The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently issued its Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010, which shows that China's forest resources rank fifth in the world, behind Russia, Brazil, Canada and the United States, and have contributed much to reversing the trend of shrinking forest resources.

Annual growth of 4 million hectares

Against the backdrop of an annual loss globally of 25 million hectares of forests, China's average annual forest growth exceeds 4 million hectares, with an average growth rate of 53.2 percent. At the present time, China's forest coverage is 195 million hectares and its rate has increased from 8.6 percent at the founding of the PRC to today's 20.36 percent.

Talking about global forest resource distribution, the report says that since the world entered the new century, Asian forest coverage has begun to show net growth despite the decrease in the 1990s. This was mainly attributable to China's large-scale tree-planting efforts, which are cushioning the continuous huge loss of forest resources in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

When estimating artificial forests globally, the report says, in recent years China has planted a large number of trees on wild land, greatly contributing to the world's artificial forest volume. Statistics show that from 2005 to 2010, the world's artificial forest coverage grew at the pace of 5 million hectares each year. In terms of global shelter forest resources, from 1990 to 2010, the coverage increased by 59 million hectares. This is mainly attributed to China's efforts since the 1990s to build up shelter forests to prevent wind damage and sandstorms, as well as to retain water and soil.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore praised China, saying its tree planting in recent years was 2.5 times the total number of planted trees in the rest of the world, and that the Chinese example was impressive. The Chinese Government's objective is to increase the forest coverage rate to 23 percent by 2020 and for the coverage rate to reach and be maintained above 26 percent, by the year 2050 China hopes to promote further "harmony between man and nature."

A greener China

With China's forest areas surging and its ecological environment improving dramatically, the country's efforts in environmental protection are earning greater international recognition. All these changes are attributable to the extensive development of ecological forestry projects.

China now has 61.69 million hectares of planted forests, with wood stock of 1.961 billion cubic meters, making it the country with the largest area of man-made forests in the world. China has been conducting massive campaigns of tree planting and returning farmland to forests for a long time. Government statistics say that 590 million people voluntarily planted a total of 2.48 billion trees in 2009. Over the last 29 years, 12.11 billion voluntary tree-planting trips have been recorded, resulting in a total of 56.33 billion new trees.

Experts have calculated that the carbon dioxide produced by an Audi car in a year can be absorbed by 14 mu (0.93 hectare) of man-made forests. Planting more trees is important to boost China's forest coverage rate. The Chinese Government has invested nearly 500 billion yuan ($73.5 billion) during the last 10 years to implement six vital forestry projects. The Three-North Shelter Forest project in North China planted forests totaling 24.47 million hectares and boosted the coverage rate of the project area from 5.05 percent to 10.51 percent. Projects to protect old-growth forests have effectively curbed exploitation of the forests for wood.

By the end of 2009, China's forestry sector had built 2,011 natural reserves, 12.79 percent of the country's total land area.

The forestation project to reduce sandstorms in Beijing and Tianjin reclaimed nearly 15 million mu (1 million hectares) of sandy land and built 37 model anti-desertification projects. China's projects to return farmland to forests now take a place among the most successful ecological improvement projects in the world in terms of scale, effects and numbers of participants and beneficiaries.

Forest carbon sinks slow down climate change

China has planted a large number of trees in response to global warming, said Zhu Lieke, Deputy Director General of the State Forestry Administration. In terms of planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, China has made its largest contribution in this indirect way.

The Chinese Academy of Forestry estimates that China's forest carbon sinks have now reached 7.81 billion tons. The forest ecological system helps to retain about 494.77 billion cubic meters of water and 7.04 billion tons of soil, absorbs 32 million tons of air pollution and stabilizes 5 billion tons of sand every year. Forest contributions to the ecological system, such as carbon sinks, releasing oxygen and cleaning the atmosphere, are worth more than 10 trillion yuan every year.

Estimates by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that global land ecosystems have sunk 2.48 trillion tons of carbon, of which 1.15 trillion tons are retained by forest systems. Global forest absorption and storage of carbon accounts for 90 percent of annual flowing carbon in the air and on the Earth's surface.

China has carried out extensive tree-planting activities for the purpose of establishing and increasing carbon sinks. Groups and individuals gave donations to the China Green Foundation to purchase carbon sinks. The foundation is then responsible for planting trees in certain areas to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and removing groups' and individual "carbon footprint" from the Earth. Since its founding, the China Green Foundation has planted more than 250,000 hectares of carbon-sink-oriented trees, as a major platform to cope actively with climate change.

It's predicted that between 2020 and 2050, China's forest reserves will reach 16.5 billion cubic meters, which will help absorb 10-12 percent of the country's total carbon dioxide emissions. By then, China's forest carbon sinks will have reached a higher stage.