June 17, 2008 |
Today is the world desertification combating and draught prevention day. The global climate change, draught and desertification are threatening existence of the mankind. The human race shows more concerns on ecological environment than ever before. The Green Olympics concept is a central theme of the era of greening, environment protection and ecological improvement. Forest has played an irreplaceable role in creating Green Olympics. To realize objective of Green Olympics, the Chinese Government has taken a series of measures to accelerate tree planting and afforestation, and improve environment. Firstly, to propel forestry ecological development in China ; secondly, to enhance greening work in Beijing and surrounding areas; thirdly, to implement greening projects of Olympics stadiums. Now I would like to brief you the situation on tree-planting and greening and ecological improvement. I. To implement national key forest development programs The success of Beijing bidding for Olympic Games has brought about a new momentum for ecological development in China . Since 2001, key forestry development programs including the Natural Forest Protection Program, Program for Conversion of Cropland to Forest, Sandification Control Program for Areas in the Vicinity of Beijing and Tianjing, Key Shelterbelt Development Program in the ?Three North? and the Yangtze River Basin have been strongly implemented. The afforestation scale has hit a record in history. For 7 years, 54.41 million ha of land has been totally afforested, including 32.73 million ha of plantations, 3.92 million ha of aerial sowing and 17.76 million ha of mountain closure. In China , the forest area has reached 175 million ha and forest cover 18.21%. The standing stock volume of forests has reached 12.456 billion m3, among which the preserved plantation area is 53.26 million ha, taking up 1/3 of plantation areas in the world. The ecological environment has been improved due to implementation of key forestry development programs for many years. The area of sandified land is decreased by 1,283 km2 annually, whereas, it was increased by 3,436 km2 every year at the end of the 20th century. II. To launch continuously compulsory tree-planting campaign Since the launch of compulsory tree-planting campaign in 1981, 51.54 billion trees have been accumulatively planted with participation of 10.98 billion person/times. The compulsory tree-planting campaign of the whole society has played an important role in raising public awareness of greening and environment protection and accelerating greening of the motherland. III. To promote actively greening work in urban and rural areas In October 2000, the State Council issued the Circular on Further Developing National Green Channels, which required to establish multi-level, multi-structure and multi-function green corridors in belts, networks, patches and dots along highways, railways, cannels and rivers. In 2001, the State Council issued again the Circular on Enhancing Urban Greening, which required to take greening as an important part of urban infrastructure and modernization. The National Greening Commission has developed integrity of nationwide urban and rural greening and set up goals of ?cities green with parks and trees, the suburbs green with forests, roads green with trees, courtyards green with flowers?. With many years' efforts, at present, 1.4 million km of green channel have been built, taking up 67.1% of the mileage to be greened. The urban green cover increased from 28.15% in 2000 to 36% by the end of 2007 and the public green area per capita rose by 8.6 m2 from 6.52 m2 in 2000. IV. To bring forest potentials and advantages into full play and combat global climate change Forest has carbon sequestration function of absorbing CO2. According to China National Climate Chang Programme, between 1980 and 2005, the forests in China absorbed net 4.68 billion tons of CO2 and 430 million tons of CO2 emission was reduced by controlling deforestation, totaling 5.11 billion tons. The forest carbon sequestration in 2004 was 500 million tons, equivalent to 8% of industrial CO2 emission. To expand forest areas and improve forest quality and tap forest carbon sequestration potentials, the State Forestry Administration in 2003 set up the Carbon Sequestration Management Office to conduct forestry carbon sequestration and climate change work. The forest carbon sequestration projects have been actively implemented and carbon accounting measures been developed. China Green Carbon Fund has been set up and China forestry carbon sequestration website been developed. The knowledge of carbon sequestration has been popularized and special training of the talents been conducted. In accordance with President Hu's proposal at the APEC meeting, Asia Pacific Forest Rehabilitation and Sustainable Management Network has been developed to promote international cooperation. Recently, the popular science publicity activity of ? Green Olympic Games, Forests and Climate Change? has been conducted for 3 months in Beijing to raise people's awareness of climate change and energy saving and CO2 emission reduction. The local people are encouraged to participate in activities of carbon compensation and CO2 emission reduction with advertisements shown on 150 large buses. In addition, to alleviate present energy shortage and complementarity, develop clean and sustainable energy, bring features and advantages of forests into play and develop forestry biomass energy, the Forest Biomass Energy Development Plan has been worked out. By 2020, 80 million ha of oil raw material forests will be established to provide annually 400 million tons of wood fuels. Starting from 2007, in cooperation with such large enterprises as China National Petroleum Corporation, over 1 million mu of biomass diesel raw material forests will be established annually to realize integration of forest, diesel and electricity. Through great achievements have been made in tree planting and greening, China is a country with lower forest cover. The forest quality is not very high and ecological environment is still fragile. In the light of scientific development concept, a big gap still exists and the task of vegetation rehabilitation and ecological development is arduous and the road ahead is long. In future, we will continuously work hard, rehabilitate forest vegetations, enhance forest management and improve forest quality in various ways. We will strive to reach 20% of forest cover by 2010 and over 26% of forest cover by the middle of the 21st century, to have beautiful mountains and clean waters and sound ecological environment and make greater contributions to global climate change.
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