‘Red lines’ plan protects 25% of country’s land

CHINA recently announced that it has completed drawing ecological protection “red lines” nationwide, which demarcate no less than 25 percent of its land area for environmental protection.

The designated protection areas cover major environmentally functional zones, ecologically sensitive and vulnerable regions, and vital regions for biodiversity.

As one of China’s institutional innovations for ecological conservation, a national guideline introduced the strategy in 2017 to foster an ecological civilization.

As defined by the guideline, a protection red line zone refers to an area with crucial ecological functions and must be strictly protected.

The red lines are “bottom lines and lifelines” for ensuring China’s ecological security, the guideline stresses.

It notes that red line zones include areas with functions of nurturing headwaters, protecting biodiversity, conserving water and soil, solidifying desert sand, and stabilizing coastal ecology. It also includes ecologically sensitive and fragile regions that endure soil erosion and desertification.

China has stressed the red line strategy on many occasions and has incorporated it into its 14th Five-Year Plan.

According to the development plan, drawing the red lines is part of the work to improve the country’s network of ecological security barriers. It also looks at launching a national afforestation campaign and implementing a “forest chief” scheme.

The guideline calls for strict regulation and management of these red lines. It urges local authorities to tailor protection and restoration measures as per local ecological conditions and prioritize the habitats of important species in implementation.

Development and construction activities are prohibited in red line areas if they harm the local ecology, the guideline says. It also forbids arbitrary changes in the usage of land.

The red lines concentrate on China’s ecologically sensitive and fragile regions, including the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Qinling Mountains, and the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins.

As north China’s largest functional area for ecology, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has designated more than half its land as red line zones.

These 596,900-squarekilometer zones include grasslands, forests and wetlands, officials say.