Qiu Xiuling has noticed a lot of positive changes to his
mountainous village in Miyun County over the past nine years.
The place is looking decidedly greener, thanks to the Miyun
Reservoir, which is responsible for supplying 70 percent of
Beijing's drinking water.
Qiu, a farmer-turned-forester, and his fellow villagers have
planted tens of thousands of trees for an international water
source protection project in their area.
They now have access to running tap water, a clean garbage
collection system, flushing toilets and wider roads.
Initiated in 1998, the Sino-German project was made possible by
China's forestry and commerce authorities and their counterparts
from Germany, with 100 million yuan (US$13.2 million) funding.
This forestry-oriented land and water protection project is a
first of its kind, and aims to protect Beijing's major water source
by keeping the immediate surrounds forested.
"Seeking sustainable water source methods to satisfy 16 million
residents is urgent in this thirsty city," Wang Xiaoping, director
of the Beijing Forestry Department of International Cooperation,
said.
With the decreasing supply from its upper reaches, Miyun
reservoir now holds only 1.1 billion cu m water, a quarter of its
designed capacity.
"Drought and environmental degradation have hampered the
reservoir's water holding capacity and supply function," Wang
said.
But Wang said the Miyun reservoir model "deserved wider
application" in other places that rely on surface water as drinking
water.
Skala Kuhmann from GTZ, the project's German partner, said
keeping the environment clean was one effective way to guarantee
sustainable water supply to Beijing.
More than 20,000 villagers have been taking part in a local
campaign by planting tens of thousands of trees and patches of
organic orchard on the once barren mountain
Now vegetation coverage is 10 per cent higher with plant
diversity on a significant rise, while the use of chemicals and
fertilizers has decreased by 50 percent.
Christoph Peisert, chief expert of the project, said: "It's not
a simple tree-planting process but an eco-protection project".
The project was carried out under the framework of Sino-German
technical cooperation agreement signed in 1982 by the
governments.
(China Daily August 24, 2007)
