Protecting marine life has been a critical part of China's environmental efforts since its reform and opening up, said a Chinese official at the UN's Ocean Conference in New York.

Results from China's marine preservation efforts are still "preliminary", but the government has been exploring various means of controlling pollution and preventing further ecological damage to marine systems in China, said Lin Shanqing, deputy administrator of China's State Oceanic Administration (SOA), on Tuesday at a meeting on conserving marine ecosystems at UN headquarters.

"Since the launch of its reform and opening up policy, China has seen tremendous social and economic development. As the country has grown rapidly, there emerged inevitable environmental and ecological problems," he said.

"China has been strengthening the management, protection, conservation, and restoration of marine and coastal ecosystems, and has seen many preliminary - yet major - results," said Lin.

The country has enacted new marine-related laws to regulate and prevent pollution damage to marine environments in marine construction projects. Those measures include the Marine Environment Protection Law, which promote sustainable economic and social development, and the Law on the Administration of the Use of Sea Areas, which promotes sustainable use of sea areas.

"Thanks to over 10 years of efforts, China has established a comprehensive system of marine resource utilization," said Lin. "It is revising the system of functional division to increase the percentage of marine-protected areas, and marine reserves and introduce more strict management."

High population growth rates in China coupled with climate change have negatively affected the country's marine and coastal ecosystems, which include chemical pollution in water systems due to runoff from agricultural lands, pressure on animals and plants in marine ecosystems, and ocean acidification in places like the Bohai Sea.

Lin said that the government has put in place a system to control total pollution discharge in key marine areas that will tackle both land and marine-based sources of pollution, a pilot program that will be used in the Bohai Sea area.

He added that the government is looking to transition from a 100 percent publicly funded protection and conservation system that provides "inadequate coverage" to one that is funded by various sources.

Investments in several major restoration projects topped $1.18 billion (8 billion yuan), and have gone toward establishing wetlands like that in the Liaohe Delta, one of six of the country's biggest marsh wetlands. There are 269 species of birds in the wetlands, comparable to 1980 levels, according to incomplete data, Lin said.

Tommy Remengesau, president of Palau who co-chaired the meeting, emphasized connecting existing funding mechanisms - such as the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the World Bank - to focus solely on oceanic issues. Preserving marine ecosystems and preventing further damage is a key goal of the Sustainable Development Goals, with ocean issues known as Sustainable Development Goal 14.

"We have a responsibility to be leaders to protect this resource that will determine the future of our people. We can all be leaders in our own individual way, by doing what we can to save the ocean, not only for our generation but for our children and their children as well," he said.

amyhe@chinadailyusa.com