Theoretical Justification, International Comparison, and System Optimization for Comprehensive Supervision of Natural Resource Assets in China

Abstract

Natural resource assets inherently integrate tripartite synthesis of legal, economic, and ecological attributes. They serve dual critical functions as foundational elements supporting the evolution of new-quality productive forces and pivotal mechanisms safeguarding ecosystemic integrity. It has become a global consensus and direction of action to advance comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets and practice the concept of “Community of Life for Human and Nature”. Under the background of the super-ministry system restructuring in China, comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets remains challenged by system fragmentation in supervision objectives and multifaceted interest conflicts among stakeholders. In light of this, this research focuses on the theoretical justification and system optimization of the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in China. Using comparative analysis and normative analysis methods, we validate the system’s function on the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets, summarize foreign experiences, and ultimately aim to explore the optimization pathway of the legal system for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets. The results show the following: (1) The choice of the legal system for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets emerges as the functional product aligning societal objectives, the rational paradigm for achieving efficient resource allocation, and the adaptive response to the external effects of common property. (2) The system supply of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in foreign countries is characterized by normative convergence in conceptual elements and typological categorization in objectives and objects. Therefore, this research recommends that, in order to optimize the system of the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in China, (1) in terms of protection of source, natural resource assets should be categorized, with operational natural resource assets focusing on management and public welfare natural resource assets focusing on conservation. (2) In terms of valuation, the economic valuation of natural resource assets should be integrated with ecosystem service assessments to enhance fair market equity. (3) In terms of method, the big data center should be established to enable the synergistic integration of technological innovation and system reforms. (4) In terms of subject, requiring the participation of various government departments, non-governmental organizations, the general public, and other parties could realize the connection of different legal bases for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets and the balance of multiple rights and interests, which should help to achieve balanced resource efficiency and biodiversity conservation and safeguard national ecological security.

1. Introduction

1.1. Background

The Civil Code of China, which came into effect on 1 January 2021, the first law named “Code” in China, provides an opportunity for the codification of reforms of various sectoral laws. In 2025, the Ecological Environmental Code of China codification entered a critical phase. Under the system of “Environmental Law Integration Theory”, natural resource law constitutes an essential part of this codification process. “A moderated codification approach” is recommended for legal norms governing resource utilization, for which specific laws operate as supplementary statutes attached to the Ecological Environmental Code [1]. As an important material basis for human survival and development, natural resource assets are not only an integral part of the natural ecology, but also a key element of material wealth for promoting economic growth and safeguarding national interests. As external public resources, incoherent collective supervision of these assets may lead to abuse and ecological degradation, ultimately thus resulting in the “tragedy of the commons”. At present, carbon emission due to excessive exploitation and consumption of natural resources is inevitable. However, a high-quality supervision system could lessen the harmful influence of the volatility of natural resource assets on climate quality [2]. Furthermore, as the core element carrier of new quality productive forces, natural resource assets are not only the material carrier and spatial foundation for economic and social development, but also strategic resources that support the iterative upgrading of new quality productive forces. Their endowment status, allocation efficiency, and sustainable utilization status directly affect the degree of release of the combined efficiency of production factors. The comprehensive supervision level of natural resource assets not only concerns the sustained development of the social economy and the effectiveness of ecological civilization construction, but also profoundly influences the high-quality development of new quality productive forces.

Since the establishment of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Ecological Environment of China in 2018, comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets has become a system imperative. Article 2 of the Comprehensive Management Regulations on Agricultural Natural Resources of Hubei Province of China clearly defines comprehensive management as follows: “Conduct comprehensive investigation, monitoring, evaluation, zoning planning of agricultural natural resources, as well as coordinate and supervise the development, utilization and protection of agricultural natural resources.” Supervision, governance, and management are complementary yet distinct from one another. Management pays more attention to what will be done when pursuing the achievement of goals, as well as the methods and actions taken to achieve the goals. Governance places more emphasis on the objectives and methods of decision-making, subjects of authority, power, and responsibility [3]. Supervision lies between them, which not only involves the control of public power subjects, but also requires the supervision of the exercise of public power by private rights subjects such as the public. In other words, supervision means multiple entities jointly supervise social security.

Supervision models for natural resource assets can be classified into different types based on various criteria. Among them, based on the number of supervisory subjects participating, they can be divided into unilateral supervision and multiple supervision. Based on the overall supervisory methods of various natural resource assets, they can be classified into decentralized supervision and comprehensive supervision. Decentralized supervision means that the supervision of various natural resource assets is under the jurisdiction of multiple departments. Comprehensive supervision means that it is uniformly coordinated by one department, which is the Ministry of Natural Resources. The scope of comprehensive supervision is relatively broad, including supervision and management, and it is often combined with multiple supervision to better play its role.

Currently, the supervision model for natural resource assets in China is in the transitional stage from decentralized supervision to comprehensive supervision, and the legal system for comprehensive supervision has basically taken shape. However, there are still many practical problems with its specific implementation. In addition, natural resource assets possess legal, economic, and ecological attributes. After the initial establishment of the system, it is still necessary to combine international practical experience. At each stage of the operation of the comprehensive supervision system, including the source, assessment, methods, and other links, specific optimization mechanisms should be established. Therefore, the optimization and improvement of the system after its establishment is the main focus of this article.

1.2. Literature Review

Current research on the supervision systems for natural resource assets is relatively abundant. Classified by research fields, the field of economics mainly includes the following: the impacts of natural resource management and agricultural economy on sustainable development [4], the implementation of the balance sheet of natural resources [5], the economic assessment of the management of specific resources assets, such as water resources [6] and sea turtle resources [7], and the natural capital accounting of land resources [8] and water resources [9]. The field of law mainly focuses on the perfection of property rights regimes for natural resources [10], the system reforms in management of natural resources [11], the conceptual governance systems of natural resources [12], and localized conservation governance of natural resources [13]. Classified by research perspective, with the participants as the perspective, other studies examined the impact of the depth of knowledge and the degree of participation of stakeholders on sustainable development [14,15]. With globalization as the perspective, the government in BRICS (acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, and China) proposed they should promote international association through economic, political, and social globalization along with green technology innovations to achieve sustainable economic growth [16]. With the digital economy as the perspective, development and construction ideas for the natural resources big data center [17,18,19] were proposed, and the importance of transitioning to ecologically sound control of natural assets and innovations in finance like digital banking for environmentally friendly growth was emphasized [20].

Based on the background of the super-ministry system restructuring and codification in China, some scholars have also proposed enhancing comprehensive supervision mechanisms for natural resources [21]. The value objectives of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets should include process-oriented, multi-participation asset accretion and technological innovation [22]. However, the existing supervision system remains based on resource-specific categorization, informed by natural resource assets’ specific laws such as the Forest Law, the Grassland Law, and the Land Management Law, which have yet to break out of the habitual mindset of decentralized supervision and have failed to satisfy the demand for the comprehensive supervision of the super-ministry system. In addition, there are institutional obstacles, insufficient representation of stakeholders, cross-departmental conflicts, and other challenges [23] which also pose obstacles to the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets. The system optimization of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets should be anchored in core elements of each stage of the system framework, systematically optimizing through source conservation, transaction evaluation, methodological innovation, and multi-participation to ensure national ecological security, respond to the requirements for the supervision of natural resource assets in the digital economy era, balance the rights and interests of multiple stakeholders, and maintain the overall coherence of the natural resource legal system.

1.3. Methods

1.3.1. Literature Analysis

This paper systematically reviews and consolidates the basic theories through analyzing the relevant domestic and foreign literature; the literature mainly comes from the China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI) and Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). The search time range is from 2010 to 2025, and the keywords include “natural resources”, “natural resource assets”, “natural resource management”, “comprehensive supervision”, etc. The criteria for literature screening are peer-reviewed academic journal papers, authoritative legal monographs, and policy research reports. The specific analysis focuses on the following two aspects: (1) First, we review the domestic and foreign literature about the model, system reform, and reform achievements for supervision of natural resource assets, and analyze the institutional functions of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets. (2) Second, in light of the current background of the super-ministry system restructuring in China, this paper sorts out and summarizes the legal system status and local governance practices regarding the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in the existing research, providing a theoretical basis for the optimization and improvement of the comprehensive supervision system.

1.3.2. Normative Analysis

This article adopts the normative analysis method to evaluate the current legal norms for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in China, through the structured approach of “identifying problems–analyzing problems–solving problems” in the subject of law. The materials mainly come from the Peking University Law Internet. Specific research includes the following: (1) First, we conduct an investigation and study on the current status of the supervision system for natural resource assets in China, and sort out the provisions related to the supervision of natural resource assets in current laws and regulations of China, such as the Marine Environmental Protection Law, the Mineral Resources Law, the Grassland Law, the Forest Law, the Water Law, etc. Subsequently, we analyze the institutional loopholes existing in the current decentralized supervisory model in terms of the coordination of supervisory responsibilities among various departments, coordination of stakeholders, and the connection of laws and regulations at different legal hierarchies. (2) Second, relying on the transition process from decentralized supervision to comprehensive supervision, we conduct an analysis of the normative structure, with a focus on the phased realization of the system optimization for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in China. Optimization suggestions are put forward from the perspectives of source conservation, transaction assessment, methodological innovation, and multi-participation, aiming to establish a comprehensive supervision system for natural resource assets which is scientific, reasonable, highly operational, and fully adaptable to the development of modern digital technologies.

1.3.3. Comparative Analysis

This paper summarizes the conceptual elements of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets internationally through the comparative analysis method, aiming to introduce advanced foreign experiences and form an international comparative perspective on the system optimization in China. The current status of laws and regulations in various countries and other materials mainly come from the official websites of the United Union Climate Change, the United States Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (USDA), the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries of Japan (MAFF), etc. The selection of research subjects is based on the maturity of the legal system and the independence of the system, as well as the openness and completeness of data acquisition. The dimensions of the comparative analysis of the concept of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets include but are not limited to the following: nature, goals and goal trade-offs, principles and concepts, subjective or objects and relational patterns, objects and object relations, supervision or research actions, supervision methods or techniques or tools, the supervision process, resources or capital and allocation mechanisms, and performance evaluation. The key point lies in summarizing the conceptual element framework of the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets all over the world, analyzing its characteristics of categorization, and comparing them with the practice of that in China, providing comparative legal supports for Chinese system optimization for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets.

2. The Theoretical Justification for Comprehensive Supervision of Natural Resource Assets in China

Coase posited that “the delineation of rights constitutes a prerequisite for market transactions” [24]. Building on the Separation of Powers theory, the ownership of natural resource assets give rise to right to use and right to regulate, to form a trilateral systemic whole of “foundation–configuration–supervision”.

2.1. The Rights System and the Subject’s Ownership of Natural Resource Assets

The rights system governing natural resource assets can be structured into three tiers: static ownership, dynamic use, and supervision rights. The ownership of natural resource assets is a bundle of incidents, including possession, use, profit, and disposition functions. The possession function bifurcates into direct and indirect possession, while the use and profit functions could be interpreted in an expanded way through interpretive adaptation to public goods and ecological attributes, ultimately extending to cover the development, management, conservation, and governance functions. Within the property rights system of natural resource assets, the right to ownership differentiates structurally into three dimensions: the direct possession, development, and operation functions give rise to the right to use of natural resource assets, while the conservation and management functions transform into the right to supervision of natural resource assets with the attributes of public law, and the indirect possession and disposition functions are retained by the right to ownership of natural resource assets, illustrated in Figure 1. “The universal principle in property law tells that any valuable resource must be owned by a particular subject” [25]. Natural resource assets encompass multifaceted value attributes, and the subject of their rights therefore also presents multiple composite characteristics. This inherent complexity poses significant challenges in constructing legally coherent systems for rights attribution.

2.1.1. Holder of the Right to Ownership—State or Collective

The legal system governing natural resource asset ownership is primarily defined under the “Constitution”, in the “Property Rights” part in the Civil Code, and various single laws and specific supervision regulations of China. Articles 9 and 10 of the Constitution of China establish constitutional principles for the ownership of natural resource assets: state or collective ownership prevails, with private ownership not explicitly recognized. Exclusive state ownership applies to mineral deposits, water resources, and urban land, while forests, mountains, grasslands, wastelands, and tidal flats adopt a dual ownership structure (state or collective). State ownership of natural resources aims to ensure sustainable development, which is essentially a legal expression of public ownership [26]. Possession in collective ownership is a form of secondary attribution, which is regarded as a form of temporary ownership, and it is a fact relationship in which the possessor is directly protected while indirectly safeguarding the owner, who is not in present possession, as well as the economy of the society as a whole [27]. Articles 246 to 251 of the “Property Rights” part in the Civil Code of China basically follow the provisions of the previous Property Law of China, with the addition of state ownership over uninhabited islands. The state or collective ownership of natural resource assets can avoid disputes over the rights of different subjects within a country.

The foundation of ownership arises from the societal need to maximize production [28]. State or collective ownership of natural resource assets is based more on the need for management, with the state and collectives holding nominal titles yet exercising only indirect possession and disposition functions. The state does not create natural resources and lacks formative input into their inherent characteristics. Instead, it functions as an institutional steward, safeguarding sustainable valorization from national interest perspectives by pursuing commercial utilization pathways and redistributing benefits to entitled stakeholders. The state functions as a caretaker rather than direct user of natural resource assets. The exercise of its rights must also be channeled through the representative of the state or the collectivity, the “Government”, the specific implementing agency for the realization of the powers or rights of the state. In terms of the concrete realization of ownership of natural resource assets, ownership is exercised on behalf of the state by the State Council and local governments at all levels. For example, Article 2 of the Land Administration Law of China designates the State Council as the national representative for state-owned land; Article 3 of the Mineral Resources Law of China vests mineral resource ownership in the State Council; Article 3 of the Water Law of China assigns water resource ownership to the State Council; and Article 3 of the Sea Area Use Management Law of China authorizes the State Council to administer maritime territorial rights. Whether the authority or rights of the state over natural resource assets can be effectively safeguarded depends directly on the effectiveness of the work of governments at all levels.

2.1.2. Holder of the Right to Use—Market Subjects

There are two kinds of rights, those of one’s own (ius in re) and those one deserves (ius ad rem), corresponding to Locke’s “property in” and “right to”. The former denotes ownership over specific objects, while the latter one is the deservedness [29]. No one can completely own or control natural resource assets because they have public good and ecological attributes. Instead, natural resource asset rights represent the deserving rights on specific natural resource assets that social members should enjoy in accordance with principles such as fairness and sustainability. Therefore, in the field of natural resource assets, the rights attributes of natural resource assets are more in line with the ius ad rem paradigm. Natural resource assets can be classified into four categories based on their public, ecological, and economic significance: subsistence-oriented, public service, ecological conservation, and economically exploitable. For the first three categories, they have only use value but not marketable value, which is not in line with the basic attributes of commodities, so they are collectively regarded as non-economic natural resource assets. Their rights to use are non-transferable and legally ineligible for transactional circulation. However, the economically exploitable natural resource assets embody the dual integration of value and use value, constituting the basic attributes of commodities. Their rights to use bear the obvious nature of a property right, which is transferable and tradable within commercial systems. Some scholars have also categorized the right to use of natural resource assets into customary use and permitted use for similar reasons [30].

Generality constitutes a defining characteristic of legal subjects, namely, whether the holders of the right to use of natural resource assets as special or general legal subjects require categorization analysis of both the subject of the right and the object of the right. Firstly, non-economic natural resource assets—given their inherent particularities and customary practices—are typically retained in their natural state through the state, such as sunshine, air, and sea, which belong to common-pool resources, and should be shared by the people. Secondly, the rights to use of economically exploitable nature resource assets usually require administrative approval, which involves a bilateral legal relationship between licensing authorities and licensees. The rights holders are required to meet certain conditions, including both for-profit and non-profit institutions. Benefit-sharing (including monetary and non-monetary forms) typically benefits the owners of natural resource assets, i.e., the state or collectives.

In summary, through the examination and analysis of the subjects and objects of natural resource asset usage rights, it can be seen that the scope of rights holders is very broad, including natural persons, legal persons, and all market entities engaged in trading activities, including the state, which is consistent with the characteristic of the universality of rights holders.

2.1.3. Holder of the Right to Supervision—Multiple Subjects

The right to supervision of nature resource assets entails comprehensive supervision by multiple subjects to ensure social safety and sustainable resource utilization, commonly referenced in scholarship as natural resource supervision or governance. In 2018, during Chinese national institutional restructuring, the Ministry of Natural Resources was established to primarily exercise supervision oversight over key operational phases—including title confirmation and registration, resource assessment surveys, exploitation authorizations, and conservation protocols—as the national administrative authority within a comprehensive governance system. In practice, however, since the conservation of natural resource assets involves the supervision responsibilities of several departments, the corresponding draft laws, at the initial stage of legislation, were usually proposed in accordance with the responsibilities of the department or even the division of labor within the department. For instance, the Land Administration Law of China was developed under the purview of the former Ministry of Land and Resources, while the Water Law of China fell within the competence of the Ministry of Water Resources. In accordance with the legislative process, although the opinions of all sectors of society are solicited when draft laws are introduced and considered at various levels, the single uniform and constrained scope makes it difficult to fundamentally address the path-dependent challenges of supervision captured by sectoral interests in legislative processes. In the law-enforcement sector, a number of law-enforcement bodies carry out inspections and supervision separately, and local governments are at a loss as to what to do. Concurrently, the “public”, as collective rights holders of natural resource assets, has their collective will remain procedurally excluded and substantively marginalized in the exercise of the phenomenon [31].

Therefore, the system of rights governing natural resource assets must guarantee that the public are truly collective owners and participate in the monitoring and supervision of natural resource assets, for they have bestowed rights. In addition, the system should also recognize the efforts and contributions made by society over time to protect natural resources and preserve ecological diversity, thereby maximizing resource utility. To solve the problem of the void of national ownership, it is urgent to establish a comprehensive and diversified supervision system with the participation of the government, the market, and society. Such reforms align with constitutional principles that “state ownership equates to collective public ownership” [32], synergizing economic, ecological, and socio-cultural valuations of natural capital. At the same time, the supervision system must ensure the three dimensions of supervision efficacy—coherence, systematicity, and pluralism—to orchestrate multi-actor coordination and cultivate high-efficiency governance paradigms.

2.2. System Functions for Comprehensive Supervision of Nature Resource Assets

The comprehensive supervision of nature resource assets is the result of integrating objectives such as maximizing economic output and achieving sustainable social development. From a resource economics perspective, it is also the optimal choice for improving resource allocation efficiency and maximizing resource benefits. At the same time, it is directly related to the external effects of common property resources in order to avoid the tragedy of the commons.

2.2.1. The Product of Cohesive Social Functional Objectives

With the rapid development of the economy and society, human demand for natural resource assets has been increasing, and the limited nature of natural resource assets has become more and more prominent. Under this background, the need for social equality in the utilization of natural resources has also emerged as a matter of urgency. The most prominent issue in the exercise of the right to use of natural resource assets in China is that, in many cases, under the influence of performance-driven governance and related evaluation criteria, resource-intensive regions frequently exploit natural resource assets in unsustainable ways, resulting in severe consequences, including resource depletion and ecological environmental destruction. Given that various resource industries operate with divergent objectives and interests, while natural resources inherently constitute an undifferentiated spatial system, ill-defined property rights and unclear right to use would inevitably lead to inter-stakeholder conflicts. What is more, these conflicts would fundamentally undermine the sustainable utilization of natural resource assets. Ecological economics prioritizes the maintenance of life-sustaining and the natural capital of economic activities, including natural resources, which must be managed in accordance with sustainability principles in order to prevent the degradation of their functions over time [33].

Otto Gierke posits that, based on the fact that human life consists of both individual and community life, the goal of law, as a system for regulating human life, is also twofold, to construct and safeguard the common life of society on the one hand, and to define and protect the scope of the individual’s life on the other [34]. In alignment with the functional coherence of these objectives, private law must advance public welfare alongside its prioritization of individual interests, whereas public law must actualize individual justice despite its primary focus on collective imperatives. The social function objective of the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets is establishing clearly defined property rights to delineate rights and responsibilities among each subject of the use and supervision of natural resource assets, thereby mediating inter-stakeholder conflicts. On this basis, the functional order of resource use is rationally determined to avoid disorder and confusion in the use of resources, so as to reduce overloaded use. While pursuing the maximization of economic production, the maintenance of the sustainable development of natural ecosystems should not be neglected.

2.2.2. The Rational Paradigm for Achieving Efficient Resource Allocation

In economic analysis, efficiency stands as a foundational criterion for assessing legal rules [35]. The construction of a supervision system for natural resource assets aimed at maximizing efficiency necessitates the integration of the Coase Theorem and transaction cost theory. The core tenet of the Coase Theorem, when applied to a supervision system of natural resource assets, posits that Pareto optimization can be achieved regardless of rights allocation among stakeholders under zero transaction costs. However, this perspective prioritizes economic efficiency without addressing distributive justice considerations. In practice, transaction costs are omnipresent. Given these costs, private negotiations often prove inadequate in resolving market failures arising from external effects, as the supervision of the system will affect the level of transaction costs. In order to improve economic efficiency, the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets should aim to minimize transaction costs by regulating the rights attribution.

Integrating legal and economic theories, the comprehensive supervision system of natural resource assets can enhance allocative efficiency through three mechanisms. The first is a comprehensive scope. According to the basic principles of property rights economics, ownerless resources, which means open access, are prone to unrestrained utilization or waste. Therefore, all valuable resources should have a clear subject of rights. The significance of comprehensive supervision lies in the fact that, through the definition of the subject of property rights and the functional allocation of natural resource assets, the market value of natural resource assets can be effectively utilized. The second is foresight perspective. A rationally structured rights system can balance the rights and interests of multiple rights holders in advance, fostering equitable negotiation and participatory supervision. This design can reduce the transaction costs—including enforcement expenditures, litigation burdens, and risks of loss due to the unequal distribution of the burden of proof. The third is the exclusivity of rights. By excluding resource utilization by non-entitled actors and the sharing of benefits arising from the use of resources, it could internalize the cost–benefit trade-off and incentive the subject of comprehensive supervision to engage actively in economic activities, thereby enhancing efficiency. In view of this, in response to the collective ownership attributes of natural resources and the risks of open-access exploitation, overuse, and misuse, it is imperative to establish a comprehensive and exclusive comprehensive supervision system with foresight, so as to systematically ensure the efficient allocation and rational utilization of natural resource assets and achieve the optimal allocation of economic and ecological benefits.

2.2.3. Adaptive Response to Externalities of Common Property

Here is an ideal model in economics. Under conditions of perfect competition, market mechanisms achieve Pareto-optimal resource allocation when social marginal costs equate to private marginal costs and social marginal benefits align with private marginal benefits. However, as common property, natural resource assets exhibit inherent collective consumption traits where individual usage cannot be isolated. Their non-competitive and non-exclusive characteristics generate externalities during utilization, manifesting as external marginal costs (spillover costs) or benefits. For example, ecological damage and environmental pollution caused by sea-enclosure projects, and overfishing of offshore fishery resources, which have led to the endangerment of some fish resources, are all externalities arising from marine development activities. Consequently, market mechanisms fail to realize Pareto-optimal allocation of these assets, resulting in systemic market failures.

From a cost–benefit analysis perspective, individual gains from utilizing common-pool resources invariably exceed their proportionate share of social costs. Specifically, consider a resource ownership community comprising n members (where n ≥ 2), and the personal benefit from the use of resources by individuals is one unit, and it is fully shared by them, but the negative impacts caused by this, such as environmental pollution, are shouldered by all members of the community of property rights, with each (including the polluter) assuming 1/n of the total cost. Since n ≥ 2, there is always l/n < 1 [36]. If each member of the community follows this logic, there will be a misuse of resources and environmental degradation, and thus a “tragedy of the commons” [37].

Under open-access regimes for common-pool resources, users can freely enter. From the perspective of individual rationality, each strives to maximize personal benefits while minimizing costs. Driven by this logic of behavior, this will inevitably result in a tendency to resource overuse, ultimately damaging the overall economic society welfare. This is especially true in the case of cost-free resource utilization. To address externalities arising from natural resource exploitation, a balanced approach is essential: facilitating commodified resource transactions while preserving common property resources for sustainable development. The prerequisite for the effective utilization of resources is clear property rights; the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets achieves this through participatory oversight mechanisms that engage the public in the supervision system, contributing to the clarification of property rights of natural resource assets and thus guiding the efficient allocation of resources and effectively preventing the tragedy of the commons.

3. The International Comparison for Comprehensive Supervision of Natural Resource Assets in China

In the international perspective, research on the comprehensive supervision systems of natural resource assets in extra-territorial countries is relatively rich. Theoretically, a unique coherent concept system has been formed; practically, the enforcement path has followed the progressive logic of sustainability and permeability; technologically, the innovative application of new concepts, new technologies, new methods, and new tools is emphasized. In comparison, reform of the comprehensive supervision system of natural resource assets in China is still in the exploration stage, exhibiting many limitations. By drawing on foreign advanced experience, this study can provide targeted guidance for the preparation of the comprehensive supervision strategy and planning process for natural resource assets in China. The comparison of the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets at home and abroad is presented in

Table 1. Overview of international comparisons of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets.

Comparative Dimension	International Practice	Chinese Practice
Supervisory System	Integrated super-ministry system (e.g., the Ministry of Environment and Resources)	Super-ministry system Restructuring (e.g., the Ministry of Natural Resources)
Technology Application	Space–Air–Ground Integrated Monitoring (e.g., Landsat + IoT)	Development of the Basic Information Platform of Territorial Space
Property Rights System	Full coverage of natural resource assets confirmation and registration	Unified Confirmation and Registration System of Natural Resources initiated in 2016 (pilot implementation)
Value Accounting	Integration into National Economic Accounting following the System of Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) international standards	Shenzhen and other areas are piloting Gross Ecosystem Production (GEP) calculations, but national standards have not yet been established
Accountability Mechanism	Institutionalization of environmental audits and exit audits	Implementation of Natural Resource Assets Departure Audit on leading cadres

Note: Information sourced from the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China platform: https://www.gov.cn (accessed on 16 August 2025).

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3.1. Current Situation of Comprehensive Supervision of Natural Resource Assets in China

During the transition process from decentralized supervision to comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in China, problems such as scattered supervisory legal provisions, lagging legislation, cross-supervision, and low legal hierarchy have emerged. The basis for decentralized supervision mainly lies in individual legislation based on the types of natural resources. Comprehensive supervision only exists in some normative documents and has not yet been elevated to the level of laws or departmental regulations.

Firstly, various separate laws on natural resource assets have made corresponding provisions on the supervision of the exploitation, use, operation, and expenses of natural resource assets, as detailed in

Table 2. Regulations in relevant laws on the supervision of natural resource assets.

Name (Enactment/Latest Amendment Date)	Content Related to Ownership, Development, Protection, and Legal Liability of Natural Resource Assets
Mineral Resources Law (amended 8 November 2024)	Art. 4: Ownership Art. 9: Competent authorities Arts. 16–29: Mining rights establishment/transfer Arts. 30–43: Exploration/mining requirements Arts. 44–49: Ecological restoration of mining areas Arts. 50–55: Mineral reserves/emergency management Arts. 56–61: Supervision duties Arts. 62–76: Legal liability
Marine Environmental Protection Law (amended 24 October 2023)	Art. 5: Competent authorities Arts. 12–32: Supervision system Arts. 33–45: Ecological conservation Arts. 46–60: Land-sourced pollution control Arts. 61–70: Construction project pollution control Arts. 71–78: Waste dumping control Arts. 79–92: Vessel pollution control Arts. 93–119: Legal liability
Wildlife Protection Law (amended 30 December 2022)	Art. 3: Ownership Art. 7: Competent authorities Arts. 10–19: Wildlife/habitat protection Arts. 20–44: Wildlife management Arts. 45–63: Legal liability
Wetland Protection Law (adopted on 24 December 2021)	Art. 5: Competent authorities Arts. 12–22: Wetland resource management Arts. 23–36: Wetland conservation and utilization Arts. 37–44: Wetland restoration Arts. 45–50: Supervision and inspection Arts. 51–62: Legal liability
Grassland Law (amended 29 April 2021)	Art. 8: Competent authorities Arts. 9–16: Ownership Arts. 17–25: Planning Arts. 26–32: Construction Arts. 33–41: Utilization Arts. 42–55: Protection Arts. 56–60: Supervision and inspection Arts. 61–73: Legal liability
Forest Law (amended 28 December 2019)	Art. 9: Competent authorities Arts. 14–22: Ownership Arts. 23–27: Forest planning Arts. 28–41: Resource protection Arts. 47–65: Management operations Arts. 66–69: Supervision and inspection Arts. 70–82: Legal liability
Land Administration Law (amended 26 August 2019)	Art. 2: Ownership Art. 5: Competent authorities Arts. 9–14: Land ownership/use rights Arts. 15–29: Master planning Arts. 30–43: Cultivated land protection Arts. 44–66: Construction land use Arts. 67–73: Supervision and inspection Arts. 74–84: Legal liability
Rural Land Contracting Law (amended 29 December 2018)	Arts. 2–11: Ownership/contract management system Art. 12: Competent authority
Coal Law (amended 7 November 2016)	Art. 3: Ownership Art. 12: Competent authorities Arts. 14–19: Development planning Arts. 20–38: Production/safety requirements Arts. 39–47: Operational regulations Arts. 48–52: Resource conservation Arts. 53–56: Supervision and inspection Arts. 57–66: Legal liability
Water Law (amended 2 July 2016)	Art. 3: Ownership Arts. 12–13: Competent authorities Arts. 14–19: Integrated planning Arts. 20–29: Development and utilization Arts. 30–43: Resource protection Arts. 44–55: Allocation/conservation Arts. 56–63: Dispute resolution/supervision Arts. 64–77: Legal liability
Fisheries Law (amended 28 December 2013)	Arts. 6–9: Competent authorities Arts. 28–37: Conservation/fishing regulations Arts. 38–49: Legal liability
Agriculture Law (amended 28 December 2012)	Arts. 57–66: Agricultural resources and environmental protection
Protection of Sea Islands Law (adopted on 26 December 2009)	Arts. 2–5: Ownership Arts. 8–15: Island protection planning Arts. 16–39: Island conservation Arts. 40–43: Supervision and inspection Arts. 44–55: Legal liability
Renewable Energy Law (amended 26 December 2009)	Art. 5: Competent authorities Arts. 6–9: Development planning Arts. 10–12: Industrial guidance/technical support Arts. 13–18: Promotion and application Arts. 19–23: Price/cost management Arts. 24–27: Incentives/supervision Arts. 28–31: Legal liability
Administration of Sea Areas Law (adopted on 27 October 2001)	Arts. 3–6: Ownership registration Art. 7: Competent authorities Arts. 10–15: Functional zoning Arts. 16–18: Application and approval procedures for resource asset utilization Arts. 19–32: Acquisition of maritime space use rights and dispute resolution Arts. 33–36: Collection of maritime space use fees Arts. 37–41: Supervision and inspection of maritime space use management Arts. 42–51: Legal liability

Note: Information sourced from the National Database of Laws and Regulations platform of China: https://flk.npc.gov.cn (accessed on 16 August 2025).

.

Secondly, there are a total of seven normative documents in China concerning the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets (see

Table 3. Normative documents related to the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets.

Release Date	Document Title and Issuing Authority	Content Related to Comprehensive Oversight of Natural Resource Assets
August 2024	Implementation Opinions of the Ministry of Natural Resources on Protecting and Sustainably Utilizing Natural Resources to Solidly Promote the Construction of a Beautiful China	Improve the property rights system and management framework for natural resource assets. …Refine the Principal-agent Mechanism of Natural Resources Assets owned by the whole people, establish accountability systems for ecological protection, natural resource conservation, asset value maintenance, and supervision. … Promote institutional development for integrated allocation of multiple natural resource elements.
December 2017	General Office of Ministry of Land and Resources (now Ministry of Natural Resources): Notice on Selecting the Third Batch of High-Level Innovative Scientific and Technological Talents in Field of Land and Resources	Focus on key innovation areas including deep earth exploration, deep-sea exploration, deep-space land observation, and land science. Gather and cultivate high-end talents in Land resource investigation and spatial optimization development, …comprehensive supervision of natural resources, high-precision land resource surveys, research and application of big data cognition on land and resources, and other important innovation directions.
December 2016	General Office of Ministry of Land and Resources (now Ministry of Natural Resources): Implementation Plan for Deepening Standardization Reform in Land and Resources	Implement the “Land and Resources Standardization + Integrated Natural Resource Management” initiative. Establish integrated standardization systems for integrated natural resource management following resource workflows.
October 2016	State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping: 13th Five-Year Plan for Surveying and Mapping Geographic Information Technology Development	Conduct surveying technology and geographic information application research in land and resources sectors, including mineral resource exploration, geological disaster monitoring, land resource remote sensing monitoring, and comprehensive supervision of natural resources.
September 2016	Ministry of Land and Resources (now Ministry of Natural Resources): 13th Five-Year Plan for Scientific and Technological Innovation in Land and Resources	Elevate comprehensive supervision capabilities of natural resources. By focusing on solving prominent issues in land development, innovate theories and methods for comprehensive supervision of natural resources. …Deepen research on comprehensive supervision of natural resources.
July 2016	Ministry of Land and Resources (now Ministry of Natural Resources): Implementation Opinions on Promoting Big Data Application in Land and Resources	Advance data sharing of land and resources to enable coordinated and unified management of natural resources, enhance effectiveness of national comprehensive supervision of natural resources.
July 2007	Regulations onComprehensive Management of Agricultural Natural Resources of Hubei Province	Article 2 (3): “Comprehensive management” refers to comprehensive activities including survey, monitoring, evaluation, regional planning, and planning of agricultural natural resources, as well as coordination and supervision of their development, utilization, and protection of agricultural natural resources.

Note: Information sourced from the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China platform: https://www.gov.cn (accessed on 16 August 2025).

for details), and most of these normative documents only regard the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets as an important area for scientific and technological innovation and theoretical exploration.

In conclusion, although China has established a basic legal framework for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets, there are still significant deficiencies in the legal system.

Firstly, in the early stage of legislation, most of the existing single laws on natural resource assets were drafted by the corresponding administrative departments in charge of natural resource assets. There is a lack of unified, systematic, and coordinated reasonable development and protection of natural resource assets.

Secondly, there is a lack of a comprehensive basic legal system for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in the current legal system of China. The laws regulating the development, utilization, and supervision of natural resource assets are rather scattered, the supervisory standards for various types of natural resource assets are different, and the institutional arrangements are inconsistent. Even for the same type of natural resources, due to the differences in supervisory authorities, the supervisory standards they rely on also vary. This deficiency in the legal system leads to an insufficiently solid supervisory basis, directly affecting the effectiveness of comprehensive supervision over natural resource assets by supervisory authorities. It is not conducive to the realization of unified territorial space use control under the concept of the super-ministry system restructuring, nor is it beneficial to the construction of a unified market for the development, utilization, and protection of natural resource assets.

3.2. Conceptual Coherence in the International Comprehensive Supervision of Natural Resource Assets

Internationally, the “comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets” is in a few cases referred to as the “comprehensive supervision of resource assets”. The term “comprehensive supervision” can also be translated as “unified supervision”, “consolidated supervision”, etc., which entails synthesizing institutional systems and operational processes into a comprehensive system to achieve unified organizational objectives. The term “comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets” emerged as a term of art mainly after the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 1992, when most countries accepted the concept of sustainable development based on the coordinated development of the environment, the economy, and society, and it was generally recognized that the poor supervision of natural resource assets was one of the major causes affecting sustainable development.

Comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets can be expressed through a coherent conceptual system consisting of a number of basic elements (see

Table 4. Elements and contents in the internationally conceptual system for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets.

Elements	Main Contents
Nature	Philosophical ideas; logical and appealing concepts; systems processes; conceptual systems; research methods; management methods; conscious processes; mode of mindset; and natural resource management strategies.
Goals and goal trade-offs	Political goals (enhance human well-being; promote resource security, poverty alleviation, disaster mitigation, and reduce risk of emergencies); economic and social goals (maximize economic and social wealth, livelihood and income security, food security, and value addition; improve quality of life, and improve community conditions); ecological goals (maximize ecosystem services, health of the Earth’s ecosystems, ecosystem integrity or connectivity, ecosystem resilience, ecosystem resistance, ecosystem resilience, ecosystem adaptation, biodiversity, conservation of natural resources, restoration and rehabilitation of nature, multiple landscape benefits, sustaining quality of life, etc.); and cultural objectives (increasing recreation and leisure opportunities); trade-offs between multiple objectives; resolving uncertainty; and preventing risk.
Principles and concepts	Generic principles philosophy (equity, fairness, and efficiency); sustainable development; adaptability; resilience; flexibility; responsiveness; iteration; learning; nature-based solutions; process orientation; appropriate spatial and temporal scales; arbitrary scaling of spatial and temporal scales; participatory management; systemic approaches; precautionary and precautionary principles; consideration of cumulative impacts; innovative application of new technologies, methods, and tools; based on the best available science; valuing local and traditional knowledge; internalization of ecological cost-effectiveness; management in an economic system; bottom-up; recognition of lag effects; balance between conservation and use; and recognition of broader linkages.
Subjective or objects and relational patterns	Multi-sectoral: government agencies; natural resources sector; water resources sector; environment sector; urban and rural administration, etc.; non-governmental organizations; research institutions; consumer groups; and stakeholders such as communities. Multidisciplinary themes: science; economics; law; biology; ecology; sociology; geography; and natural resources. Multiple modes of relational engagement: shared responsibility; joint committees; inter-agency cooperation agreements; memorandums of understanding; Internet synergies; participatory techniques; joint action; cooperative coordination; etc.
Objects and object relations	Various geographic areas defined using ecological criteria; coastal zones; water resources; water sources; watersheds; agricultural natural resources; arid zones; landscapes; ecological zones; protected areas or reserves; habitats; earth science systems; natural ecological communities; biodiversity; biomes; Earth life support systems; natural ecological socio-economic systems and various sub-systems; ecosystem structure; ecosystem functions; ecosystem processes; ecosystem services; ecosystem characteristics; natural capital; green infrastructure; biophysical, biogeochemical and socio-economic processes; human activities; knowledge of data and information; quality of life; spatial and temporal scales; stressors; drivers; natural resource stocks; flows; etc.
Supervision or research actions	Preparation and implementation of strategic planning for comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets; integration of various plans, policies, projects, objectives, tools, data, information, and knowledge into higher-level planning; identification, definition, and classification of ecosystems; identification of local problems; knowledge and description of the Earth’s or ecosystem’s structure, functions, processes, relationships, etc.; identification of stakeholders; identification of types of interests; harmonization of competing interests; setting of compatibility goals; determination of indicators for integrated evaluation of ecosystems, including cumulative impacts; integrated ecosystem evaluation; reporting on the state of nature; detecting the state of nature; socio-economic evaluation; scenario analyses and projections of governmental measures; capacity-building; risk assessment and response; policy adjustments; etc.
Supervision methods, techniques, tools, etc.	Geographic Information System (GIS); crowd-funding; agent models; data–information–knowledge integration techniques; simulation techniques; modeling techniques; development of conceptual systems; the Internet; the Internet of Things; experimental sciences; piloting; interactive decision-making; coordination techniques; conflict resolution and arbitration tools; remote sensing; data analytics; planning techniques; scenario analysis; ecosystem accounting; natural capital accounting; presentation of inventories; development of templates; development of best practice guidelines; etc.
Supervision process	Planning programs–implementation–monitoring–evaluation–feedback–adjustment–continuous learning–iteration
Resources or capital and allocation mechanisms	Natural capital; human capital; social capital; physical capital; intellectual capital; etc., allocated in accordance with the rules of restoration and rehabilitation, preservation of value and appreciation, maximization of welfare, maximization of inputs and outputs, risk prevention, crisis management, etc.
Performance evaluation	Such as an area of land under sustainable landscape management; value-added index; percentage of communities utilizing innovative technologies in landscape planning and monitoring; etc.

Note: Information obtained by sorting out the relevant regulations on the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in various countries.

). This system has evolved through global empirical insights, refining distinctions from traditional resource supervision approaches. Although not all of these elements may be included in the definitions of various types of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets, the common elements as a whole are compatible with the conceptual system of various types. As the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets progresses, each element gradually becomes concrete, structural, and even standard.

It is precisely because of the relatively unified system that comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in different ecosystems can be connected. At the same time, due to its neutral, reusable, and compatible characteristics, it enables comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets, as the highest form of natural resource supervision, to be integrated into national and even international supervision systems, and moreover to be dialogued and interfaced with other closely related systems, such as the environment.

3.3. Categorization of Comprehensive Supervision of International Natural Resource Assets

The categorization of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets is mainly manifested in objects and objectives of supervision.

Firstly, the essential difference between international comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets and traditional supervision is that it targets different objects of supervision. (1) Regarding the geolocational attributes of supervised objects, the targets of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets are landscapes, watersheds, coastal zones, agricultural natural resources, military installation areas, ecosystems, communities, water resources, and conservation areas, which are fundamentally place-based. All integrated elements are spatially anchored to specific geographic locations. (2) Regarding ecologically differentiated composite features, unlike traditional single-category classification systems, the comprehensive supervision system defines supervised objects based on ecosystem integrity principles, emphasizing the systemic relevance of ecological objects. Examples include biodiversity, genetic resources, watersheds, species, landscapes, ecosystems, and ecosystem services—not conventional categories like land, minerals, or water. (3) Regarding unique zoning and classification methodologies, comprehensive supervision classifies natural resource assets based on ecological distinctions, focusing on ecosystem vulnerability, sensitivity, integrity, connectivity, or service types, and may be adjusted as needed. (4) Regarding science-aligned supervisory logic, the zoning–classification system deeply integrates scientific knowledge of ecosystems, reflecting paradigms supervision centered on ecosystem science.

Secondly, the international comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets aims to address the compatibility of environmental, economic, and social objectives and trade-offs. Originating from sustainable development principles, it seeks to identify managerial tools that harmonize these objectives into actionable policies. Empirical practices demonstrate that comprehensive supervision achieves multi-objective compatibility through the following measures. (1) The first is expanding and refining the “dimensions” of objectives. Progress in ecological understanding and technological innovation has broadened these supervisory objectives, initially environmental, economic, and social, to encompass political-, cultural-, military-, and resource-related domains. This reflects both the extensible dimensionality of natural resource assets and an evolution in their service provisions from tangible/material to intangible/spiritual benefits. For example, the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) schemes have made certain achievements in promoting global forest protection and sustainable supervision. The Global Forestry Expert Group of International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) have drafted reports that the schemes have produced considerable benefits in terms of environmental, social, and socio-environmental synergies by curbing the trend of deforestation and forest degradation and have made a positive contribution to mitigating global climate change. Moreover, the above implementation effects are also affected by the complex institutional environment and the synergistic effect of social–economic and environmental trade-offs [38]. (2) The second is specifying and refining the “degree” of objectives. Through scientific understanding of supervised objects, comprehensive supervision concretizes and refines objectives across each dimension. For instance, the integrity of the ecosystem can be specifically divided into the ecosystem structure, composition, process, and connectivity. Ecological integrity can be categorized into different levels based on landscape features, external stressors, vegetation structures, and spatial scales, thereby establishing the goal to draw the “scale” that both measures objectives and guides implementation pathways. (3) The third is proposing managerial tools for harmonizing multi-objective trade-offs. While the theoretical compatibility of political, environmental, economic, social, and cultural objectives has been accepted for a long time, the critical challenge for comprehensive supervision lies in resolving the conflicts between various types of objectives within natural resource asset plans or supervision systems through targeted supervisory techniques. The character of comprehensive supervision indicates that it employs multiple tools, most critically, integrated ecosystem valuation or natural capital accounting tools, which compare net ecological or capital benefits in different scenarios.

4. The System Optimization for Comprehensive Supervision of Natural Resource Assets in China

The new institutional economics argues that institutional evolution and innovation hinge on the supply and demand of the system [39]. Supply and demand are interdependent and mutually constraining. Economic theory emphasizes equilibrium between them to achieve optimal institutional structure [40]. The current legislative framework for natural resource laws in China exhibits many negative characteristics under existing models, including the interest conflict of different departments, imbalanced supervision architectures, a large number of legal documents, and a lack of whole systematicity [41]. Aligning with market transaction cycles, the points of supervision should be divided into four aspects, namely, source conservation, transaction assessment, methodological innovation, and multi-participation, and a phased supervision model constructed.

4.1. Source Conservation: The Categorization of Natural Resource Assets

The thinking of categorization emphasizes defining subjects through holistic, macroscopic, and systematic perspectives, developing comprehensive understanding of the general characteristics of things (the object) by analyzing constituent elements. Based on the different supervisory purposes under the comprehensive supervision system, natural resource assets could be categorized into two major types: operational assets and public welfare assets. The former are governed through market-driven, asset-oriented supervision, prioritizing value appreciation and equitability; meanwhile, the latter are managed via government-led, resource-oriented supervision focused on value preservation and safeguarding public interests.

4.1.1. Supervision of Operational Natural Resource Assets

For operational natural resource assets, such as forestry resources, the core supervision objective should focus on realizing economic value to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the owners through market-driven supervision. Currently, China has not yet clarified the principles of standardized market transactions of operational natural resource assets, resulting in their inefficient integration into market frameworks for operational oversight. Drawing on the experience of state-owned enterprise reform experiences, it can explore the establishment of a professional operating company for resource assets that is independent from administrative natural resources departments, so as to innovatively realize the improvement of governance effectiveness. This could involve restructuring entitlement allocation mechanisms; legally clarifying property rights relations, thus achieving separation of the right to ownership, use, and supervision of natural resource assets; establishing modern corporate governance frameworks and enhancing comprehensive supervision systems for optional natural resource assets; and designing categorized reform pathways. For general natural resource assets, to implement mixed-ownership reforms modeled after state-owned enterprise restructuring, hybrid enterprises could be created integrating state, collective, and private capital to optimize utilization efficiency. For strategic natural resource assets, it is necessary to set up state-controlled natural resource-based enterprises, conduct market-aligned value assessments, and apply supervision and appraisal with reference to the current reform model of state-owned enterprises.

In terms of the main objectives and principles of supervision, operational natural resource assets usually exhibit a relatively complete “bundle of rights” structure, with core supervisory goals centered on sustainable transformation of economic value. Specifically, by providing products for the market, promoting the development of related industries, and generating multiple economic effects such as direct sales revenue and fiscal tax revenues from the development of related industries, the ultimate goal is to increase national income. Operational natural resource assets should mainly be utilized and regulated through market means, and traded or transferred fairly in accordance with market rules. The government should not interfere too much in the operation process. For critical resources impacting national security and public interests, such as basic farmland, combined mechanisms integrating market operations and administrative controls should be conducted under the principles of multifunctional utilization objectives and supervision.

As far as the supervisory framework is concerned, the specific conservation and supervision agencies for each type of natural resource asset, as well as their powers and responsibilities, should be further clarified, and a unified system encompassing value assessments, supervisory audits, and appraisal should be established. It should also clarify the difference between governmental oversight and corporate operational functions, while enhancing market mechanisms and agency supervision for optional natural resource assets.

4.1.2. Supervision of Public Welfare Natural Resource Assets

The supervision objectives of public welfare natural resource assets must be based on both domestic and international dimensions. Due to its public goods attribute, at the domestic level, all Chinese people enjoy the rights to deserve public welfare natural resource assets. At a global perspective, in line with the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind, all of humanity should be entitled to enjoy the rights to deserve. Therefore, the supervision needs to ensure the maximization of domestic social welfare while actively aligning with the global development agenda. Through the endogenous transformation of international conventions, it should promote the establishment of a more systematic and forward-looking comprehensive supervision system to achieve domestic and international synchronization. Taking ecological shelter forests as an example, at the domestic level, the core supervisory objective should mainly focus on the realization of the ecological environment functions of China, safeguarding public welfare benefits, and meeting the needs of national ecological security and the well-being of the people. At the international level, on a macro level, it is necessary to follow the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 15 (SDG15), with the guiding principles of “protecting, restoring and promoting the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably managing forests, preventing desertification, stopping and reversing land degradation, and curbing the loss of biodiversity” [42]. In specific practice, specific goals and action frameworks should be set in reference to international norms, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) [43] and the Strategic Framework of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) 2018–2030 [44].

Given the special attributes of public welfare natural resource assets and the dual requirements of domestic and international goals, their comprehensive supervision should focus on government administrative supervision. For ecological reserve categories, it is necessary to build government-led specialized supervision frameworks, and establish an independent professional protection organization to coordinate the protection and supervision of nature reserves. At the same time, the supervision hierarchy between the central government and local governments should be clearly demarcated, while centralizing conservation and management functions for nationally significant public welfare natural resource assets under the central government. For other public welfare categories, the models of state ownership and governmental operation should be applied, strengthening supervision frameworks to ensure resource allocation to public domains.

In terms of the main objectives and principles of supervision, focus should be placed on public welfare natural resource assets—such as nature reserves, ecological protection forests, and government-managed public lands—to deliver foundational public goods or services, prioritizing ecological integrity. Supervision should enforce economic utilization and sustainable development principles, strictly controlling profit-driven exploitation. Primary oversight should employ administrative public supervision tools, emphasizing ecological impact assessments and ecosystem quality evaluations for public welfare natural resource assets.

As far as the supervisory framework is concerned, based on existing laws and supervisions, clear provisions should be made for specific trustees for the supervision of public welfare natural resource assets, and the responsibilities and duties of relevant administrative agents should be refined. Key priorities include refining registration, accounting, and auditing of the departure from office of leading cadres of enterprises, thereby progressively enhancing the comprehensive supervision framework for public welfare natural resource assets. Currently, it is necessary to refine the public welfare natural resource asset protection zones according to the degree of scarcity of natural resource assets, establishing independent conservation and supervision units to uniformly exercise the supervisory duties of resource utilization and environmental conservation within these zones. Additionally, central-local coordination must be optimized through rational allocation of administrative authority, aligning administrative power with fiscal responsibilities. Specifically, national-level reserves should be directly managed by central authorities, with specialized supervisory bodies established under natural resource administrative departments to strengthen conservation and supervision of public welfare natural resource assets.

4.2. Transaction Evaluation: The Integration of Resource Asset Economic Value and Ecosystem Service Value

At the market transaction stage of the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets, the primary challenge stems from divergent valuation methodologies, which leads to market disorder and increasing risks of state-owned asset loss. In light of this, establishing a coupling framework integrating natural resource asset economic value accounting with ecosystem service value assessment is necessary, and thereby a dual-track accounting system taking both economic and ecological attributes into account would follow closely.

Firstly, economic valuation of natural resource assets employs scarcity attributes as its analytical foundation, seeking to establish an equilibrium-oriented perspective on social and economic benefits. This approach concurrently safeguards market stability and ensures comprehensive supervision policy complying with sustainable development demands. Key manifestations include the following: (1) providing a standardized analytical framework that integrates scientific, economic, and social evidence for thematic or site-specific assessments; (2) addressing spatial variability in environmental challenges by implementing comprehensive cost–benefit appraisals and risk profiling and significantly reducing the risk of ignoring the value of natural environments (whether monetized or not); and (3) promoting methodological innovation in supervision policymaking while building databases for long-term ecosystem valuation. On 8 Oct 2024, the Ministry of Natural Resources in China formulated the Technical Guidelines for the Overall Assessment of Natural resource Assets Prices (Trial), which follows the principles of sustainable use, overall coordination, and professionalism. It selects one of the two operation modes, namely separate assessment and combined assessment, or both, to guide and regulate the price assessment behavior in the overall transaction of multi-category natural resource asset portfolio supply [45].

Economic valuation of natural resource assets conducive to determining their spatial boundaries, reserve quantities, and associated direct or indirect economic benefits can be valuable. It can visualize the holistic long-term value of natural resource assets to promote information transparency, which safeguards civic participatory entitlements and informational equities, while promoting scientific decision-making by government departments through democratic supervision. On the one hand, economic valuation could reflect the range of benefits that can be provided by a change in the comprehensive supervision regime for natural resource assets, including a change from one natural habitat to another, as well as a change from a natural habitat to a hard project such as a real estate development. On the other hand, it could delineate impact pathways of specific supervision adjustments on natural resource assets’ benefits and value. Uncovering the differences in the values of public and private interests in different natural resource assets is the key to identifying trade-offs and synergies between different phases of comprehensive supervision decisions of natural resource assets.

The statistical information generated from economic valuation of natural resource assets should be presented in the form of a natural capital balance sheet, which compares the value of the benefits from the use of natural resource assets with the cost of maintaining them. Based on the trade-offs of the benefits associated with the natural resource assets, it is possible to assess the natural resource assets and liabilities borne by a region in a given period of time. A natural capital balance sheet can be composed of a number of different parts, including the following: (1) a natural resource asset scope and reserves account (assets register), i.e., the area, type, and conditions of exploitation and utilization of the natural resource assets; (2) a physical flow account, i.e., the source of natural resource assets, i.e., the physical flow of natural resource assets itself; (3) a monetary flow account, i.e., the monetary value of the proceeds from the use of the natural resource assets, together with the total value of the natural resource assets over their lifetime; and (4) the maintenance cost accounts, i.e., the cost of current and future natural resource asset maintenance activities. Currently, some regions in China have piloted this approach in practice at the local level, such as Huzhou City in Zhejiang Province, Sanya City in Hainan Province, and Lianjiang County in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province. The application practice in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province is detailed in

Table 5. Application of the natural resource assets balance sheet in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province.

Category		Core Functions	Practical Application
Natural Resource Balance Sheet Structure	Physical Assets Category	Resource Stock Registration	Total land resources area: 105,900 hectares.
			Audited forest resources, grassland resources, wetland resources, etc.: 89,600 hectares.
			Surveyed sea area: 824,600 hectares.
	Quality Category	Ecological Health Monitoring	Multi-dimensional indicators including water quality, biodiversity, etc.
	Value Category	Monetization of Ecosystem Services	Total ecosystem service value of natural resource assets: CNY 19,356.2 billion, with marine resources contributing over 98% (about CNY 19,000 billion).
	Balance Sheet	Resource Dynamics Tracking	Alerting the risk of resource overdraft in aquaculture zones.
	Flow Category	Depletion Cost Evaluation	A special fund was initiated for the Jianjiang Peninsula–Huangqi Peninsula Eastern Waters Bayside Protection and Development Project.
Economic Value Realization Mechanism		Value Visualization	Pilot valuation of maritime resources through artificial seaweed farm projects Valuation: about 8000 CNY per mu of maritime space; the Agricultural Development Bank of China extended CNY 11 million in 6-year credit facilities by 2020.
			The compilation of the natural resource balance sheet, with marine resources as a key component, and its value realization mechanism, estimating the “value” of ecological products, enabling the Lianjiang Huangqi Bay Offshore Kelp Farming Demonstration Zone construction to successfully secure bank credit loans of CNY 11 million. In 2019, the city’s gross marine economic output reached CNY 268 billion, prematurely achieving the “13th Five-Year Plan” marine economy development target.
		Resource-to-Asset Conversion	The Jukou Village Cooperative achieved professionalized operation of the scenic area, generating CNY 3 million in annual fixed revenue: CNY 450,000 was allocated to village collective funds, and CNY 1.05 million was distributed to 271 villagers via equity shares.
			Under the marine area contracting model, Dajian Village in Huangqi Town receives approximately CNY 800,000 in marine area contracting fees each year; Xiagong Township’s Jiangwan, Chulu, and Songgao villages each receive about CNY 1 million in marine area contracting fees each year.

Note: Data sourced from the official website of the Government of Fuzhou City, Fujian Province in China: https://www.fuzhou.gov.cn (accessed on 16 August 2025).

.

Secondly, value evaluation of the ecosystem service of natural resource assets is based primarily on the sustainability of them in the ecological dimension. Ecosystems are complex architectures of interactions between living and non-living components of natural ecosystems. Through their interactions with each other, they facilitate the process of ecosystem supervision of natural resource assets, which is what we call ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are more consistent with cost–benefit principles than the effects of human interventions, such as the supervision of atmospheric gases, large-scale filtration, and water purification. However, such services remain systematically undervalued due to informational deficits in decision supervision and their frequent exclusion from market-based supervisory paradigms.

Ecosystem service value is defined as the benefits of nature for individual survival and social development, encompassing both direct and indirect contributions to human well-being. Biodiversity conservation constitutes the center of such valuation. Depending on the purpose of natural resource asset valuation, the value of ecosystem services could be further differentiated into the value of services that can be directly transformed into benefits (referred to as “final ecosystem services”) and the value of services that support other services (referred to as “intermediate ecosystem services”).

Value evaluation of ecosystem services is an approach that integrates the full range of benefits and costs (both monetary and non-monetary) from supervision decisions that affect or are affected by ecosystems [46]. That is, the outcomes and results provided by ecosystems that directly or indirectly affect human well-being are linked to supervision decisions on natural resources, aiming at value trade-offs between social, environmental, and economic elements, holding significant importance in promoting the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development [47]. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) commissioned the Australia 21 Think Tank to produce an analytical report to systematize the development of the concept of ecosystem services and its relevance to policymaking in other sectors of the Australian Government and society. As concluded in the Ecosystem Services Position Paper of the DAFF, a principal function of such valuation lies in facilitating a cross-sectoral policy dialog to address the complex and significant policy challenges facing Australia in the area of agriculture and natural resources. By optimizing institutional arrangements for valuing ecosystem services across government and society, this methodology enhances comprehensive supervisory decision-making, ensuring market-equitable transactions while advancing the sustainable utilization and ecological value realization of natural capital.

4.3. Methodological Innovation: Establishment of the Big Data Center for Natural Resource Assets

The rule of law is a systematic project. Its realization requires the cooperation of many factors, including political and economic institutions and mechanisms [48]. The rapid advancement of the digital economy has not only propelled industrial production, modernization, and lifestyle innovation but emerged as a critical enabler for global sustainable development. How to make full use of big data as an emerging governance resource and plan for the construction of a big data center for natural resources assets is an important issue that needs to be explored to strengthen the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets.

4.3.1. Necessity of Establishing the Big Data Center for Natural Resource Assets

Institutions can determine the social structure and type of society, and the system of reward and punishment can create the trend of history [49]. With the global technological transformation triggered by big data technology, the supervisory models for natural resource assets in various countries are undergoing profound changes. The strategic, assetized, and socialized characteristics of contemporary data have become increasingly prominent, gradually risen to be national strategic assets. Developed countries utilize modern cloud computing, big data, and new-generation information technologies to establish a full-process supervision system of natural resource assets. Through systematic data collection and comparative analysis, these technologies furnish informational foundations for natural resource valuation and scientific policymaking. This facilitates the deep integration of governmental administration, realizes data-driven supervision methodologies, and makes supervisory decision-making more market-oriented and scientific [50].

The advantage of big data lies in remedying limitations in public sector data regimes, particularly regarding openness, sharing, and relevance. A large amount of resource utilization data and pollution emission data are interconnected, thus driving digital transformation within the natural resource asset comprehensive supervision system. This necessitates two systemic reforms: (1) The integration of departmental settings and personnel arrangements should integrate supervisory functions to eliminate redundancies across agencies and establish unified supervision systems encompassing all natural resource assets. (2) The intelligentization of administrative examination and approval involves deconstructing natural resource project approvals into different process modules with embedded query–response protocols, thereby enabling end-to-end self-service permitting processes.

The use of big data and informatization can provide multi-phase technical support for such comprehensive supervision. Relying on the intelligent analysis function of the big data center of natural resource assets, it enables refined early-warning mechanisms for public contingencies including health emergencies and natural disasters. The establishment of the big data center for natural resource assets serves as a technological carrier for the improvement of the unified system of confirming rights and registering natural resource assets, and as a key infrastructure for the construction of the system of natural protected areas and the realization of the comprehensive supervision system of natural resource assets. In practice, Tianxin District of Changsha City, Hunan Province in China, has integrated artificial intelligence (AI) technology with GIS, cloud computing, Internet of Things, and other technologies, built a smart river-chief system information platform, and constructed 35 sets of one-pole water and rainfall monitoring stations and seven sets of online odor concentration monitoring stations. River chiefs can obtain real-time images of water levels and rainfall in rivers and reservoirs within their jurisdiction, as well as monitoring data on water surface odors. They can promptly identify problems and potential risks and report and handle them in the first instance. The platform can also intelligently identify floating objects on the water surface, helping to protect the ecological environment of rivers [51].

4.3.2. Implementation Strategy of Establishing the Big Data Center for Natural Resource Assets

Based on different sources of data information, natural resource assets data can be classified into two primary categories: governmental data (predominantly structured data), including survey statistics and departmental operational records data, and market data, comprising IoT data (semi-structured) and web-based information (largely unstructured). The big data center promotes the data-oriented process of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets by integrating massive data information. Since the establishment of the Ministry of Natural Resources of China, vertical integration across the organizational system has been achieved, harmonizing domain-specific data streams including land administration, mineral resources, geological surveys, cartography, marine systems, forestry, grassland ecosystems, and hydrological records. This institutional reform effectively breaks down the long-standing barriers to cross-departmental data flow and sharing.

The establishment of the big data center for natural resource assets constitutes a pivotal innovation in supervisory methods. The center emphasizes the innovative application of new concepts, technologies, methods, and tools, primarily manifested through two dimensions: the deployment of hard infrastructure technologies and the implementation of soft governance mechanisms. (1) Multi-technology integration and application should be conducted. GIS technology [52], the Global Position System (GPS), remote sensing, crowdsourcing, collaboration, simulation, modeling, intelligent networks, artificial intelligence, participatory technology, scenario analysis, and participatory planning should be contextually comprehensive across operational phases. This convergence targets critical challenges in comprehensive supervision, including multi-scalar, conflicting stakeholder interests, and dynamic system variability. (2) Strategic planning formulation and implementation should also be conducted. Contemporary governance increasingly adopts comprehensive supervisory strategic plans as pivotal instruments for ecological data synthesis, existing state assessments, gap analysis, goal realization, and optimal resource allocation. Specifically, comprehensive supervisory strategic blueprints should be developed at the nation scale, and operational plans should be established for watershed supervision, comprehensive landscape supervision, and comprehensive supervision for nature reserves. (3) Ecosystem tool development and utilization should also be conducted. Focusing on the development of ecosystem monitoring, comprehensive ecosystem evaluation and ecosystem modeling should occur and be gradually applied in decision-making and actions for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets and promoting the transition of comprehensive supervision decision-making to modeling.

4.3.3. Specific Measures for Establishing the Big Data Center for Natural Resource Assets

In February 2024, the Ministry of Natural Resources of China issued the Overall Plan for Enhancing Digital Governance Capacity of Natural Resources, a framework document guiding the digital development of natural resource assets in China during 2024–2030 [53]. Currently, operational mechanisms of international technology of China have been systematically optimized. The “One Network” infrastructure for natural resource assets, comprising the classified intranet, operational network, and government extranet (Internet), has been preliminarily established. Data aggregation has achieved initial results, and the “One Map” for natural resource assets is fundamentally established. However, capabilities in data production, governance, mining, and sharing require enhancement. The coordination mechanism for information technology remains insufficient, with overlapping construction content. Cross-departmental data sharing, cybersecurity, and coordination between central and local governments need further improvement.

To address these issues, the Ministry of Natural Resources issued the Measures for the Administration of Data Security in the Field of Natural Resources on 22 March 2024, to encourage lawful sharing, opening up, and utilization of natural resource data while supporting innovative applications [54]. It mandates “categorized and tiered + full-lifecycle security” supervision, categorizing data into general, important, and core data, balancing development with safeguards for national data security and ecological security. The Implementation Guidelines for Protecting and Sustainably Utilizing Natural Resources to Advance the Beautiful China Initiative, issued on August 5 of the same year, further requires “Enhancing digital governance capacity for natural resources” and “Constructing multi-dimensional digital application scenarios to support the digital and intelligent transformation of comprehensive natural resource supervision” [55].

Specifically, this involves (1) advancing the construction of a regulatory sandbox mechanism for natural resource asset supervision. Originating in financial regulation and gradually expanding into energy and other sectors, the regulatory sandbox model balances innovation promotion and risk prevention. It demonstrates rationality across economic, political, legal, and institutional dimensions. Its introduction into natural resource asset regulation requires tailored, phased implementation based on national conditions, resource endowments, and development objectives. Key areas include legal translation of comprehensive supervision concepts, enhancing comprehensive supervision governance performance, and fostering institutional synergy for technological innovation. Taking the formulation of the Ecological Environment Code as an opportunity, supervisory approaches must adapt to industrial changes in natural resource assets under ecological security strategies. This entails optimizing regulatory methods, strengthening relatively centralized and comprehensive supervision of natural resource asset industries, and aligning with practical industrial development needs. Simultaneously, the mechanism should address diverse stakeholder interests, promote collaborative comprehensive supervision, and ensure supervisory agencies effectively fulfill their functions. Additionally, the natural resource asset regulatory sandbox requires an improved information technology capacity for natural resource asset surveying and monitoring. This includes achieving “one-time data acquisition, unified sharing” to enhance data access for operational supervision, strengthen dynamic monitoring of administrative behaviors, and improve acquisition capabilities for network public opinion and public supervision information related to natural resource assets.

(2) This also involves advancing the construction of a multi-stakeholder data collaboration and sharing mechanism. Inter-agency task forces or pilot governance zones should be established to, on the one hand, provide unified vertical data sharing services across institutional levels. This includes online aggregation services for spatial and non-spatial data, as well as unified baseline data and analytical support for approval, supervisory, and other operational processes. They should also facilitate cross-level business coordination through national and provincial platform integration, enabling data synergy and operational alignment. On the other hand, they should develop horizontal inter-departmental collaboration mechanisms targeting sectors such as development and reform, ecology and environment, transportation, water resources, and agriculture. They should also provide standardized interfaces for inter-agency operational coordination and government data sharing. Through multi-terminal channels, they should offer diversified social services to enterprises, institutions, and the public, including online inquiry systems for basic geographic data, land survey status, and administrative approval records, and development interface access for customized data integration. Additionally, they should enable public supervision through information disclosure and interactive tools such as location navigation, incident reporting, and data submission portals.

4.4. Multi-Participation: Coordination and Connection of Comprehensive Supervision of Natural Resource Assets

As the property attributes and income distribution functions of state-owned natural resource assets continue to strengthen, their strategic significance in socio-economic development and national income distribution has become increasingly prominent. However, the transition from decentralized to comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in China still faces multiple obstacles, such as misalignment with existing legal frameworks and resistance from vested interest groups.

First, the supervisory foundations are complex and exhibit internal and external coherence conflicts. Current supervision of natural resource assets in China primarily relies on fragmented single laws. At the same statutory hierarchy level, the internal coherence is inadequate, with unclear supervisory authorities, overlapping or vacant responsibilities, and regulatory gaps, all of which hinder comprehensive oversight. Across the different hierarchical levels, external coherence conflicts between legal norms are prominent, particularly coordination challenges between departmental regulations and local laws [56]. Following the amendment of the Legislation Law of China on 15 March 2015, the local legislative authority expanded significantly, with the number of local legislative bodies increasing from 49 major cities to 323. This has objectively intensified the supervisory conflicts between central and local governments. Taking the supervision of uninhabited islands as an example, Article 18 of the Municipal Regulations on Uninhabited Island Management of Qingdao City establishes in 2018 a multi-level approval process from district or city to provincial marine authorities. However, Article 9 of the Measures for the Approval of Development and Utilization of Uninhabited Islands issued by the National Oceanic and Sea Administration in 2016 stipulates that development applications for uninhabited islands (except those requiring State Council approval) may be directly approved by provincial governments and processed by provincial marine authorities. Such conflicts in approval standards and procedures could foster rent-seeking behaviors and undermine market fairness. Moreover, departmental regulations formulated by ministries and commissions under the State Council represent sectoral interests, while local laws and regulations, enacted by local legislative bodies, reflect regional priorities. These inherent differences in institutional positions create systemic barriers to establishing a comprehensive supervision system of natural resource assets.

Second, interest-driven competition between departments and local governments leads to inadequate protection of usage rights. Influenced by interest-driven competition between departments and local governments, the protection and supervision of natural resource asset usage rights remain insufficient. Functional departments and local governments compete for profits, concentrating natural resource utilization benefits among certain interest groups or individuals and causing significant loss of state-owned natural resource assets. The current forest coverage rate of China stands at 22.96%. According to the Forestry Action Plan for Climate Change and the National Forest Management Plan (2016–2050), forest coverage is projected to reach 26% by 2050, with the forest stock volume exceeding 23 billion cubic meters. This implies intensifying competition for land use. Regarding state-owned construction land, incomplete supervisory systems for developing state-owned agricultural land and unused land hinder the realization of state-owned natural resource asset rights and interests. The structural imbalance in benefit distribution mechanisms further exacerbates asset losses. In land resources, the specific allocation of land use compensation fees collected from newly added construction land follows a 70:30 ratio between local and central fiscal revenues. Some local governments acquire land use rights through administrative allocation, effectively becoming direct exercisers and de facto owners of land ownership rather than “agents”. Coupled with the reality that “whoever occupies, disposes, and benefits”, the state and all citizens, as legal owners, fail to enjoy relevant benefits from resource use. Similarly, in certain state-owned forest farms or agricultural enterprises, resource use benefits are appropriated by local entities or corporate interest groups, seriously infringing on national interests.

In view of this, by leveraging the ongoing compilation of the Ecological Environment Code in China, the “moderate codification” model represents a feasible pathway for achieving comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets. It does not simply incorporate existing diverse single laws into the Ecological Environment Code but rather positions them as supplementary single laws attached to the code. Through the top-level design of foundational legislation, this approach enhances the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets’ effectiveness and drives the revisions and improvements of legal norms at all hierarchical levels. Comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets extends beyond mere operational efficiency; its core relies on intensive coordination, vertically across different levels of government and horizontally across policy sectors [57]. Social consensus appears to be a key prerequisite for fostering efficient and comprehensive supervision of scarce natural resources [58]. Stakeholder engagement in supervision is essential for improving accountability and reducing uncertainty through dealing with potential conflicts of interest and incorporating diverse knowledge in supervision processes [59]. Therefore, the realization of the “moderate codification” model necessarily requires the engagement of multiple stakeholders.

On one hand, “vertically”, the cohesion and coordination of diverse supervisory foundations for the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets require vertical (central–local) legislative alignment. Centered on the Ecological Environment Code and interconnected through single laws on natural resource assets, central legislation guides local legislation, while specialized central legislation authorizes or directs the implementation of local tailored systems, optimizing their respective functions and roles. Building on this framework, based on information sharing from the big data center of natural resource assets, a communication and coordination mechanism between central and local legislative bodies should be established to ensure consistency in legislative activities related to similar matters or interconnected issues. First, local legislative bodies within specific regions can adopt regional legislative coordination committees or joint conference systems to conduct joint legislation [60]. For instance, when addressing shared interests in regional economic development, consensus among multiple parties can be achieved through joint conferences, such as the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area. Second, an information exchange platform for regional collaborative legislation should be established, leveraging digital technologies such as big data and cloud computing. This platform would enable prior online communication and inspection during the formulation or revision of local regulations related to regional economic and social development, thereby reducing regulatory conflict costs arising from legislative disparities across regions and improving the effectiveness of comprehensive supervision.

On the other hand, “horizontally”, the cohesion and coordination of stakeholder interests under the comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets require horizontal (multi-stakeholder) engagement. Issues related to comprehensive supervision involve cross-sectoral integration demands, and to achieve sustainable comprehensive supervision, it is crucial to integrate multiple stakeholders, including governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the public, to consider the interrelationships of interest among diverse subjects from multiple angles [61], particularly those communities and agricultural collectives whose livelihoods depend on ecosystem services derived from natural resource assets [62]. Such integration enables horizontal alignment across administrative subjects and legal domains, unifying the economic, social, and ecological valuation dimensions of natural resources. The delegation of power to different interest groups is a key process in the effectiveness of supervision [63]. A delegation in a government-initiated integrated water resource supervision approach has been implemented in the Caylloma Province, located in the department of Arequipa, Peru, facilitating participatory supervision by community stakeholders [64]. In 2025, the Fengcheng City Natural Resources Bureau of Jiangxi Province, in collaboration with the Municipal Forestry Bureau, Municipal Emergency Management Bureau, Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau, and Municipal Public Security Bureau, jointly issued the Fengcheng City Regularized Joint Law Enforcement and Information Sharing Mechanism for Mineral Resources. By integrating core capabilities across departments, this mechanism breaks down information silos, achieves deep integration of law enforcement resources and professional expertise, and establishes a regularized governance model characterized by “one-point detection, multi-party coordination, and targeted enforcement” [65].

The realization of a multi-stakeholder engagement mechanism for natural resource asset supervision can be advanced through both legislative and administrative dimensions. (1) Through the legislative dimension, the NGOs, the public, and other stakeholders can be effectively granted the right to engage in natural resource asset supervision, and procedural rules for engagement in assessments, hearings, and reporting can be refined to provide a legal basis for multi-stakeholder regulation. Empowerment of multi-stakeholder regulation by legislation can address existing conflicts of provisions between the current procedures for the development and utilization of natural resource assets, potential operational risks, and inadequate information disclosure. It is necessary to amend legislative loopholes promptly and strengthen transparency, thereby ensuring the effective exercise of supervisory rights by diverse market subjects and integrating diverse supervisory forces by procedural standardization. (2) Through the administrative dimension, it is crucial to establish regularized channels for governments to collect feedback and suggestions from NGOs and the public throughout all stages of natural resource asset supervision, with timely responses via official media platforms including newspapers, websites, WeChat official accounts, and Weibo. Full disclosure of the entities responsible for illegal development and utilization of natural resource assets, along with corresponding penalties, should be implemented to enhance awareness among NGOs and the public. This should drive supervisory effectiveness through information disclosure, thereby ensuring the effective implementation of supervisory rights by multiple stakeholders.

5. Conclusions

Improving the comprehensive supervision system of natural resource assets is an objective requirement for the construction of the ecological civilization system of China. Contemporary supervision challenges predominantly manifest as complex property rights, conflicting utilization–conservation objectives, and multiple supervision and strip supervision failing to meet the need of overall comprehensive supervision and sustainable development. Although the super-ministry system restructuring has led to a trend towards comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets, in practice it remains a simple aggregation of fragmented sectoral supervision lacking systemic institutional consolidation. The accelerated modernization of social governance mechanisms reveals dual structural deficiencies within government-led decentralized models: from the perspective of the macro-structure, the focus is on the economy rather than environmental protection, with a single supervisory instrument and approach, which directly undermines governance efficacy; from the perspective of the micro-structure, the coexistence of inter-departmental competencies and parallel supervisory authorities has led to blurred responsibility boundaries and the existence of multiple departments [66]. The systemic linkages between natural resource assets and other ecological elements amplify the supervisory complexity, mainly manifested through the direct impacts of economic activities on other ecosystems. For example, fertilizer application in agricultural production may have an impact on water bodies and soil microbial resources. Absent comprehensive supervision of resource utilization, such impacts will appear as negative externalities that undermine holistic ecosystem service function. Consequently, optimizing the comprehensive supervisory legal system of China necessitates constructing a phased supervision model aligned with market transaction cycles. Firstly, for strict control of the source link, the protection of ecosystems requires typological classification based on the principle of holistic protection of ecosystems. Secondly, value trade-offs of the market transaction can be assessed by establishing a coordinated assessment mechanism for the economic value of natural resource assets and the value of ecosystem services to prevent the loss of state-owned assets. Thirdly, methodological innovation in the process of supervision can be managed by establishing a state-owned natural resource asset big data center, integrating information on the utilization of natural resource assets. Fourthly, multi-participation in subject supervision can be established “vertically” through establishing communication and coordination mechanisms among legislative bodies at all levels to effectively link the legal norms at various levels that form the basis for comprehensive supervision. “Horizontally”, mechanisms can be established for participation by multiple stakeholders, including government departments, NGOs, and the general public, to achieve sharing of data and information on various types of natural resource assets, and ultimately achieve dynamic coupling of economic, social, and ecological benefits.

This paper proposes an optimized path for comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets in China through comparative research and normative analysis. Compared to existing studies, its innovations lie in four key aspects: (1) The first is conceptual system development. Based on international comparisons, it establishes a conceptual element system for comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets, not simply cross-country institutional contrasts. This framework informs a localized system optimization approach for China that enhances global competitiveness and feasibility, and possesses strong comprehensive capabilities, adaptability, and potential for system integration. (2) The second is the categorization of source conservation. It categorizes source conservation for public welfare and operational natural resource assets, delineating distinct supervisory principles and priorities for each category, which balances the development of new-quality productive forces with ecological civilization construction. (3) The third is the big data center for natural resource assets. This paper emphasizes the necessity of establishing a big data center for natural resource assets, outlining implementation strategies and concrete measures. By integrating AI and other digital methods into integrated supervision, it advances intelligent supervisory transformation. Borrowing from international innovative supervisory tools, this enhances the capacity to address global environmental challenges like climate change in China. (4) The fourth is system coordination and stakeholder balance. It emphasizes the cohesion and coordination of diverse supervisory foundations and the balance between multi-stakeholder interests, to address institutional resistance from vested interests hindering the super-ministry system restructuring and comprehensive supervision progress.

Combined with the possible shortcomings of this paper, future studies could be improved in the following aspects:

• Firstly, although this paper proposes optimizing the comprehensive supervision system for natural resource assets by constructing a phased supervision framework, certain recommendations still lack operational precision. Future research could integrate field research with empirical data research combining quantitative metrics (e.g., econometric modeling) and qualitative assessments (stakeholder interviews) to enhance policy implementation ability.
• Secondly, while addressing procedural supervision stages, we recognize that comprehensive supervision requires multi-stakeholder collaboration, such as industry organizations and the public. Future research could further discuss the aspects of supervision subjects, and explore the synergistic supervision model of multiple subjects, especially the mechanism design of social public participation and integration of stakeholder collaboration (public–private–society).
• Thirdly, this paper analyzes the legal system of comprehensive supervision of natural resource assets from three aspects, theoretical proof, international comparison, and system optimization, but the optimization of this system includes many contents, such as the establishment of a natural resource asset evaluation system, etc. Due to the limited scope, the above issues are the targets of future in-depth research that can be continued in this field, contributing to modernizing the natural resource governance paradigm of China, while reinforcing the development of new quality productivity and the construction of a national security guarantee system.