| What’s innovative? To address the enormous pressure to exploit China’s coastal resources, this project has used advanced technology and methods for environmental monitoring in coastal waters and introduced international seafood handling and processing standards. |
China has a continental coastline of 18,000 kilometers, and its territorial waters cover 4.87 million square kilometers. This vast area is one of the world’s largest and most productive sources of aquatic products. In recent years, the output from China’s coastal resources has shown dramatic growth. Outputs from marine and freshwater aquaculture and offshore capture fishing have spurred the growth of processing industries and led to substantial foreign exchange earnings. Rapid growth in production has led to new challenges that require urgent attention, including disease outbreaks, declining stocks of some valued species, water pollution, loss of critical habitat and biodiversity, and overexploitation of marine resources. Project Objectives and Description The Sustainable Coastal Resource Development Project (SCRDP) aims to support the government in sustainably developing China's coastal resources, reduce pressure on coastal fisheries resources, and help improve aquatic product quality (which also directly supports the national “Law on Marine Resource Use of the People’s Republic of China,” passed by the National People’s Congress in January 2002). The project has four components: Support the design and implementation of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) plans in four provinces.
Support environmentally sustainable marine aquaculture in shallow waters and tidal flats. This activity involves the production of fish in cages and ponds, oysters, scallops, clams, several species of seaweed, and shrimp in four coastal provinces.
Support trials of new methods of shrimp culture.
Finance a number of seafood handling operations, including processing and wholesale markets, to improve product quality and safety. This project component should enable companies to meet higher food quality and safety standards demanded by China's main customers in North America and Europe.
During the identification phase, the objective of the project was shifted from a single focus on production (mainly from aquaculture) and primary seafood processing to one centered on sustainability and product quality. The project originally proposed to devote about 50 percent of the investment to constructing and rehabilitating shrimp ponds, 30 percent to expanding eel production, and the remainder to new processing facilities for aquatic products. During the project preparation stage, the team concluded that shrimp pond rehabilitation on a large scale would be too risky, given the uncertainty of new techniques.
  
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