Targeted Location and Population:

The project site is the Poyang Lake (PYL) Basin which is the largest fresh water lake in China. The PYL region is one of the ten key ecological function reserve zones in China and an important international wetlands conservation area.

The total area of Duchang County (the project site) is about 2669.5 km2 among which 41,631 ha are arable land. The total population is 783000 people.

Problems:
Protection of crane and other bird species and the limited amount of wetland under climate change in PYL has become a key biodiversity conservation challenge.There is an increasing concern that climate change may pose significant threats on biodiversity, ecosystem services and health in PYL Basin, and may further aggravate the existing overwhelming conflicts in resource use among wetland protection, infectious disease prevention, eco-tourism development, biodiversity conservation and habitat loss.

Solutions/ planned activities:

1. Development and application of an integrated wetland ecosystem research framework to collect, analyze and synthesize data and information from existing literature and other sources related to impacts of human activities and climate change on biodiversity, wetland ecosystem services, and human health;

2. Evaluation of alternative wetland ecosystem and resource use plans and practices by relating their various impacts to a number of ecosystem sustainability indicators. The results of wetland use option evaluation will generate the results for optimal resource allocation and wetland ecosystem sustainability;

3. Recommend the practical wetland ecosystem use plans and options which can be implemented in the project site by rural communities to effectively protect biodiversity, enhance wetland carbon sink, promote renewable energy use, reduce infectious disease risks, and improve rural livelihood; and

4. Partner with local stakeholders to implement pilot practices of integrated wetland ecosystem and resource use to achieve co-benefits and improve rural sustainability.

Anticipated results/ immediate outputs of this project:
1. a set of effective integrated wetland ecosystem conservation and use options and plans is developed and implemented in domenstration area.
2. Poor people in the villages have increased capacity in sustainable resource use decision making through selecting effective and desirable options to improve biodiversity and to reduce carbon emission.
3.A wetland ecosystem health monitoring system is designed and installed to monitor the most critical ecological factors in the PYL wetland ecosystem.
4.A mini natural reserve area is established for protecting important and endangered species of submerged and floating leaf plant biodiversity and habitat.
5.A 20 cube meters biogas generator for one village school is installed to convert sewage and a variety of wastes (plant, animal and human waste) into biogas which can be efficiently used for cooking, heating, and gas lighting.
6.A 15000 m2 of fenced enclosure grazing area with a rotation grazing system is established to protect wetland biodiversity and to manage water buffalo and cattle grazing to reduce infection rates of schistosomiasis.
7. Partnerships among community representatives, NGOs, ecosystem managers, researchers are built.