CURRENT STATUS: TRANSBOUNDARY MANAGEMENT OF
BIODIVERSITY AND INTERNATIONAL WATER RESOURCES
(from the Strategic Action Program, 9 October 2002)
The TumenNET region is a mosaic of socio-economic
factors, geography, resources, management practices, opportunities, and
administrative and institutional capacities, necessitating differentiated
interventions and responses. It is not surprising, then, that the current
status of biodiversity and water resources varies dramatically in each of
the four TumenNET zones. Until now, transboundary biodiversity and
international water resources in the region have benefited from very few
targeted, internationally coordinated interventions at the national level.
There is a legacy of fragmented national and
international environmental management in the four zones of the TumenNET
region an absence of co-ordinated planning and integration, poor legal
frameworks, lack of enforcement and implementation of existing regulatory
instruments, insufficient public involvement, unbalanced regional capacity
development, inadequate financial mechanisms of support, as well as
inadequate capacity to monitor and assess ecosystems.
These human factors are superimposed on complex,
sensitive transborder ecosystems which have highly variable environments,
resulting in declines in populations of key species, compromised water
quality and loss of watershed functions, unsustainable agriculture and
forestry, uncertainty regarding ecosystem status and yields, increasing
residential and industrial pollution, worsening desertification and dust
storms, habitat destruction and alteration, and loss of biotic integrity.
All of these effects have significant transboundary implications. The
challenge is to halt this changing state of the TumenNET region and, where
possible, to reverse the process through co-operative regional actions at
the national level to manage shared ecological resources on an integrated
and sustainable basis.
This challenge is heightened by ambitious national
development plans that are certain to result in additional ecological
stress if national actions are not taken promptly to integrate economic
planning with environmental concerns.
Current Environmental Issues
Unsustainable agricultural activities and forestry as
well as inadequate land-use planning are driving land degradation and
desertification near the borders between Mongolia, the PRC, and Russia; in
the Tumen River basin these stresses combine with industrial activities to
severely compromise water quality. In particular, land degradation in
eastern Mongolia (driven in large part byaccess) results in
increasingly severe dust storms across the entire TumenNET region and
beyond. In both the steppe and Tumen basin, various ecosystems, biological
diversity, and ecological integrity suffer as a result.
Deterioration in water quality at local and regional
levels poses a threat to sustainable development, community livelihoods,
ecosystem integrity, and human health, especially in the Tumen River
basin. Although most impacts of chronic deterioration in water quality are
localised national issues, they are common to all countries and require
collective, transboundary action to address them. Moreover, chronic
pollution and catastrophic events can have widespread transboundary
consequences, requiring co-operative management and sharing of knowledge,
equipment, and technology.
Habitat destruction and ecosystem degradation are
occurring at an accelerated pace in all TumenNET zones. Although most
impacts appear localised, habitat alterations attributable to
unsustainable agricultural and livestock management practices,
urbanization, mining, industrial and residential waste, and land transport
are causing migration of biota, extinction of species, and systemic change
throughout ecosystems.
Throughout the region, declining populations of rare
wildlife, especially large mammals and migratory birds, continue to be a
major cause for concern requiring immediate remedial action. Endemic
species such as the Amur tiger, Far-eastern leopard, white-tailed gazelle,
cranes and other birds are now on the threshold of extinction. Increased
loss of biotic integrity, such as changes in community composition,
species, and diversity, threaten the biodiversity of the TumenNET region
as a whole.
Complicating this trend is the fact that national
boundaries do not coincide with ecosystem boundaries, and much of the
regions important biota is shared between countries or move across
national borders. Dangers to a species in one country due to past and
continued habitat fragmentation or alteration, poaching, or general
mismanagement can therefore lead to depletion of that species in another
country, as well as negative changes to the ecosystem as a whole. Many
natural resource management challenges are transboundary in nature and
require collective and co-operative action by member states to address
them.
Current Constraints
There is vastly unequal distribution across countries
of institutional, infrastructural, financial, and human capacity to fully
assess, jointly or nationally, the ecological status of the TumenNET
region as a whole, or to adequately assess and respond to transboundary
resources and impacts.
The main constraints to remedial action include:
governmental policies that correspond insufficiently or inadequately to
environmental requirements and to cross-border issues like poaching and
smuggling of wildlife artefacts; uncertainty about land ownership; lack of
proper legal frameworks and standards; weak policy implementation caused
by lack of capacity and financial resources; disregard of government
regulations; lack of adequate eco-tourism infrastructure; missing
agreements and mechanisms for management of transboundary protected areas;
outdated technologies and farming systems; administrative and financial
bottlenecks for investors; inadequate physical and economic development
planning; and, last but not least, the absence of jointly managed
monitoring and management systems for transboundary environmental issues.
Anticipated Situation Without Intervention
Without coordinated national actions, the current
situation will continue to deteriorate, threatening the ability of
communities to provide livelihoods, compromising sustained and balanced
economic development, and preventing future generations from enjoying
their inalienable right to the natural heritage stewarded by TumenNET
countries. In particular, these negative impacts include: increasingly
serious fragmentation of large ecosystems; further reduction of rare and
precious plants and animals in both numbers and species; malfunction of
water systems; further loss and modification of forest ecosystems; further
loss of habitats; accelerating water and soil erosion; further decrease of
soil quality; gradual decrease of wetlands area; and unsustainable
development of natural resources.
THREAT ANALYSIS
The root causes of the major transboundary threats to
biodiversity and international waters across the region are complex,
intertwined, and varied, depending on the diverse natural environments,
socio-economic profiles, and administrative structures in the four
TumenNET zones. For this reason, unique threats to biodiversity and water
resources are presented in the text below by zone, prioritized by the
participating countries through bilateral or multilateral negotiations.
However, there are some common themes across all zones, which are
highlighted in table 1 below. Greater detail is presented in the Transboundary
Diagnostic Analysis (TDA), which forms the basis for this analysis.
Table 1: Summary of the major root
causes of ecological threats in the TumenNET region
Environmental problems
Natural Issues (Causes)
Human Issues (Causes)
Land and wetlands degradation
(local and region-wide dust storms, desertification, loss of
topsoil and other erosion, decrease in fertility of pasture and
croplands)
Low rainfall
High winds
Extreme temperature
Thin topsoil
Steep slopes
Fires
Aridisation
Livestock herds too big or intensive in some areas (due toaccess)
Inappropriate mining and industry practices
Inappropriate cultivation practices
Multi-tracking (off-road traffic)
Fires
Wetland reclamations
Inappropriate development projects
Deforestation
(depletion of limited but available forest resources)
Fires
Insects
Slow
growth rates for natural and replanted regeneration
Destructive and unregulated commercial logging techniques
Insufficient and poorly managed reforestation
Unregulated cutting for domestic fuel
Fires
Loss of biodiversity
The same natural causes of land degradation lead to loss of
species and habitats
Hunting and poaching
Inappropriate development projects
Overgrazing
Pollution
Deforestation
New transport routes
Military activities
Water and air pollution
(generally
localized or urban problems)
Fires
High winds
Low flow-rates in rivers for most of the year
Localized temperature inversions
Overall inefficiency in manufacturing and natural resource
extraction, which results in excessive energy/inputs use and waste
Coal burning in power plants and industrial boilers
Increase in the number of vehicles, often old and poorly
maintained
Inappropriate use and disposal of chemicals
Inappropriate disposal of solid and liquid waste
A. Tumen River Basin Zone (TRZ)
A.1
The major
transboundary threats in the Tumen River basin are, in order from highest
to lowest priority: industry (including coal mining and paper
manufacturing in the PRC and iron ore mining in the DPRK), urbanization,
agriculture, inappropriate management of water and land-use, unsustainable
forestry, forest fires, transport networks, unsustainable management of
protected areas and species, and high-impact tourism.
A.2 Water pollution in the Tumen River and its
tributaries is a particularly significant problem, requiring urgent action
to address the root causes, which are waste and run-off from industry,
agriculture, and municipalities.
B. Daurian Steppe Zone (DSZ)
B.1
Russia and Mongolia
have prioritized the major transboundary threats in the Daurian Steppe as
land degradation, deterioration of wetlands, poaching or over-utilization
of species, and habitat loss. The root causes driving these threats are
identified largely as overgrazing due to unsustainable water, land, and
pasture management; lack of use of environmentally friendly technology in
the mining and agricultural sectors; as well as natural disasters such as
strong sand and dust storms and steppe fires.
B.2
The participating countries are concerned about significant knowledge gaps
in the status of biodiversity, as well as lack of data on sources or
amounts of transboundary water and air pollution.
C. Mongolian Plateau Zone (MPZ)
C.1
Mongolia
and china Mongolia and the PRC agree that the
most significant threats in the Mongolian Plateau are: land degradation
and desertification (driven by poor agricultural practices including
overgrazing), wetland deterioration, ecosystem fragmentation,
deforestation, poaching, as well as natural disasters such as strong sand
and dust storms and steppe fires.
C.2
Land degradation and desertification is a particularly serious problem
requiring concerted cooperation to remedy, as the resulting dust storms
negatively affect economic activities and human health throughout and
beyond the TumenNET region, in addition to the local economic impacts
resulting from lost pasture and agricultural land.
D. Supra-Regional Zone (SRZ)
D.1
The Supra-Regional
Zone, covering the entire TumenNET region, has a number of assets that are
crucial components for maintaining transboundary biodiversity and water
resources; these assets have been identified by the countries as wetlands,
migratory birds and other fauna, marine ecosystems, forest and steppe
ecosystems, air quality, and rare plants.
D.2 Threats not specific to
one location occur throughout the region and have been identified by the
participating countries as follows: degradation of wetlands, urbanization
impacts, soil erosion and land degradation, transport networks, poaching
and illegal trading, forest and steppe fires, transboundary dust and sand
storms and air pollution, high-impact tourism, inappropriate agriculture,
and unsustainable forest exploitation.
D.3 The
TumenNET countries are concerned about rapidly emerging threats that have
not been fully analyzed in the TDA due to their timely nature. These
include a recently planned project in Russia to provide oil products to
the Asia-pacific region via oil pipelines in the DSZ and TRZ and a
proposed oil terminal in Khasanski district, etc.
