Land use trade-offs associated with protected areas in China: Current state, existing evaluation methods, and future application of ecosystem service valuation

[Display omitted] •This paper aims to inform the management of protected areas’ land use trade-offs.•Valuing ecosystem services of China’s nationwide protected areas can aid management.•Assessing environmental impacts can benefit from valuing ecosystem services.•Payment for ecosystem services schemes need to cover non-marketable cultural services. This review paper is aimed at providing decision makers and researchers with information on applying ecosystem service valuation (ESV) to better manage land use trade-offs associated with China’s protected areas (PAs). PAs are a key source of ecosystem services (ESs) and therefore crucial to human wellbeing and sustainable development. The Chinese government is now improving PA management but faces several land use trade-offs, including the expansion of PAs, and balancing conservation with tourism and local livelihood development. The benefits and costs of conservation have not been comprehensively weighed up on environmental, socioeconomic and cultural aspects, so it is unclear if expanding nationwide PAs and enhancing tourism development would generate greater benefits or costs. While cost-based payment for ESs schemes have been developed to address the trade-off between conservation and local livelihoods, current schemes often neglect financial compensation for the local people’s loss of non-marketable cultural ESs. To further address these trade-offs, ESV is integral as it allows for a better understanding of the production and value of ESs provided by PAs. Research is needed to value the ESs of PAs, especially non-marketable cultural ESs to local people, and to comprehensively assess costs and benefits of tourism development in PAs.