon that after planting eucalyptus, other tree species cannot be planted in this plot in the next few years?

A: There are some misunderstandings about the statement that eucalyptus cannot be planted with other tree species after planting. Although Eucalyptus produces a large amount of water, the key is to choose suitable planting sites and tree species, which should follow the principle of "suitable for the site and trees", that is, planting tree species that are originally suitable for the local environment according to the soil and climate conditions in the region.

 

Q: If we don't interfere with eucalyptus, will its ecological value be gradually reflected in a few years?

A: Eucalyptus may form a new ecological small balance without human intervention. As a part of pure eucalyptus forest ecosystem, it will reproduce itself and participate in the whole ecological balance after a certain period of time.

 

Q: If eucalyptus is planted artificially and the area is later classified as a protected area, will it be impossible to cut it down?

A: In this case, there is no large-scale planting of eucalyptus in the area under discussion. However, if it is within the protected area, even eucalyptus or fir trees planted artificially are not allowed to be cut down at will according to regulations. Logging targets must be obtained for cutting down trees, and in protected areas, the government usually does not approve such applications. At present, the government has cracked down on illegal logging, and it is difficult for timber without legal certificates to circulate in the market.

 

Q: In Jiangxi and other places, precious tree species such as second-class yew are common and artificially planted, and some even have a history of hundreds of years. Is there a similar situation in Nanling?

A: There are also some precious tree species in Nanling area, including Pinus kwangtungensis and Taxus chinensis. Wild or native large plants are often used for seed collection as a source for cultivating new plants.

 

Q: Has the local villagers' awareness of ecological protection improved after the establishment of the reserve?

A: It is observed that with the establishment of protected areas and the implementation of relevant policies, the local villagers' awareness of ecological protection has been enhanced to some extent. In the past, the excessive pursuit of economic development led to a more prominent contradiction with the government in ecological protection. For example, the villagers lost part of their income sources by banning the felling of trees and restricting tourism activities. Nowadays, the government encourages villagers to participate in the maintenance of protected areas by providing preferential policies, improves rural infrastructure, actively explores ecological compensation mechanisms and attracts more eco-tourists to help villagers find new ways to live. At the same time, the villagers learned about the successful cases of other national parks through the news and realized that harmonious coexistence is the long-term way, and confrontation policies will only make them suffer. Generally speaking, this is an issue involving the eternal theme of human development and natural environment protection, which is similar to the contradiction between countries at different stages of international development. The key to solve this contradiction lies in education, especially in cultivating the next generation with the concept of moderate development, realizing that we should not blindly pursue economic income, but should attach importance to and cherish the health guarantee and quality of life brought by the superior ecological environment.

 

Q: How to balance economic development and environmental protection in protected areas?

A: The local villagers have a strong sense of environmental protection now, but how to achieve sustainable development in a limited space still needs to be explored and balanced.

 

Q: In view of the cross-regional management problems in the construction of Nanlinggong National Park, what obstacles have been encountered at present? Does the management mechanism need to be improved?

A: To realize the effective protection of the whole space, the key is to solve the coordination problem between different local governments and administrative departments. We are not clear about the coordination situation at the government level, and we can only coordinate matters within our own responsibilities. At present, in terms of road management and control, it is necessary to prevent unnecessary vehicles from entering the protected area at will. The solution of such problems requires the intervention and coordination of higher-level governments, ensuring that different departments reach an agreement, and carrying out scientific planning and effective management from the policy level, combining with scientific research and technical support, and the close cooperation between various management agencies and community residents' management departments, to jointly build a management model and mechanism that adapts to local conditions.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript provides an in-depth analysis of the governance structures of Protected Areas (PAs) from a spatial perspective, integrating theories of spatial relationships and spatial justice to explore the complexities of power allocation and coordination among various stakeholders. These discussions offer valuable insights into enhancing the effectiveness of PA governance through spatial considerations, making a meaningful contribution to research in environmental management and policy development. After revisions, the language quality of the manuscript has significantly improved, and the research ideas and arguments are now expressed with much greater clarity.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

thank you for your great effort in following my suggestion. Good lack for your future research development