Tourism Impact Management and Plan for Chinese World Heritage Sites Great Wall, Meili Snow Mountain, and Mount Huangshan

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Tourism Impact Management and Plan for Chinese
World Heritage Sites Great Wall, Meili Snow
Mountain, and Mount Huangshan

• Rui Yang
• Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

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World Heritage at China
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Case 1Issues of The Great Wall
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Brief description
Date of Inscription 1987 Criterion C
(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (vi)

• In 220 B.C., under Qin Shi Huang, sections
  of earlier walls were joined together to form a
  united defence system against invasions from the
  north. Construction continued up to the Ming
  dynasty (13681644), when the Great Wall became
  the world's largest military structure.

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• The Great Wall built during Qin Period(221206
  B.C.)

• Great Wall built during the Warring States
  Period (403221B.C.)

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• The Lesser Square Fortification, Yumenguan Pass,
  The Western Han Great Wall

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The Great Wall we find today dates back to the
Ming period. It starts from the Yalu River in the
east, stretches westward through Tianjin,
Beijing, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi,
Ningxia and Gansu, and ends at the Jiayuguan
Pass, cutting across the northern parts of China
for a distance of some 7,300 kilometrers.
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• Eastern gate tower of Shanhaiguan Pass

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• Castle at Jiayuguan Pass

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• The Great Wall on Badaling Mountain

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• The Jinshanling section, Hebei Province

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• Simatai Section, Beijing

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• Yanmenguan Pass, Shanxi Province

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Issues of Protection for GW

• Integrity Authenticity
• Carrying Capacity
• Communities
• Imperfect Laws and Regulations
• Fund

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Integrity
In 2002, some Chinese experts did a survey for
the whole Great Wall. They found that only 20
of the whole wall were kept in good condition,
less than 30 could see some evidence of the
ancient wall. That means the other 50 of the
wall are in dangerous conditions. How to keep
the integrity of the Great Wall is a big
challenge.
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Authenticity
Authenticity is also a problem I am worrying
about. From this picture you could see the
reconstruction of Juyongguan Pass. We could see
a big difference between the new one and old one.
Juyongguan Pass
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Community Issue

• Villagers Habitation in the tower of the
  Great Wall

• skin was Peeled off by locals to get bricks

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Carrying Capacity
As other popular world heritage site in China,
this picture shown the condition during the
Golden weeks. There are two golden weeks in
China, the first one is from May. 1-7, and the
second one is from the Oct. 1-7. During these
two weeks, both the heritage protection and the
visitor experience are very bad.
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• Imperfect Laws Regulations

• Illegal building near the Great Wall

• The high voltage electrical wire beside the Great
  Wall

Because of imperfect law and regulations for the
Great wall, there is no clear boundary of the
heritage and its buffer zone. As a result we
could see some mess just very close to the Great
Wall.
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Suggestions for Protecting GW

• To designate a single NP instead of numerous
  pieces
• To identify the boundary of Great Wall WH and its
  buffer area
• To set up a single government agency who take
  care of all of the management issues
• To develop a good GMP is the first step.

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Plan for Protected Area System of Beijing
The Existing System
The Planed System
Some steps have been taken to improve the
management of the great wall. For example, in
last year, the Beijing Government asked me to
develop a plan for Parks and Protected Area
System of Beijing metropolis Region. In this
plan, I suggested to protect the whole length of
the Great Wall inside the Beijing metropolis
Region, and I am happy to tell that this
suggestion has been put into the new version of
official plan, though there are still lots of
difficulties to make this dream come true at the
end.
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Recent GMP Cases for Chinese WHs

• GMP for Mount Tai World Mixed Heritage
  1999-2001,2004-
• GMP for Meili Snow Mountain NP at TPR WH,
  2002-2003
• GMP for Mount Huang World Mixed Heritage
  2002-2004
• GMP for Mount Qianhu NP at TPR WH
• GMP for Mount Laojun NP at TPR WH
• GMP for Mount Wutai Nominated World Heritage Site
• Plan for Parks and Protected Area System of
  Beijing metropolis Region

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Method and Process of GMP

• Stage 1- Survey Region, Resource, Human
  Activities, Facilities, Land-use, Communities,
  and Management Mechanism
• Stage 2- Analysis SWOT, Stakeholders Analysis
• Stage 3- Assessment Value, Resource Importance
  and Vulnerabilities
• Stage 4- Planning Objectives-Strategies-Zoning-Ac
  tion Plan
• Stage 5- Impact Analysis EIA, SIA, VIA
• Stage 6- Decision Making
• Stage 7- Monitoring and Implementation

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Case 2GMP for Meili Snow Mountain NP at Three
Parallel Rivers WH
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The three parallel rivers world heritage site is
inscribed into world heritage list in 2003, which
is evaluated by IUCN experts as one of the top
five world natural heritage sites around the
world.
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Harmony Between Man and Nature
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Setting Policy Goals and Management Objectives

• ARV Analysis of Parks Value and Resources
• ASC Analysis of Stakeholders Concerns

To fulfill the mission of the park, the first
step of the plan is to set the policy goals and
management objectives. This comes from two
analysis analysis of Parks Value and Resources,
and analysis of Stakeholders Concerns.
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Resource Assessment

• SA Significance Assessment
• VA Vulnerability Assessment

It is not enough to evaluate the significance of
the resources only the evaluation of resource
sensitivity constitutes an equally important arm.
To give a not very proper example, there are two
pandas, equal in importance, but one is in good
health and not very sensitive to the surrounding
environment while the other is in poor health and
therefore sensitive to the surrounding
environment. Given this, the carrying capacity of
the two pandas are different and so the
protection measures and intensity should vary
accordingly. And here lies the very reason for
doing resource sensitivity evaluation.
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Conservation Degree Spectrum
Bases on the resource assessment we developed a
conservation degree spectrum which is very
important to make the management policies. The
coldest color in this spectrum represents areas
with the highest level of resource significance
and sensitivity, and are therefore areas
requiring the maximum protection and minimum
utilization. The warmest part of the spectrum
represents areas with the lowest level of
resource significance and sensitivity, and are
therefore areas requiring the minimum protection
and maximum utilization. Other parts mark
in-between conditions.
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Stakeholders

• Local Communities
• County Government
• Provincial Government
• Conservation Organizations
• Central Government
• Investors

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Park Mission

• As a national park with Tibetan holy mountains,
  most important and significant natural habitats
  and rare low-latitudes and low-elevation
  glaciers, the purposes of the park are to
  preserve for scientific study, access by Tibetan
  pilgrims, Eco-tourism and cultural tourism.

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Policy Goals

• Conserving effectively the parks eco-system and
  natural and cultural resources
• Increasing the economic and social development
  level for the local communities through
  sustainable tourism
• Providing various visitor experiences to enjoy
  the parks outstanding values.

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Management Objectives

• 13 items for conservation
• 5 items for community management
• 4 items for tourism and visitor experience
  management

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Strategies Based on SWOT Analysis

• Management based on scientific research
• Alternative Energy
• Eco-tourism and Cultural Tourism
• Community Education

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Management zones

• 245 sub-zones, and 18 types of management
  policies
• Each management policy has management objectives,
  management guidelines and monitoring indicators.

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Definitions, Management Objectives and
Distribution of management zones
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Index of Management zones
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Management Policies for Human Activities

• For each category of sub-zones, 53 types of human
  Activities will be under management and control

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Management Policies for Facilities

• For each category of sub-zones, 33 types of
  facilities and infrastructures will be under
  management and control land uses
• 10 types of land uses are under control

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Case 3 GMP for Mt. Huangshan World Mixed
Heritage
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Topics in Mt. Huangshan Case Study

• Monitoring Indicators and Standards
• Visitors space-time Distribution model

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Visitor Impact Management

• The objective of visitor impact management is to
  optimize visitors experience while to minimize
  environmental impact.

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Indicators and Standards of Monitoring

• Indicators for resource conditions
• Air quality
• Air Humidity
• Soil quality measured several meters from a trial
  (road) centerline
• Nutrition status of dominant plants
• Number of indicative animals
• Indicators for social conditions
• Degree of visitor congestions
• Percentage of visitor satisfaction
• Quality of visual landscape

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Indicators and Standards of Monitoring

• Indicators and Standards for different zone
  category

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Model for Management of Visitors Space-time
Distribution

• Management strategies of visitors space-time
  distribution are different at peak season and
  other season.
• Real time monitoring system is used to manage
  visitors space-time distribution at peak season.
• Only appointed tourism products are available at
  peak reason.
• To balance the distribution of visitors at peak
  season and other season.

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Why Develop the Above Model?
Going to a fair? Visiting a world heritage?
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Model of Visitors Real-time Space-Time
Distribution
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Conclusion Experience and Lessons of Tourism
Management and Plan at Chinese World Heritage
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Three Main Factors for WH Management
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Carrying Capacity is More Than a Number

• Carrying Capacity is a process to manage the
  visitor impact
• LAC and ROS provide good tools to manage the
  visitor impact
• RPS (Resource Protection Spectrum) and RTSTM
  (Real Time Space-time Model) may provide new tool
  for managing Chinese WHs
• Indicators and standards are very important for
  the carrying capacity issue.

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Zoning

• It is very important to link zoning with the
  Value and resource evaluation
• Core to zoning is the control and management of
  human activities, facilities and land-use
• Code Map may give great help for Chinese site
  managers.

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Stakeholders

• Planning is a process of sharing common
  understanding and coordinating differences among
  the stakeholders.
• It is a basic obligation of the planner to help
  all the stakeholders understand the importance of
  heritage value and take the effective
  conservation of the heritage value as the primary
  criteria in making management policy decisions.
• the major and key stakeholders in China are local
  communities.

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Role of Heritage Value in Planning Process

• is footstone to make the policy goals
• is the benchmarks deciding to what human
  activities, built facilities and land use
  patterns are acceptable
• is the criteria to select monitoring indicators
  and standards
• is subject matters of interpretations
• Is destinations planners direct stakeholders
  common understandings to.

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Thank you