What new opportunities lie ahead for grassland conservation and development?

Report from this website  Recently, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Advancement of Ecological Civilization Construction" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), which is both an important measure for implementing the spirit of the 18th National Congress and the third and fourth plenary sessions of the 18th Central Committee, and a strategic deployment made on the basis of China's national conditions. Building ecological civilization concerns the well-being of the people and the future of the nation, and is an important part of realizing the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The "Opinions" is the first document in which the central leadership has made a dedicated deployment on ecological civilization construction, fully reflecting the great importance attached to ecological civilization construction by the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as General Secretary, and is of great significance for promoting economic transformation and upgrading, promoting social harmony, building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and safeguarding global ecological security.

The "Opinions" sets out detailed arrangements for the main goals, key tasks and institutional development of China's grassland conservation and development for the current period and the period ahead. The "Opinions" proposes stepping up efforts to return grazing land to grassland, continuing to implement the grassland ecological protection subsidy and reward policy, raising grassland vegetation coverage, and increasing grassland carbon sinks. By 2020, the comprehensive vegetation coverage of grasslands nationwide is to reach 56%. It calls for accelerating the delineation and protection of basic grasslands, scientifically delineating the grassland ecological red line, and revising the "Grassland Law". It calls for strictly implementing the systems of grazing bans and rest grazing and the balance between grass and livestock, stabilizing and improving the grassland contract management system, carrying out unified registration of rights confirmation for grasslands and other natural ecological spaces, clarifying the owners, regulators and their responsibilities for natural resource assets in territorial space, and accelerating the building of statistical monitoring and accounting capacity for grasslands and other resources. Among these, the comprehensive vegetation coverage of grasslands, as an important binding indicator, has been established in a document of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, providing strong support for consolidating the current good momentum in grassland ecological protection and development, restraining governments at all levels from sacrificing grassland resources in exchange for short-term development, and orderly advancing the development of key ecological civilization systems such as grassland damage compensation and accountability. This is of great significance and far-reaching influence.

The environment is people's livelihood, green mountains are beauty, and blue skies are happiness. China's grassland area is nearly 400 million hectares, accounting for about 2/5 of the national land area. As China's largest terrestrial ecosystem and one of the main vegetation types of the "two barriers and three belts" in the "12th Five-Year Plan", grasslands have irreplaceable and important functions in water conservation, windbreak and sand fixation, carbon fixation and nitrogen storage, and maintenance of biodiversity, and are a main battlefield for ecological civilization construction. Grasslands are the source and water conservation areas of China's rivers; the sources of the Yangtze River, Yellow River, Lancang River, Liao River and Heilongjiang River are all in grasslands. On grasslands with good vegetation coverage, the ground sediment transport is only equivalent to 1% of that in shifting sand areas, and near-surface wind speed can be reduced by 50%. Grassland ecosystems can fix 520 million tons of carbon each year, equivalent to 1.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide, roughly offsetting about 30% of China's total annual carbon dioxide emissions. China has 18 types of grassland and more than 17,000 species of animals and plants, making grasslands an important "gene bank" for maintaining China's biodiversity. The important ecological status and functions of grasslands require us to understand and view grasslands from the strategic height of safeguarding national ecological security and realizing the sustainable development of the Chinese nation, to further raise awareness of the importance of grassland conservation and development, to closely keep pace with the general trend of ecological civilization construction, to strive for achievements in consolidating the results of grassland conservation and development, and to seize the momentum in improving the grassland protection system.

Going forward, whether government administrators, business operators or the broad masses of farmers and herders, all should be part of ecological civilization construction, strictly follow the requirements of the "Opinions", firmly establish the concept of respecting nature, conforming to nature and protecting nature, grasp grassland ecological protection with systems engineering thinking, and advance grassland legal system development in accordance with the requirements of governing grasslands by law. We should continue to implement grassland ecological protection and development projects, consolidate the effects of the grassland subsidy and reward policy, stabilize and improve the grassland contract management system, implement grassland protection systems such as basic grassland protection, grazing bans and rest grazing, rotational grazing by zone, and the balance between grass and livestock, study and delineate the grassland ecological red line, accelerate the legislative process of the "Regulations on the Protection of Basic Grasslands", study and establish a grassland ecological damage compensation system, continuously accelerate the pace of grassland ecological civilization construction, strive to open a new era of grassland conservation and development, and make new and greater contributions to building a beautiful China and building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.