Guangdong growing greener and cleaner
Zhong Chenxi, 63, a retiree in the Pearl River Delta boomtown of Dongguan, has developed the habit of taking a long walk with his friends along a green path near his home almost every morning except when the weather is really bad.
“I just can’t resist the fresh air and green views,” he told China Daily recently.
Zhong lives in downtown Dongguan and it takes him no more than 15 minutes to walk to the green path nearby.
“Our city is becoming more beautiful, the sky bluer, the water clearer, the whole environment much better than before,” he said.
Zhong is among the tens of millions of residents in the Pearl River Delta region who have benefited from the province’s immense efforts to protect the environment and improve the region’s ecology.
In fact all of the province’s nine cities in the Pearl River Delta region are models of environmental protection, according to a recent report in the local newspaper Nanfang Daily.
The delta, which has been dubbed the “world’s factory”, is one of the best-developed regions in China and it suffered from worsening environmental and ecological problems during its economic takeoff.
But the situation has improved noticeably in the past few years thanks to the provincial authorities’ endeavors to integrate growth with environmental protection, the newspaper said.
According to the report, Guangdong aims to become a resource-efficient and environmentally friendly province, and the Pearl River Delta plans to be the nation’s leading ecofriendly region by 2020.
To this end, the provincial government has been tightening its grip on pollution and expanding its green spaces.
This year, the province’s environmental protection authorities have shut down 819 polluting enterprises and urged more than 5,400 to make corrections.
Among other measures, a province- wide program to establish ecological control lines — or urban expansion boundaries — for cities was introduced in October, and a pilot carbon trading system came into operation on Dec 19 to limit the emissions of carbon dioxide.
And the provincial government spent 7.41 billion yuan ($1.22 billion) to increase the province’s ecological and scenic belts by 3,103 kilometers and its forest areas by more than 240,000 hectares.
The province’s forest coverage is expected to reach 58 percent by 2015 and 60 percent by 2017, the report said.