Long-term green drive takes root

China’s mining regions get new lease on life under sustainability programme

BEIJING: For more than a month, Tong Fangping has spent half of his work at a tree seedling base of the Hunan Academy of Forestry.

As spring comes, the base is sending many tree seedlings to two once-barren old mining regions in central China’s Hunan province.

Rich in mineral resources, Hunan has a total mining area of 400,000ha. Hundreds of years of mining have damaged the environment.

“We must first select trees that are adaptable to the environment,” Tong said. “Some tree species can hardly survive in the mining regions due to heavy soil pollution.”

But some tree species can help absorb heavy metals in the soil and are thus suitable for local afforestation programmes, Tong said, adding that local authorities had selected more than 10 tree species.

Planting trees in the mining areas, however, is much more difficult than elsewhere as the ground in these areas is covered in slag.

To improve survival rates, workers often need to dig trenches and plant trees with new soil brought from elsewhere and sometimes with the help of nutrient solutions.

In an afforestation campaign launched in 2011, the city of Lengshuijiang in Hunan managed to plant trees on one-third of its tin mining area of 6,600ha.

The efforts have helped reduce the concentration of heavy metals in the soil by 20% in the past eight years, according to government monitoring.

A similar campaign has helped reduce the desert area in northern China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, a vital ecological security barrier in northern China.

The region now has 26 million hectares of forests, with the forest coverage rate at 22.1%, up 1.07 percentage points from 2014.

“The annual precipitation here is about 100mm, leaving many plants unable to grow,” said Liu Hongyi, head of the forestry work station of the Alxa Left Banner, Alxa League.

In the long-term struggle against wind and sand, local forestry workers have found a more effective solution: planting mainly shrubs and some trees and grass, said Liu.

The scale of afforestation has increased over the past years as the government stepped up spending on ecological protection, he said.

Other parts of Inner Mongolia have also been seeking a sustainable path for ecological protection and restoration, said Yu Guangjun, head of the economic research institute with the regional academy of social sciences.

Data shows that China and India are leading the increase in land greening and concludes that the “effect comes mostly from ambitious tree-planting programmes in China and intensive agriculture in both countries”.

China plans to add 6.73 million hectares of afforested areas in 2019 to further expand forest coverage.

China aims to increase its forest coverage rate to 23% by 2020 and to 26% by 2035, as part of the plan to build a Beautiful China.