China unveils plan to plant more trees and expand national parks

Country aims to increase forest coverage rate over the next four years to 24.1 per cent in bid to improve health of ecosystem
Senior forestry official also says national parks should cover 18 per cent of land area by 2025, with a nature reserve system in place a decade later

Environment

Echo Xie

Published: 8:30am, 21 Aug 2021

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China aims to increase its forest coverage rate to 24.1 per cent by 2025, up from 23 per cent last year, in an effort to improve ecosystem health, a senior forestry official said on Friday.

The country also plans to expand its national parks to cover as much as 18 per cent of its land area by 2025 and set up a nature reserve system with national parks as a major component by 2035, said Li Chunliang, deputy head of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.

National parks are one of the most important types of protected areas in China and it now has 10 pilot programmes in place across 12 provinces. They include a national park containing the headwaters of three major rivers in Asia on the Tibetan Plateau, one for giant pandas in the southwestern province of Sichuan and another one for Siberian tigers and Amur leopards in Jilin and Heilongjiang, in the northeast.

In 2019, Chinese officials said that some 2,750 natural protection zones had been established, covering 15 per cent of the country’s land area. They claimed that the ratio would reach 18 per cent if other such areas with a lower protection status were included.

Officials have emphasised that 18 per cent milestone because it means that China will have achieved the Aichi biodiversity target, which was set in 2010 and called for 17 per cent of Earth’s land to be protected by 2020, Cui Shuhong, an official with the environment ministry, told reporters in July.

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As China continues planting trees, 23% of the country is now covered in forest

A new framework will be decided upon at the UN Biodiversity Conference to be held in the Chinese city of Kunming in October, when countries are expected to agree to protect 30 per cent of the world’s oceans and land by 2030.

China announced it would establish a national park system in 2013 and now has a basic management system in place. But managing such a vast system presents challenges. While the central government can directly manage the parks, it can also entrust their daily management to provincial authorities, according to an action plan released by the forestry administration on Wednesday.

“[However] there are several situations where national parks are directly managed by the central government,” said Yang Zhaoxia, deputy director of the research centre for ecological law at Beijing Forestry University.

“One situation is when a national park has a special status and another is when it spans more than two provinces,” he said. “The central government can choose to directly manage a national park if it thinks the local management is chaotic or if local authorities lack manpower or financial resources.”

Yang also noted that finding a balance between protection and development was a common problem faced by many national parks.

Li Zhenji, a professor with the college of environment and ecology at Xiamen University, said many departments were involved in managing national parks in China and it became complicated if the parks covered several provinces.

To address these issues, China plans to introduce a national park law to clarify the rights and responsibilities of stakeholders, according to the new action plan. But it appears to be some way off since it is not included on the National People’s Congress Standing Committee’s legislative agenda.