Increasingly greenish China to delight of people

Today, March 12th is China's National Tree-Planting Day, or an Arbor Day, and it has turned out to be a warm, sunny day. As the land across China is now vibrant with life and all things imbued with vigor, so it is really the ideal day for tree planting.

As a child, I was so fascinated whenever I turned to vivid lines of a Tang dynasty (618-907) poem: "Rows after rows of green trees encircle the village, lush-green hills peer down the gateway." As an experienced reporter residing overseas for years in my adulthood, I have come to see our gap with the developed nations globally is definitely the ecology of civilization rather than sky scrapers, top-rated hotels or supermarkets. In China's some areas, there are now more buildings but fewer trees, more broad roads or expressways with no foliage sheds and, with more cities hemmed in polluted air during the current process of industrialization or urbanization, and deforestation gives rise to serious soil erosion, or landslides and floods frequent in some places.

Fortunately, under the guidance of a scientific outlook on development, people in China have come to recognize the precious "value of trees" through their careful, repeated introspections. Last year, as a result of that policy, China achieved in 2009 its goal… by 20 percent per capita the afforested area or "greening coverage" for 2010 ahead of schedule despite rare dry spells and other natural adversities as well as tragic global financial crisis. The nation has afforested a total of 5.88 million hectares of land, with 2.48 million trees planted on a voluntary basis, averaging close to two trees per capita.

Forests are a main terrestrial ecosystem with a very decisive role to play in maintaining ecological balance. Scientists cite the forest ecosystem as a "lung of the Earth", the wetland ecosystem as the "kidney of the Earth", the desert ecosystem as a type of chronic diseases or persistent ailments on Earth" and the biodiversity as the "Earth's immune system."

The "three systems and one diversity" have been playing a central and leverage role in maintaining the overall functions of terrestrial ecosystems. Regardless of damages done to any of these systems, the Earth's ecological balance, "health condition" and "longevity" or the "prolonged life span" could all be affected, thus jeopardizing the foundation of the human existence.

Hence, the tree-planting or afforestation is becoming a major issue of global politics and a strategic choice to address climate change. Forests have three main functions in response to climate change: First is the function of absorption as the largest terrestrial carbon sink device. Scientific researches show that one cubic meter of wood growing stock can take in 1.83 tons of carbon dioxide and let out 1.62 tons of oxygen.

The second is the storage function. Forests constitute the largest terrestrial storage pool, which has kept more than half of the carbon in the land ecosystem and, thirdly, the function for replacing or alternation. With the extensive use of timber wood to substitute for reinforced concrete structures, the per-unit energy consumption can reduce to 100 from 800, according to the International Energy Agency. Furthermore, owing to the forests' these special functions in addressing climate change, the "Kyoto Protocol" offers two channels for the direct reduction of industrial emissions and the forest indirect reduction means.

Forest response to climate change has not only arrested an unprecedented attention to its special role of coping with the climate change, but also contribute immensely in drafting the nation's foreign policy strategy, so as to upgrade China's global status significantly.

At the U.N. Climate Change Summit held in September 2009, Chinese President Hu Jintao solemnly declared to the world: "We will energetically increase the forest carbon sink. We will endeavor to increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares and forest stock by 1.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 from the 2005 levels." This solemn declaration of China's has once again received due respect and endorsement from all other nations on earth.

While addressing on what China has scored in its tree-planting endeavor over he past two years, former U.S. Vice-President All Gore said, "They have been planting 2.5 times more trees than the rest of the world." Al Gore also commended China's proposals that remained helpful and praised the country's "impressive leadership".

"China has the largest area of man-made forests in the world," Premier Wen Jiabao told world leaders at the Copenhagen Climate Summit held in November 2009. Between 2003 and 2008, he noted, China's forest coverage registered a net increase if 20.54 million hectares and forest stock volume rose by 1.123 billion cubic meters.

Moreover, China has 1.3 billion population with its per capita GDP having only exceeded 3,000 U.S. dollars, Wen further acknowledged, and China still has 150 million people living below the poverty line, according to the U.N. standards, and so it is still facing an arduous task of developing its economy and narrowing the economic gap.

In order to enable the pastoral, poetic sceneries to display in both urban towns and rural villages country-wide, China is currently bent on bustling with "three driving waves" to promote the tree-planning, afforestation and maintaining "green colors" nationwide. Hence, let people in China plant more and more trees and, as a matter of course, on not the Arbor Day festival on March 12 alone, but for all-year-around.

By People's Daily Online and contributed by PD desk editor Yan Bing