China needs to incorporate ecosystem services into wetland conservation policies

China has implemented several ambitious wetland conservation policies, however wetland degradation remains a serious problem. The Chinese government is starting to recognize ecosystem services as a possible approach for identifying the most beneficial areas of the ecosystems and addressing wetland management and policy challenges. In the past two decades, Chinese scientists have begun testing a variety of approaches to advance the science of ecosystem services for wetland conservation. However, significant challenges remain, which are preventing wetland management and policy efforts from achieving desirable outcomes. In this paper, we first demonstrate why China needs to use ecosystem services information to inform policy and the main scientific challenges that need to be overcome to achieve this goal. We conclude a proposed framework for monitoring and valuing wetland ecosystem services to improve wetland policies.