Afforestation and Tree Planting Advance Steadily: China's Land Greening Achieves Remarkable Results
Through more than 30 years of continuous afforestation and tree planting, our country has more trees, greener mountains, and greener land. Even more encouraging is that the ecological concept of loving and protecting greenery has taken root in people's hearts and become a common trend. It takes ten years to grow trees but a hundred years to cultivate people. Only by turning afforestation and tree planting into a long-term action with participation by the whole people can China become more and more beautiful——
It is once again Qingming season, and the voluntary tree planting activity in the capital has also reached its 34th year. On the morning of April 3, Party and state leaders took part in the voluntary tree planting activity in the capital. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized during the tree planting activity that afforestation and tree planting are an important way to achieve blue skies, green land, and clean water, and are the most inclusive livelihood project. It is necessary to persist in nationwide mobilization and action by all people in afforestation and tree planting, and strive to turn building a beautiful China into a conscious action of the people.
Since the founding of New China, and especially over the past more than 30 years, under the attention of successive Party and state leaders, China's afforestation and tree planting have advanced steadily, and the “Three-North Project”, the “Natural Forest Protection Project” and others have achieved remarkable results. Echoing afforestation and tree planting, the green concept has also become a common trend. Concepts such as “the environment is people's livelihood”, “green mountains are beauty”, and “blue skies are also happiness” have taken root in people's hearts.
Project Protection: Vast Lands Turn from Yellow to Green
⟦NL> During Qingming season, on the Ru River riverbed in Yanghe Village, Gucheng Township, Pengyang County, Ningxia, green waves sway, reeds turn green, and water birds fly about. Pengyang is located in the arid and rain-scarce region of the northwest. Due to vegetation destruction, it could not conserve rainwater, and the Ru River was dry to the bottom for most of the year. Over 30 years, unremitting artificial afforestation has greatly increased Pengyang's forest coverage rate from 3% to 27%, and the “seasonal river” has become a “perennial flowing river”.
The transformation of the Ru River benefited from an important shelterbelt construction project in China——the “Three-North Project”. Zhang Wei, director of the State Forestry Administration's Three-North Shelterbelt Construction Bureau, said, “Since the project was launched in 1978, the ‘Three-North Project’ has added 150,000 square kilometers of newly treated soil erosion area, and nearly 50% of the soil erosion area has been controlled to varying degrees.”
Over 36 years, the “Three-North Project” has completed a total of 7.791 million hectares of afforestation in the Loess Plateau region, and the regional forest coverage rate increased from 11% at the initial stage of project construction to 19.55%, realizing a historic transformation of the mountains and land from “yellow” to “green”. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei sandstorm source area has successfully achieved human advance and sand retreat. Monitoring data from the Yellow River Conservancy Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources show that the average sediment transport in some tributary basins of the Yellow River over the past 5 years has declined significantly compared with the multi-year average. Among them, the declines at monitoring stations such as Baijiachuan on the Wuding River, Ganguyi on the Yan River, and Hejin on the Fen River exceeded 90%, while the declines at monitoring stations such as Zhangjiashan on the Jing River and Huaxian on the Wei River exceeded 70%.
Urban Green Lungs: Let People See Mountains and Water
Let cities integrate into nature, and let residents see mountains, see water, and remember nostalgic attachment to their hometowns. New ideas and new practices in urban greening are changing the face of cities.
On April 2, the Tianjin Municipal City Appearance and Landscape Commission revealed that Houtai Urban Park, located in the Houtai area in the western part of Tianjin's central urban area, is under intense construction and is expected to meet citizens this year, adding another major urban green lung to Tianjin. In recent years, more and more cities have seen such reports, and building urban green lungs is becoming an important greening project in many cities across the country.
According to the reporter's understanding, in recent years the State Forestry Administration, centering on the two major themes of “planting green on the land” and “sowing green in hearts”, has organized a series of urban forest construction projects, wetland restoration projects, ecological culture construction projects, and ecological civilization education projects in more than 140 cities across the country. According to statistics, from 2011 to 2013, cities nationwide completed new afforestation of 16.70 million mu, 18.80 million mu, and 26.127 million mu respectively, accounting for 19%, 21%, and 30% of the national total afforestation that year.
Innovative Forms: Whole-People Participation in Afforestation and Greening
In recent years, enthusiasm from all sectors of society for participating in afforestation and tree planting has continued to rise. The recently released “2014 China Land Greening Status Bulletin” shows that last year, units directly under the Central Committee and central state organs organized officials and staff to participate in voluntary tree planting activities, planting about 339,000 trees and shrubs. The Communist Youth League system organized 5.984 million person-times of young people to participate in the Protect Mother River action, creating youth forests and grasslands.
Afforestation and tree planting have won widespread participation, which cannot be separated from the improvement of policies and mechanisms for afforestation and greening. Over the past year, forestry reform in collective forest areas was deepened. New progress was made in forest rights confirmation and registration, and the rate of household contract allocation increased by nearly 2 percentage points compared with 2013. Policy support and incentive mechanisms for afforestation and greening were noticeably strengthened. In 2014, central forestry investment was 151.7 billion yuan, an increase of 6.7 billion yuan over 2013. Twenty-four provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), 3 cities with separate state planning, and the Greater Khingan Mountains Forestry Group Corporation were included in the scope of central financial forest insurance premium subsidies, and the insured forest area reached 140 million hectares.
Especially worth mentioning is that with the vigorous development of the Internet, the forms of voluntary tree planting are also constantly innovating. The “Online Tree Planting and Happy Homeland——Western Greening Action” ecological poverty alleviation public welfare project implemented by the China Green Foundation is one of them. The project was launched in 2009. At one end, it provides netizens with an online “tree planting” platform; at the other end, it links “online tree planting” offline with greening projects in poor areas of western China, allowing people to plant a sapling on a barren piece of land through virtual space.
At present, more than 560,000 netizens have participated in this ecological public welfare project, donating nearly 10 million yuan. In just two phases of ecological economic forest projects in Tongwei, Gansu, and Jinxiu, Guangxi, more than 100,000 trees were planted to help local poor families, benefiting nearly 20,000 poor families, with an average survival rate of more than 80%.