IUCN COMMISSION GROUP

IUCN SSC China Species Specialist Group

Overview and description

Description:

China Species Specialist Group (ChSSG) was established as one of the strategic pilots for the National Species Specialist Group (NSSG) of IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC), as an interspecies ...

Dr Yan XIE

Dr. Yan Xie is Associate Research Professor in the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences; International Coordinator, NESS International Science Network; Chair, China Species Specialist Group of SSC (ChSSG), Vice Chair for China and Steering Committee Member of Species Survival Commission (SSC/IUCN); Chief Scientiest, International Alliance of Protected Areas (IAPA/ISZS).

Since 2017, she actively involved in National Eco-Security System (NESS) Initiative to promote wider society to participate and support conservation. NESS Initiative encourages and promotes each country in the world to actively build its National Eco-Security System (NESS) and further promote the joint building " An Eco-Security System for All People" (ESSAP); during 2005-2012, as the China Country Program Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), she promoted conservation on Amur tiger, Tibetan antelope, Chinese alligator conservation and wildlife trade control; during 2004-2013, her effort on promoting a comprehensive Protected Area Law of China has big impact to current protected area system reform in China; in 2013, she raised Protected Area Friendly Concept and has been promoting practices; During 2000-2009, she led the significant initiative for developing China Species Red List where evaluated over 10,000 species; Since 2020, she conduct research on establishing national parks in China, including management mechanism, establishing conservation stations, needs assessment on staff and funding, solution to address conflict of plantations to conservation.

More about the Specialist Group

The National Species Specialist Groups (NSSG) are a new type of group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) to catalyse interdisciplinary cooperation across different Specialist Groups and to develop national species expert networks as holistic scientific “brain-trusts” for reversing trends of biodiversity loss, and facing new nature-related sustainability challenges.

The China Species Specialist Group (ChSSG) is one of a handful of groups recently launched as strategic pilots (also including Colombia, Indonesia and Madagascar), and it focuses on supporting China, the host nation of the Convention of Biological Diversity’s recent CoP15, to develop and implement China’s ambitious National Biodiversity Strategic and Action Plan, and to shape a model for pragmatic advancement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Specialist Group work

Supporting conservation and research initiatives in China

The establishment of ChSSG improved SSC’s ability to provide support to conservation and research projects in China, and opened doors for young professionals, non-English speaking specialists and interspecies biodiversity experts to engage in SSC’s international community. Since its official establishment in the third quarter of 2022, ChSSG was able to recruit 100+ new experts into SSC, launched pilot programs for young professionals and activated a comprehensive study in the Greater Bay Area (GBA), via the newly formed Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Biodiversity Alliance (GHMBA), which ChSSG helped establish. Spearheaded by Sun Yat-Sen University, University of Hong Kong, and University of Macau, GHMBA aims to create an interinstitutional platform for knowledge sharing and regional biosphere collaborations.

Since biodiversity loss and climate change are universally recognized by the scientific community as “two sides of the same coin”, ChSSG’s biosphere pilot study in GBA aims to unveil the dynamic interrelation between biodiversity and climate, both for each of GBA’s 11 municipal “site biospheres” and collectively as a regional biosphere, which significant potential for addressing sustainability’s complex challenges. The study includes critical scientific tools for spatial planning and sustainable financing, such as the Red List “Barometer of Life”, ecosystem service function of species that support long-term survival of people in a given country, and MRV (Measurable, Reportable, Verifiable) ready carbon measurements of climate impacts on nature. GBA is a collaborative model for facilitating cross-border planning and implementation of regional biodiversity strategies and action plans, and other nature conservation and sustainability development efforts.