Assessing the effectiveness of protecting reserves for nature assets in China

Evaluating the effectiveness of protecting nature assets is a vital component of responsive, pro-active management of protected areas. It is important to protect reserves of geological (including fossils) assets as a means to also protect national and natural heritage. At the end of 2013, 2669 protected areas had been established in China and 123 of them are reserves for nature assets. This paper builds an evaluation framework for protection effectiveness of these assets. The current elements and characteristics for effective protection are analyzed, along with an analysis of existing problems so as to construct a scientific approach to protect these assets. The influencing elements and characteristics for effective protection of nature asset reserves are included in an index evaluation system for effective protection in such areas, which contains four parts-target layer, evaluation criteria, evaluation indexes, and evaluation parameters-based on related documents and files. For the target layer, it includes nature asset evaluation and management evaluation. In the end, it is discussed how to build a comprehensive evaluation model and achieve an effective quantitative evaluation.