Schoolchildren in China’s Protected Areas from a Sustainability Perspective: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Protected areas (PAs) are an important estate for sustainable development. Children in PAs are of particular concern, as they are potential future stakeholders of this estate, yet they may be the ones affected the most by the conservation and development programs in PAs. However, knowledge on children in PAs has been very limited, which threatens the probability of the success of both nature conservation and sustainable development. In this paper, we present the findings from a questionnaire survey targeted at schoolchildren in China’s PAs. Our sample consisted of 41 primary schools across China. We looked at 22 indexes of the sample, inferred the conditions in the whole PAs using an exact binomial test, and compared them with those in other rural or urban areas in China. We found that schoolchildren in PAs are substantially disadvantaged in terms of many indexes, both in school and at home. We discuss possible reasons, link these results to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and discuss some policy implications. With this preliminary study, we hope to stimulate additional research on the conditions of children in PAs and their potential implications for sustainable development.

1. Introduction

Protected areas (PAs) are lands and waters that are legally designated and managed for long-term nature conservation [1]. The last half century has seen PAs undergo a pronounced expansion, both geographically and conceptually [2]. As of May 2023, the world’s officially designated PAs numbered 285,411, covering 15.95% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 8.16% of coastal and marine areas [3], constituting one of the remarkable types of land use on earth. PAs not only protect biodiversity and ecosystem services from the impacts of anthropogenic activities and climate change by conserving iconic landscapes and seascapes, but they also promote socioeconomic developments by sustaining local livelihoods and bolstering national economies [2,4]. By playing such a diverse set of roles in the ecological, social, and economic sectors, PAs have become an important estate for sustainable development [2,5].

Children, human beings below the age of eighteen years according to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, are future decision-makers and potential stakeholders in actions toward a sustainable future [6]. The importance of children to a sustainable future cannot be overemphasized. For instance, among the 232 indicators of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 44, or nearly 19 percent, are child-related. No other people in specific age groups receive such high attention in the SDGs’ indicator framework. Children living in PAs are of particular concern, as they are an important part of the PAs and may be the ones affected the most by the conservation and development programs implemented there due to their young age and vulnerability. Yet those children’s education, knowledge, experience, lifestyle, and cognition of nature and attitude toward it shall have far-reaching implications, both for nature conservation and our common future [7,8,9,10]. The status of children living in PAs must be investigated, comprehended, and cared for if the long-term success of nature conservation and a sustainable future are to be expected [1,11].

However, in the literature, there are only a few studies involving both PAs and the children near them and fewer studies on children in them. Our knowledge on children in PAs, therefore, has been very limited. Below, we summarize major findings from those studies. The dietary diversity and nutritional status of children are positively associated with proximity to marine protected areas [12,13]; deforestation in protected areas reduces the likelihood of infant (children in the first year of life) mortality but increases it for children born from first pregnancies [14]; childhood (under 5 years old) stunting was negatively associated with distance to PAs [15], but children living near multiple-use PAs with tourism had higher height-for-age scores and were less likely to be stunted than similar children living far from PAs [16]; schoolchildren, especially boys, in villages near to PAs showed reduced scholastic achievement and school attendance [17,18]; and children (ages 6–16) in PAs had a significantly lower rate of growth in school attendance than those outside of the protected areas [19]. In addition, schoolchildren living near PAs can contribute to nature conservation and scientific research by collecting valuable mammal-monitoring data using camera traps while connecting with nature and learning through their own scientific discoveries [20]. These studies provide valuable information on the conditions of children near or in PAs, primarily from the perspective of health or education. A linkage connecting those conditions to the SDGs is still missing. In this paper, we present the general conditions of schoolchildren in China’s PAs and link them to SDGs.

China has >11.8 thousand PAs with a total area of more than 1.7 million km², which is about the combined land area of England, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Spain. Based on a study on population distribution in China’s nature reserves [21], we estimated that approximately 3.7 million children are living in these PAs. Relevant studies on China’s PAs have largely focused on the household level, e.g., [22], with little attention paid to children. In this article, our goal is to provide a portrayal of the conditions of schoolchildren in school and at home and link those conditions to SDGs. We look at schools because they are where students spend most of their time, and the conditions there may greatly affect children’s knowledge of and behavior toward nature, which are at the roots of a sustainable future [8,23,24]. We also look at the conditions at home because they complete the whole picture of children’s daily life and may signal the PAs’ adequacy or inadequacy in achieving SDGs. The main motive of this paper is to call attention to a particular yet important group of people, children in PAs. With this report, we hope to stimulate additional research on the conditions of children in PAs and on the linkages between those conditions and sustainable development.

2. Materials and Methods

We focused on primary school students aged about 6 to 12 years old, living in national nature reserves, one major type of China’s PAs that occupies nearly 58 percent of the total protected area in China. We selected >100 national nature reserves from the list of China’s nature reserves published by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, considering their location, area, and type. We found at least one primary school within each reserve using the Baidu Map (https://map.baidu.com/ (accessed on 1 October 2019)), one of the popular search engines in China. Following [6], where important topics on children, such as nutrition, education, sanitation, and safety, were discussed, we designed a questionnaire that consisted of 22 multiple-choice questions, each representing an index for one of these aspects of school or home conditions (Supplementary Material S1). We posted the questionnaire on an online survey website (https://www.wjx.cn (accessed on 1 November 2019)) and sent the principal of each primary school a letter in which we enclosed a two-dimensional code (namely, Quick Response Code, or QR code). By scanning the code using WeChat, a popular social media application that almost everybody in China installs on her or his mobile phone, the principal was redirected to the website to complete the questionnaire. We surveyed from November to December 2019.

We collected back 41 questionnaires from 41 primary schools in 41 national nature reserves across China. These reserves have a total area of 451.85 km², or approximately 8.6 percent of China’s national nature reserves in number and 4.6 percent in area. A list of these reserves and a map of their distribution across China are provided in Supplementary Material S2. We compiled our data in Microsoft Office Excel and inferred relevant percentages and their respective 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using an exact binomial test in RStudio [25]. To compare the conditions in PAs with those in other rural or urban areas, we collected data for those areas from documents and yearbooks published by relevant ministries such as the Ministry of Education and the National Bureau of Statistics. We designed our indexes to reveal the general conditions of schoolchildren in school and at home (

Table 1. Twenty-two indexes, their interpretations, and statistics.

Conditions	Indexes	Index Interpretations	Percentages in the Sample (%)	95% CIs for Percentages in PAs (%)
In school	1	School size ≤ 300 students	56.1	(39.7, 71.5)
	2	Student-to-teacher ratio ≤ 15:1	78.1	(62.4, 89.4)
	3	Salary of intern teachers ≤ USD 571 per month	90.9	(70.8, 98.9)
	4	Enrollment rate > 99%	97.6	(87.1, 99.9)
	5	Dropout rate ≤ 1%	100.0	(91.4, 100)
	6	Access to Internet available	36.6	(22.1, 53.1)
	7	Flush toilets available	73.2	(57.1, 85.8)
	8	Expenditure on lunch ≤ USD 0.71	48.8	(32.9, 64.9)
	9	No safe drinking water	7.3	(1.5, 19.9)
	10	No medical services	51.2	(35.1, 67.1)
	11	No conservation educational programs	24.4	(12.4, 40.3)
	12	Students’ awareness of ecosystem functions little or very little	65.9	(49.4, 79.9)
At home	13	Per capita income ≤ USD 1429/y	73.2	(57.1, 85.8)
	14	Medical services available ≤ 1 km	17.1	(7.2, 32.1)
	15	Medical services poor quality	39.0	(24.2, 55.5)
	16	Home-to-school distance ≥ 3 km	53.7	(37.4, 69.3)
	17	Home-to-school time ≥ 1 h	26.8	(14.2, 42.9)
	18	Home-to-school not safe	12.2	(4.1, 26.2)
	19	Left-behind children ≥ 10%	73.2	(57.1, 85.8)
	20	Heavy reliance on PAs	31.7	(18.1, 48.1)
	21	Environmentally unfriendly forms of reliance	75.6	(59.7, 87.6)
	22	Large or very large degree of children’s involvement in income-generating activities	26.8	(14.2, 42.9)

), rather than to directly measure the progress toward SDGs; therefore, these indexes are not the same as the indicators used in the global indicator framework for SDGs [26]. In addition, rather than constructing a single index of general conditions based on the 22 indexes, we analyzed each of the indexes separately to allow for a clear interpretation of each index and to provide the convenience to compare with existing indexes, a method used in some other studies [16].

3. Results

Table 1 summarizes the 22 indexes and displays their percentages in the sample and the 95% CIs of their percentages in the population. (For our purposes in this study, the population is all primary schools in China’s protected areas when we infer the children’s conditions in school, and it is all of the protected areas in China when we infer the children’s conditions at home because we asked principals to evaluate conditions at home from the whole protected area level.) Figure 1 provides comparisons between PAs and other areas in terms of four indexes. The other indexes cannot be directly compared due to data availability. We discuss each index below. Technical details, including the R codes for the CI estimations, R codes for Figure 1 and Figure 2, and the details of exact binomial tests are provided in Supplementary Material S3.

3.1. Interpretation of Results

The results in Table 1 are straightforward to interpret. We use index 1, namely school size ≤ 300 students, as an example. Other indexes can be interpreted similarly. The percentage of primary schools with a size of 300 or fewer students in our sample was 56.1 percent. This is also an estimate of the percentage of schools with such a size in all of China’s PAs. The 95% confidence interval for this percentage was 39.7–71.5%. Below, we provide a detailed interpretation of each index and compare the index with other areas when the data are available.

3.2. Conditions in School

At least 39.7% (and up to 71.5%) of primary schools in PAs (PSPAs) have 300 or fewer students, while the average school size in China is 412 students in the nation and 478 students in urban areas [27]. This indicates that PSPAs are typically small. The small school size, in turn, leads to the result that the student-to-teacher ratio in PSPAs is typically 15:1 or fewer. This compares to the ratios of 16.85:1 in the nation and 18:1 in urban areas [27]. This result certainly does not indicate the abundance of teachers in PSPAs, but rather, it is attributed to the small number of students.

We defined intern teachers as teachers in their first year as a teacher. Their salary may serve as an indicator of the school’s attractiveness and education quality. There were at least 70.8% (and up to 98.9%) of PSPAs where intern teachers had a salary of USD 571 (4000 Chinese yuan) or less per month, which is dwarfed by the national level of USD 833, which we estimated based on [28].

The enrollment rates of boys (which are the same for girls) in PAs were significantly lower than the national level of 99.94% (p < 0.05. Figure 1A) [27]. All schools reported a dropout rate of less than 1% for boys (and the same for girls). However, 7 out of the 41 schools (or 17.1 percent) did report the occurrence of dropouts in their school, indicating that dropouts may not be uncommon in PSPAs.

The percentage of PSPAs where students had access to the Internet was significantly lower than the rural areas’ level of 65.7% and the urban level of 83.0% (p < 0.01. Figure 1B) [29].

The percentage of PSPAs that had flush toilets was significantly lower than the rural areas’ level of 90%, which we estimated based on [30] (p < 0.01, Figure 1C).

We did not find available data for other indexes to form a comparison. We describe those indexes by underlining the lower bound of each of their percentage’s 95% CI (Table 1).

There were at least 32.9% of PSPAs where students spent an average of USD 0.71 (5 Chinese yuan) or less on lunch.

At least 1.5% of PSPAs had no safe drinking water.

At least 35.1% of PSPAs had no medical offices to provide students and teachers with medical services.

At least 12.4% of PSPAs did not have educational programs about the functions/services of the local nature reserve. Moreover, there were at least 49.4% of PSPAs where students had little or very little awareness of the functions/services their local nature reserve provides.

3.3. Conditions at Home

The percentage of PAs where the per capita income was USD 1429 (10,000 Chinese yuan) or less per year is at least 57.1%. This contrasts sharply with the USD 2288 in rural areas and the USD 6051 in urban areas in China [31].

The percentage of PAs where students had medical services available within 1 km of their home was significantly lower than those in rural areas and urban areas, which were 53.1% and 62.5%, respectively (p < 0.01. Figure 1D) [32]. There were at least 24.2% of PAs where the quality of medical services near students’ homes was considered poor or very poor.

At least 37.4% of PAs had an average home-to-school distance of 3 km or longer, there were at least 14.2% of PAs where students needed at least one hour to go from home to school, and there were at least 4.1% of PAs where students were not safe on their way to school.

Left-behind children are children whose parents are both working out of their hometown, or one works out of the hometown and the other is incapable of taking care of the children due to illness or disabilities. There were at least 57.1% of PAs where the percentage of left-behind students was 10% or greater. Children who are left-behind face more challenges in various aspects, such as education, health, and safety [30].

There were at least 18.1% of PAs where residents relied or heavily relied on the resources from the PA. There were at least 59.7% of PAs where residents’ income-generating activities took forms that may have negative impacts on the protected area, including crop planting, livestock husbandry, and resource collecting (such as Chinese traditional medicines and mushrooms). Moreover, there were at least 14.2% of PAs where primary school students participate in those income-generating activities to a large or very large degree.

4. Possible Reasons

Many correlated factors may interact in a complex way to affect the general conditions of schoolchildren in PAs. Here, we offer qualitative analyses of three of them.

Financial status of local governments. In China, PAs are typically directly managed by relevant bureaus affiliated with local county-level governments [33]. These local governments are the major financial sponsor for both the conservation and the development activities in PAs [34]. These governments’ financial status can be deterministic for the conditions in PAs, including schools, transportation, sanitation, and medical services [35,36]. We used per capita GDP (gross domestic product) as an indicator of local governments’ financial status. Based on our sample, we estimated that the average per capita GDP in China’s PAs in 2019 was USD 5200 (95% CI: USD 4643–USD 5757), or only about one half of the per capita GDP in the nation, which was USD 10,129 in 2019. Their embarrassing financial status makes it unlikely that children in PAs have appropriate conditions, either in school or at home.

Location of protected areas. China’s PAs are typically located in far, often mountainous areas, where rough geographic features make it difficult to transport people into and out of the PAs [37,38]. Mountains, jungles, valleys, and rivers may make the PAs pristine and beautiful, but they certainly make human activities and economic development much more difficult and severely impact the conditions of schools and residential communities. “Getting out of the mountains” has been the dream of many generations of people.

Conservation programs. The impact of conservation programs on local livelihoods has been a topic that is contentious and widely debated [39,40,41]. While PAs may benefit local people by various means such as employment or ecotourism, some studies have found that conservation programs restrict local households’ abilities to expand and diversify their agriculture [39]; limit human activities, and, therefore, can harm local economic development [42]; and often lead to the displacement of residents, which alters their livelihoods, usually for worse [43]. Research has also shown that PAs distribute fortune and misfortune unevenly [42] and that the payments for ecosystem service (PES) programs can actually increase income inequality among households participating in the programs [44]. These impacts may channel down to affect children’s conditions, both in school and at home.

5. Linking the Indexes to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are interlinked and integrated in nature. We only link to nine of them which we consider directly related to our indexes. We exclude other SDGs, such as SDG7 (affordable and clean energy) and SDG13 (climate action), as they are not related to the indexes used in this paper. By linking the indexes to SDGs, we construct a network that shows the relationship between the indexes and the SDGs, and, therefore, we can provide an overview of the conditions of schoolchildren in China’s PAs from a sustainability perspective.

Figure 2 is a network graph showing the detailed linkages between our indexes and the nine SDGs. (We generated this network graph in RStudio using the package ‘igraph’. Detailed R codes are provided in Supporting Information S3.) In Figure 2, an index can link to one or multiple goals, and a goal can be linked by one or multiple indexes, reflecting the interlinking relationship between our indexes and the SDGs. An arrow links an index to a specific goal, indicating that schoolchildren’s situation may signal a negative in achieving that goal in terms of that index. For instance, an arrow links index 6 (access to Internet) to SDG4 (quality education), indicating that schoolchildren in China’s PAs do not have adequate access to Internet and that this inadequacy of access to Internet may be an obstacle to the progress toward SDG4. The more indexes linked to a goal, the more significant that goal is in showing the disadvantages of schoolchildren (and the less likely that the goal may be achieved). SDG4 (quality education) is the goal linked by the greatest number of indexes, which is nine (indexes 3, 6, 4, 18, 16, 17, 5, 12, and 11). Specifically, the salary of intern teachers (index 3), enrollment and dropout rates (indexes 4 and 5), access to Internet (index 6), conservation education programs and children’s awareness of ecosystem services (indexes 11 and 12), and home-to-school distance, time, and safety (indexes 16, 17 and 18) all indicate the disadvantages of schoolchildren in PAs from the perspective of SDG4 (quality education), and they may also reveal the deficiency of China’s PAs in meeting the goal of SDG4 from the children’s point of view.

Figure 2. A network graph showing the 20 indexes (numbers in blue small circles) and 9 Sustainable Development Goals (numbers preceded by an ‘SDG’ in green circles and red circles). An arrow linking an index to a specific SDG indicates that achieving that goal may be challenging in terms of the children’s condition represented by that index. A goal was marked red when it was linked by six or more indexes. The graph does not include indexes 1 and 2 because they do not indicate disadvantages of children in PAs. Other SDGs, such as SDG7 (affordable and clean energy) and SDG13 (climate action), are excluded, as they are not related to the indexes used in this paper.

Figure 2. A network graph showing the 20 indexes (numbers in blue small circles) and 9 Sustainable Development Goals (numbers preceded by an ‘SDG’ in green circles and red circles). An arrow linking an index to a specific SDG indicates that achieving that goal may be challenging in terms of the children’s condition represented by that index. A goal was marked red when it was linked by six or more indexes. The graph does not include indexes 1 and 2 because they do not indicate disadvantages of children in PAs. Other SDGs, such as SDG7 (affordable and clean energy) and SDG13 (climate action), are excluded, as they are not related to the indexes used in this paper.

Following SDG4 are SDG9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), which is linked by eight indexes (indexes 16, 17, 18, 7, 14, 9, 15, and 10); SDG3 (good health and well-being), which is linked by seven indexes (15, 9, 10, 14, 8, 22, and 19); and SDG10 (reduced inequality), which is linked by six indexes (13, 14, 7, 4, 3, and 6). We have marked these four goals with a red color to highlight their significance (and also the urgency to pay attention to them). SDG6 (clean water and sanitation) is linked by five indexes, SDG1 (no poverty) by four indexes, SDG2 (zero hunger) and SDG16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions) by two indexes each, and SDG12 (responsible consumption and production) by one index. Again, these numbers of indexes serve as an indicator of the individual SDGs’ significance in showing the disadvantages of schoolchildren in China’s PAs. The greater the number, the more significant that respective goal is.

Figure 2 also shows the number of goals each index is linked to. Index 14 (medical services available ≤ 1 km) is linked to the greatest number of SDGs, which is four (SDG3, SDG6, SDG9, and SDG10). Seven indexes (22, 15, 9, 10, 8, 13, and 7) are each linked to three SDGs. For instance, index 22 (large or very large degree of children’s involvement in income-generating activities) is linked to SDG16, SDG3, and SDG1. Another seven indexes (19, 18, 17, 16, 4, 6, and 3) are each linked to two SDGs. For instance, index 19 (left-behind children ≥ 10%) is linked to SDG16 and SDG3. The remaining five indexes (20, 21, 11, 12, and 5) are each linked to one SDG. For instance, index 5 (dropout rate ≤ 1%) is linked to SDG4. The number of SDGs an index is linked to may indicate the importance of that index in achieving SDGs. The greater the number, the more important the index is. This may be useful in identifying investment priorities to help to achieve SDGs in a resource-efficient manner. For example, investing in index 14 (medical services available ≤ 1 km) may help to achieve four SDGs, namely SDG3 (good health and well-being), SDG6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), and SDG10 (reduced inequality), while investing in index 21 (environmentally unfriendly forms of reliance) may achieve only one (SDG12: responsible consumption and production).

6. Policy Implications

6.1. Inter-Sectorial Cooperation

In China’s protected areas, both nature conservation and upward socioeconomic mobility are expected, which calls for integrated planning and collaboration between multiple sectors. China has established a new National Park Administration to take over the administration of PAs from multiple ministries [45,46]. This new agency must collaborate with other ministries, such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the Ministry of Transport, and stakeholders from other sectors, including industry, academia, and non-governmental organizations, in designing and coordinating the conservation and development programs in PAs.

6.2. Investment in Education

Quality education enables people to break the cycle of poverty. Conditions in schools in China’s PAs are generally poor, and conservation education, in particular, has largely been ignored. Although China’s investment in PAs has greatly increased with its rapid economic growth, many PAs still do not have sufficient funds to cover their operation and maintenance costs [47], and, importantly, it is not clear how much of this investment goes to children’s education. China must secure, allocate, and monitor its investment in PAs, not only to ensure a functioning PAs system but also to promote children’s education. Education may also be gauged to include other residents in addition to children. Residents in PAs where the settlements are typically featured by a gemeinschaft cultural environment may have a strong sense of attachment to their protected area [48]. Nature conservation and other sustainability education, therefore, may be especially effective for them. That could be a good way to improve sustainability in PAs.

6.3. Inequality Mitigation

Although it has been shown that China’s nature conservation programs have greatly improved provisions of critical ecosystem services and increased rural livelihoods [47,49], we found that children in PAs are generally disadvantaged compared with those living outside of them. These inequalities are partly historical, considering that PAs are typically located in far rural areas where poverty often stands out as a prominent issue [42,50], but they may also be due to the socioeconomic impacts of conservation programs on local people. Following this line, social equity, social justice, and human rights have become important dimensions in nature conservation [51,52,53]. It is not right that PAs provide an enormous amount of ecosystem services to society while children in them are disadvantaged and left behind. Inequity must be adequately mitigated to achieve conservation outcomes and, meanwhile, promote sustainable development [54].

7. Concluding Remarks

We found that schoolchildren in China’s PAs are substantially disadvantaged in terms of many aspects both in school and at home. These children’s conditions may indicate the inadequacy of China’s PAs in meeting the SDGs discussed in this study. Governments and nongovernmental organizations must work cooperatively in the systematic planning of PAs, with children as a special concern. It has been shown that children in underdeveloped rural areas in China are disadvantaged. For example, returning migrant students have very limited access to educational resources in their rural hometowns [55], and rural children have significantly fewer opportunities to go to college than urban children [56]. Our study contributes by showing that children in PAs are even more disadvantaged than those in rural areas and linking their conditions to the SDGs.

There are several limitations of this study. First, a sample size of 41 is small. Although this is large enough to do a binomial test, a larger sample would certainly deliver more accurate results. Second, we asked the principals of schools to also evaluate their students’ conditions at home (in addition to the conditions in school that they presumably knew well). A survey targeted directly at individual households might bring more detailed and accurate data for conditions at home. (However, our method may still be valid because of two reasons. First, the principals were typically residents of PAs or had worked in them for years and, therefore, were familiar with local livelihoods. Moreover, secondly, in the questionnaire, the principals selected a specific range of values or selected a qualitative description (instead of providing a specific quantitative value. See Supporting Information S1). Therefore, the possibility of obtaining biased responses should have been minimized to the greatest extent possible). Finally, third, the connections of our indexes to the SDGs are quite qualitative. We linked an index to a goal if we decided that they were related (for instance, we considered that the nine indexes mentioned above, including index 3: salary of intern teachers, index 4: enrollment rate, etc., were all related to SDG4: quality education). A more proper way would be quantitatively link or compare the index with the specific goal when data availability allows.

This is a preliminary study that looks at the conditions of schoolchildren in PAs and links them to the SDGs (and the first such study, to the authors’ knowledge). We call for more studies on children in PAs. Future studies might investigate the driving factors or causal mechanisms for these children’s disadvantages, link them to the probability of success in nature conservation and sustainable development, quantify impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children in PAs, and, perhaps more importantly, develop a strategy to improve these children’s well-being.