China has spent more than 300 billion yuan or about $47.3 billion in 20 years in protecting natural forests, according to sources with State Forestry Administration.
As a key measure initiated by the State Council after severe floods hit the valleys of the Yangtze River and Songhua River in 1998, natural forest protection project was implemented in 16 provinces, including Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, Yunnan, Hunan and Liaoning.
So far, about 129.6 million hectares of natural forest has been well protected, according to an official in charge of natural forest protection.
Logging of natural forest has been completely banned in these regions.
State-owned forestry bureaus in key protection areas received subsidy of 15 million yuan each annually to sustain their daily operation.
Boasting the fifth largest forest area in the world, China aims to expand its forest cover to more than 23 percent by 2020 to combat climate change and soil erosion. The forest coverage was 21.7 percent at the end of 2016.
An increase of 1.4 percentage points means the forest volume rising by more than 1.3 billion cubic meters, supporting China’s climate change obligation to add around 4.5 billion cubic meters of forest by 2030.
In the meantime, China’s forestry authority has made a plan to boost the domestic forestry industry and increase its forest resources to the world’s average by 2050.
By 2050, China’s forest stock will expand to 26.5 billion cubic meters, and 72 percent of the growth of forestry industry will come from technological advancement.
Although China has seen its forest resources growing fastest in the world in the past five years, forestry has remained “a weak link” of China’s modernization drive.
In the first phase from now until 2020, China’s forest coverage rate is expected to reach 23.04 percent from 21.66 percent, while the volume of forest resources will expand from 15.137 billion cubic meters to 16.5 billion cubic meters.
From 2020 to 2035, the percentage of forest coverage will grow further to 26 percent while forest stock will rise to 21 billion cubic meters.
Over the same period, the greening rate in the rural area will surge from 30 percent to 38 percent. By 2050, the figure will reach 43 percent.
In 2018, the afforested areas in both cities and counties would be 6.67 million hectares.
The aggregate output of the forestry industry will reach 7.5 trillion yuan in 2018 compared with 7 trillion yuan in 2017, while the imports and exports of forestry products will rise to $160 billion from $150 billion in 2017.
(Source: ourjiangsu.com)
