Over 100 million mu of damaged land nationwide urgently needs reclamation and reuse

A responsible official from the Ministry of Land and Resources revealed at the recent 2014 Beijing International Symposium on Land Reclamation and Ecological Restoration that China has so far reclaimed a cumulative land area of about 30 million mu, and more than 100 million mu of damaged land has yet to be reclaimed and reused.

According to Liu Renfu, deputy director of the Farmland Protection Department of the Ministry of Land and Resources, the current situation facing land reclamation in China is that “old debts remain unpaid while new debts are being incurred.” According to incomplete statistics, over a long period, in production and construction activities, the land damaged by human activity amounts to about 130 million mu. As production and construction continue to develop, about 4 million mu of newly damaged land is added each year, of which about 2.75 million mu is damaged by production and construction activities, and more than 900,000 mu is damaged by natural disasters.

In recent years, research on mine ecological restoration in China has developed rapidly. During the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” period, the central government invested a total of 12.9 billion yuan, driving 50 billion yuan in investment from local governments, enterprises and society. During the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period, the average annual scale of investment in ecological restoration in China was 85.78 billion yuan. All 31 provinces (regions and municipalities) across the country have established a mine geological environment treatment and restoration deposit system and a land reclamation fee guarantee system. According to the plan of the Ministry of Land and Resources, by 2015, China's mine restoration rate will reach 35%.