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Of the 1,157 World Heritage sites around the world to date, 94 are National Parks themselves. Many other World Heritage sites have geographic overlaps with national parks, including the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries World Heritage site, which was inscribed in 2006. Facing the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution, China launched 10 pilot national parks in 2015 as one of the key measures to build an ecological civilization and a beautiful China, and officially designated 5 of these pilot park projects as national parks in October 2021, with the Giant Panda National Park being one of them.

The development of the Sichuan section of the Giant Panda National Park gained full speed starting in 2022. The Giant Panda National Park, which spans three provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu, stretches over an area of 22,000 km2, in which 19,300 km2 (approx. 87.7% of the total area) falls within Sichuan Province, including 1.32 km2 of core protected area and 0.61 km2 under general control. The Giant Panda National Park is home to 1,340 wild giant pandas, accounting for 71.89% of its total population in China, among which 1,200 or 93% are found in the Sichuan Section. The Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, on the other hand, cover over 1.5 million hectares and 58.48% of China’s giant panda habitat.

Since as early as 2007, the very outset of the “Conservation and Management of World Heritage Sites in China” project supported by China Youth Development Foundation Mercedes-Benz Star Fund, 91�鶹������Ʒ���� been working with the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries to enhance its conservation and management capacities, support the establishment of a biodiversity monitoring and management mechanism, and raise public awareness of the conservation and sustainable development of the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, especially in the Ya’an area. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquakes in 2008 and 2013, the project undertook post-disaster assistance projects, translated and applied the volume on Managing Disaster Risks for World Heritage within the World Heritage Resource Manual Series, and enhanced awareness on World Heritage sites and communities in post-disaster recovery.

Since 2017, the project has been focusing on the balance between heritage conservation and community development and has successively piloted beekeeping in Ya’an and Wolong. The practice not only offers a source of livelihood that is beneficial to protecting the local ecosystem, but also effectively engages local residents in biodiversity monitoring. From 2021, with the support of Sichuan Forestry and Grassland Administration and Wolong Special Administrative Region Administration in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province, the project activity has leveled up to the “Panda Ambassador” pilot activity in close partnership with the UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Tourism in UNESCO Designated Sites on heritage education. The pilot activity also actively builds platforms for horizontal dialogue among pilot sites under the project, bringing new vitality into the local beekeeping cooperatives on brand-building and product marketing.

As China forges ahead with the new national park system, the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries World Heritage site and its communities are seeing new opportunities for sustainable development. Meanwhile, the project’s implementation at the site level over the past 16 years could also serve as useful platforms and references for the development of the Giant Panda National Park and the capacity enhancement of the park managers.

To share up-to-date knowledge and insights on the national park system, UNESCO, Sichuan Forestry and Grassland Administration (Giant Panda National Park Sichuan Administration), and the School of Tourism Management of Sun Yat-sen University co-organized a one-day online capacity building workshop for the Giant Panda National Park managers on 20 April 2023. It also served as an occasion to celebrate the World Earth Day (22 April). The workshop zoomed in on key themes of national park management, including community planning at national park entrances and the standardization of ecotourism management in national parks, as well as franchising, nature education and sustainable development in national parks. 105 people (49.5% women), The participants from 57 local management divisions and conservation sub-units of protected areas, including Ya’an, Wolong and Mianyang, participated in the workshop and benefited from the knowledge of many expert speakers, including Mr. QIAO Yongqiang from the National Park Research Institute of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Prof. ZHANG Chaozhi and Associate Prof. GAO Jun from the School of Tourism Management of Sun Yat-sen University, Prof. ZHANG Yujun from the National Park Research Center of Beijing Forestry University, and Prof. ZHANG Haixia from the School of Tourism and Urban-Rural Planning of Zhejiang Gongshang University.

Building upon the workshop, the project plans to strengthen collaboration with relevant counterparts in the future to further explore and promote the synergies of conservation, management and sustainable development between the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries World Heritage site and the Giant Panda National Park, and to facilitate transmission and communication of heritage values and livelihood improvement through heritage education.