A hand-drawn map of the China-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City. 

The China-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City received international recognition for its biodiversity conservation efforts at the 9th Summit for Subnational Governments and Cities, an official parallel event of the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 17). The Eco-City was included in the latest group of cities joining the CitiesWithNature platform and featured as a case study in Cities in Harmony with Nature: Case Studies of Urban Biodiversity Conservation in China, highlighting its approaches to biodiversity protection.

The Eco-City sits on coastal saline-alkali land with salt content as high as 4–7 per mille, where vegetation survival rates are extremely low. At the start of development, natural shorelines had been lost, land-sea ecological connectivity was insufficient, and habitat fragmentation severely affected migratory birds' migration, breeding, and survival outcomes.

As the world's first eco-city developed through intergovernmental cooperation, the Eco-City compiled the world's first eco-city indicator system during its initial planning stage, setting clear wetland and shoreline protection targets, preserving large areas of ecological wetland at the river mouth, and strictly protecting migratory bird routes and feeding grounds.

Through systematic governance, green coverage in built-up areas has reached 50 percent, while communities of salt-tolerant native vegetation have formed a complete food web for insects, amphibians and birds. 

As of 2025, the Eco-City had recorded 305 plant species, while the number of bird species had risen from 106 at the start of development to 214, making it an important stopover on the East Asian–Australasian Flyway for nationally protected birds such as the Oriental stork. 

It offers a replicable and scalable model for ecological restoration and biodiversity conservation in coastal cities around the world.