On November 26th, a symposium of a key project on ecological civilization and China's national park system development funded by the National Social Science Foundation was held in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University. The symposium which lasted for one and a half days focused on three themes of institutional mechanisms of national parks, multidisciplinary integrated management techniques, and management planning based on the ecosystem. More than 170 people from government bodies, universities, industry and the media attended the symposium with 40 presentations and a roundtable session.

The symposium aimed at finding an optimal system suitable for national parks in our country by coordinating the engineering strengths from different disciplines of the university to move toward ecological civilization. That was why the symposium was held at Tongji.

Some scholars advocated establishing an independent discipline -- Park Science which integrated disciplines across nature, humanities, economics and other related fields, since national park protection and management was a project of complex system. Departments or schools of this kind should be set up in universities to provide education in national park protection and management for China on its way to scientific and sustainable management.