China spends 300 bln yuan in 20 years to protect its forests

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China has spent more than 300 billion yuan (about 47.3 billion US dollars) in 20 years protecting natural forests, according to sources with the State Forestry Administration.

As a key measure introduced by the State Council after severe floods hit the valleys of the Yangtze and Songhua Rivers in 1998, the natural forest protection project has been implemented in 16 provinces, including Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, Yunnan, Hunan and Liaoning.

So far, about 129.6 million hectares of natural forest have been protected, according to an official in charge of natural forest protection.

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Logging has been completely banned in these regions.

State-owned forestry bureaus in key protection areas received subsidy of 15 million yuan annually to sustain their operations.

Boasting the fifth largest forest area in the world, China aims to expand its forest coverage to more than 23 percent by 2020 against climate change and soil erosion. The forest coverage stood at 21.7 percent at the end of 2016.

An increase of 1.4 percentage points means that the forest volume rises more than 1.3 billion cubic meters, supporting China's climate change obligation to add around 4.5 billion cubic meters of forest by 2030.

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency