China's bureaucracy hinders environmental recovery.

Ecosystem restoration efforts have become a booming business in China. Billions of dollars are being spent annually to restore polluted waterways and ecosystems that have been degraded, fragmented, or paved over (Fu et al. 2007; Wang et al. 2007). However, China’s environmental sustainability index remains among the lowest in the world (World Bank 2009; Liu 2010). For all the money spent, there is little evidence of the overall effectiveness of China’s efforts to enhance environmental sustainability. For example, soil erosion by water has expanded to cover more than an additional 1,000 km of land annually over the past 30 years (Wan et al. 2005). More than 60% of China’s large lakes are eutrophic, and the water quality has declined in [50% of its rivers (Fu et al. 2007). Recent water assessments suggest that pollution has been increasing in northern China, and a water crisis is, therefore, emerging. Water resource problems alone cost 2.3% of China’s GDP in 2008 (World Bank 2009). It is important to ask why such large costs and efforts are not ‘‘turning the tide’’. Many factors have contributed to the grave challenges facing environmental restoration in China. The burden of a large population, combined with unevenly distributed natural resources and environmental carrying capacity, has severely limited the options for effective environmental management. However, the distribution of the ecological damage is complex, and its driving forces are often unique and vary widely from situation to situation. In this article, we have examined a neglected aspect of China’s environmental management efforts by analyzing the interactions among government policies related to environmental protection and management. We illustrate how humans create problems when they try to wring more out of an ecosystem than it can sustainably provide. Our examples are relevant to many other countries, and particularly to developing countries that are facing problems similar to those in China.