Fan Meng is the director of ocean and fishery preserves in Guangdong Province and alumni of Sun Yat-Sen University. He plans to expand and improve a marine protected area network in southeast China. Meng is a visionary leader who implemented most of the first Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in China’s rapidly industrializing Guangdong Province.
Meng said that he will use the Fellowship to expand and improve the region’s MPA network. According to him it will safeguard the extensive coastal areas from the serious threats of industrial pollution and unsustainable fishing. Dr. Ellen Pikitch, Executive Director of the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, said that Meng and his team will establish a wider and sounder Marine Protected Area network in the region, ocean environments in Guangdong Province that will have a much better chance of being protected, to the benefit of marine life that resides there and future generations of Cantonese.
Meng is the first Chinese to receive the prestigious Pew Fellowship. He said that Guangdong Province has grown rapidly in industry, commercial fishing, and environmental exploitation in recent years, whereas the political and public support for serious marine conservation has been slower to develop.
He further adds that the Pew Fellowship will help him to extend the network of marine protected areas along the coast of Guangdong Province. It would also increase public and political commitment to marine conservation in China, and would help to professionally train staff of the MPAs so they can be more effective.
Under the fellowship Meng plans to design and implement an additional 15 to 20 MPAs in Guangdong Province. He opined that there is no easy channel through which those concerned with marine conservation in China can get information or get involved but his information center will change that.
