Yangtze: Ecology, green development prioritized

At the Nanjing symposium, Xi said efforts should be made to strengthen the protection and restoration of ecological and environmental systems and coordinate work on the upper, middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

He also called for comprehensively improving the efficiency of resource utilization and accelerating green and low-carbon development based on the premise of strictly protecting the ecological environment.

Series of actions

The commission said local authorities along the economic belt have undertaken a series of actions to implement Xi’s instructions.

Over the past six years, around 63,000 kilometers of sewage pipes have been checked for environmental hazards, it said. Local governments have also constructed or renovated about 8,500 km of sewage pipes, which help collect 61 percent of urban domestic wastewater in the belt for disposal.

Efforts have also been stepped up to close, relocate or upgrade chemical factories, reduce fertilizer consumption, and control waste from livestock farms, along with cracking down on illegal sand exploitation and the haphazard development of small hydropower stations.

The economic belt has also made great achievements in the control of desertification and soil erosion, thanks to the afforestation of almost 1.2 million hectares of land, the commission said.

After a 10-year fishing moratorium came into effect in all of the Yangtze’s natural waterways at the start of 2021, a cross-department and regional law enforcement mechanism was established in the Yangtze River Basin, it said.

With illegal fishing essentially curbed thanks to the mechanism, “the highly endangered Yangtze finless porpoise has been spotted more frequently in the river”, it added.

The Chishui River, a major tributary of the Yangtze where the fishing ban was introduced four years earlier, has seen its fish stocks improve. “The level of fish stocks in the Chishui River is 1.95 times the level before the fishing ban was imposed. The situation for aquatic organism resources has been gradually improved,” the commission said.