City sets conservation example for nation

Chengdu, a mega city in western China, is not just a rising star on China's economic landscape, it is also playing a leading role in the country's push to promote ecological conservation and environmental protection.

The city has been famous for its beautiful environment since ancient times. Many great poets, including Li Bai and Du Fu during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and Lu You in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), wrote verses about it.

Chengdu is working to recreate the beautiful scenes depicted in the verses, and it is expected that the project will be completed within five to 10 years.

The city has been upgrading its ecological environment to ensure a cleaner, healthier environment for its residents.

By 2020, the urban green coverage is expected to reach 46 percent, green space ratio 42 percent and parkland per capita 15 square meters.

Chengdu launched the Ecological Belt Around the City project in 2012, aiming to create an ecological preservation area along the city's ring expressway by 2020.

The ecological belt reaches 85 kilometers and covers a total area of 133 sq km, about one-fifth of Chengdu's central urban area.

It will connect six rivers and lakes and eight wetlands, increasing the city's total water area to five times that of the famous West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

The city drew up a conservation regulation for the Ecological Belt Around the City project making the city the first in the country to introduce a law for ecological planning.

Following the regulation, more than 100 protective boundary tablets have been erected around the 133 sq km ecological belt.

The city will also increase vegetation coverage on the Longmen and Longquan mountains that surround the Chengdu Plain, according to the Chengdu Forestry and Garden Bureau. A giant panda national park, which is planned to cover 1,616 sq km, will be established on Longmen Mountain. Through the building of the park, Chengdu plans to enhance the recovery and protection of the forest ecosystem on the mountain and protect biodiversity.

There are also plans to add 6,706 hectares of forest on Longquan Mountain in the east of the city over three to five years, raising the mountain's forest coverage by 8.75 percentage points to 59.79 percent.

Since 2014, Chengdu has been cooperating with seven neighboring cities to improve the environment of the Chengdu Plain Economic Zone, which is the most developed region in Sichuan and home to 40 percent of the province's population.

The cities will jointly implement projects in forestation, sewage treatment and air pollution control, helping to build a "green shelter" in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

In July 2014, Chengdu was one of the first cities to be named a National Ecological Environment Demonstration Area by the National Development and Reform Commission and five other departments.

(China Daily 07/23/2016 page37)