By Wu Ping, DRC

2016-12-23

As the “lung of the earth”, forests could provide strong ecological protection for people’s survival-oriented demand and development.

First, sustainable management of forests could preserve green mountains and is essential for the formation of the ecological protection for national territory. According to the report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), China boasts the largest growing areas of trees planted each year with a stable increase of forest reserves. As a result, forests could not only provide wood, but also shore up eco-security. China has been developing modern forestry to enrich farmers. The output value of forestry had increased from 409 billion yuan in 2001 to 5940 billion yuan in 2015, which has made great contributions to the alleviation of poverty for 700 million rural residents. Forestry reform not only protects the ecology, but also ensure people’s livelihood. Since the implementation of the pilot program of banning commercial forest harvesting in key state-owned forest areas in 2014 and the systematic reform in tenure of collective forests in 2008, the forest areas with confirmed rights cover over 445.6 million acres, directly benefiting more than 100 million farmers.

Second, China’s forestry development is still facing enormous pressure and challenges. It is an arduous task to increase forest areas to 98.8 million acres and forest stock volume respectively to 1.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 and 4.5 billion cubic meters by 2030. It is imminent to improve the uneven national forest quality as well as the management ability of forests.

Third, we need to promote forestry with different approaches and measures for ecology and people’s livelihood. It is necessary for us to establish the concept of green development, comprehensively deepen forestry reform, and innovate forestry governance system. In order to well accomplish the task of planting, protecting, managing and utilizing trees, the government needs to enlarge the greening areas of the national territory, enhance forest governance capacity, manage forests with scientific approaches, and develop green forestry economy.

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