China’s Saihanba Forest Farm is the winner of the 2017 Champions of the Earth award, the highest environmental honor of the United Nations. 

The announcement of the prestigious award was made at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday. 

Saihanba covers an area of 94,000 hectares in the north of Chengde city, Hebei Province. It once served as ancient royal hunting grounds with abundant water plants, lush forests and numerous birds and beasts. 

But over time, due to deforestation and mountain fires, Saihanba was reduced to a plateau, where “the birds have no perch, the sun covered by yellow sands.”

Things changed under the strong support of China’s government as the area was rehabilitated. Thousands of hectares of forests were planted and Saihanba has been transformed from vast wasteland to a forest oasis.

It has become one of the largest man-made plantations in the world.   

By 2016, forest coverage had increased to 80 percent with 185,000 acres of dense forest absorbing 747,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year, significantly improving the environment in surrounding areas. 

Saihanba has become a symbol of Chinese spirit of hard work and vivid example of eco-civilization.

It has also played a leading role in regional and national eco-civilization construction.  

According to official statistics, forestland in the surrounding Chengde City has increased from 200,000 hectares in the early 1950s to the present 226 million hectares, absorbing 124 million tons of carbon dioxide, making Chengde City the “green lung of northern China” and also an important ecological buffer protecting Bejing and Tianjin. Saihanba is also an important contributor to the national three-North shelterbelts.

The construction of the Saihanba Forest Community is a good demonstration of President Xi Jinping’s “perseverance in promoting eco-civilization building and efforts to forge a new pattern of the harmonious development of man and nature.” 

It demonstrates that China has become an important participant, contributor and leader on global eco-civilization.  

The history of Saihanba manifests that “green” has become the core of the construction of a beautiful China, the newest pathway revealed by the Chinese government. 

The farm started before the escalation of China's environmental drive and demonstrates a spirit of “ecological perseverance,” makes a material contribution to the country’s sustainable development, and will become a beacon of ecological progress of the world. 

It deserves more recognition and to be better known to the world.  

(Zhang Jianyu, chief representative of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) China Program. The article reflects his opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.)