China forest plans cover area as big as Ireland

Huge tree planting scheme is latest measure to tackle rising pollution

CHINA has announced plans to plant new forests in 2018 that will cover at least 6.6million hectares, an area roughly the size of Ireland.

The move is China’s latest bid to become a world leader in environment protection, after Donald Trump chose to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement last year.

China’s state forestry administration target is to increase the number of hectares of forest in the country to 23 per cent of the total land by 2020, with the figure currently at 21.7 per cent. Zhang Jianlong, head of the administration, said that by 2035 the figure will be up to 26 per cent.

“Companies, organisations and talent that specialise in greening work are all welcome to join in the country’s massive greening campaign,” he said. “Cooperation between government and social capital will be put on the priority list.”

China, which has to feed a quarter of the global population using just 7 per cent of the world’s arable land, has long struggled to strike a balance between industrial growth, maximising food production and protecting its environment. Its cities have been blighted with chronic air pollution due to rampant industrial expansion in the past few decades.

In 2014 China declared a “war on pollution”. As well as cracking down on polluting companies and punishing officials who break environmental rules, forest expansion and cleaning up polluted rivers have become top priorities.

This year, new forest areas will be built in the northeast Hebei province, Qinghai province in the Tibetan Plateau, and in the Hunshandake Desert in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in the north.

Mr Zhang said that 33.8million hectares of forest had been planted nationwide over the last five years, with a total investment of more than 538 billion yuan (£61 billion), bringing the country’s total forest area to 208 million hectares.

Three new state forests with a total area of 483,000 hectares would also be built in the new Xiongan development zone in Hebei province, he said. The heavily polluted Hebei, which surrounds the capital Beijing, has pledged to raise total forest coverage to 35 per cent by the end of 2020.

The government has also introduced “ecological red line” policies that require local governments to curb what they deem to be “irrational development” near forests, rivers and parks.