Chinese province approves action plan to protect Yangtze

WUHAN - Central China's Hubei Province has approved an action plan which aims at reducing pollution and protecting the environment along the Yangtze, China's longest river.

Some 1,061 kms of the Yangtze's course runs through Hubei, the most of any province.

According to an action plan issued by the provincial reform and development commission, the province aims to make great achievements in river protection within the next three to five years.

The action plan covers reforestation, recovering lake and wetland environments, restoring biodiversity, cutting industrial pollution, building sewerage plants, addressing pollution in rural areas, improving lake water quality and reducing metal and phosphate pollution along the Yangtze.

In the coming five years, 20,000 hectares of arable land will be reforested or returned to grassland. Fishing and farming will be banned from 45 wetland areas in five major lakes along the river, according to the plan.

Chemical and paper-making industries will be banned within 1 km of the river and its major tributaries. Construction of new petro-chemical and coal-powered factories will also be strictly limited near the river.

In July, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Water Resources jointly released an environmental protection plan covering the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

Stretching from southwest China's Yunnan Province to Shanghai, the belt covers nine provinces and two municipalities in an area of 2.05 million square kilometers.