China will reduce logging on planted forests and eventually end logging on natural forests, under a plan published this week by the State Council, China’s cabinet.
Under the guidelines, China will reduce commercial harvesting of planted forests by 20 percent and eliminate logging on state-owned natural forests by 2020.
Amid the many environmental concerns facing China, the country’s forest cover has seen notable progress over the past several decades. China began aggressive efforts to expand its depleted forests in the 1980s, and that campaign took on a new intensity after 1998, when flooding of the Yangtze River was attributed to rampant logging. As a result “more of the country is forested than at any time since the early Qing” dynasty, the University of Washington scholars Alicia S.T. Robbins and Stevan Harrell wrote last year. The Qing dynasty spanned from 1644 to 1911.
But experts say that such reforestation efforts also have many weaknesses. Large numbers of trees of a single species are often planted together, leaving them vulnerable to disease and vast die-offs. Sometimes the trees are not appropriate for the arid climates where they are planted, increasing the strain on limited water resources. An effort to expand forest cover across north China to slow desertification, known colloquially as the Green Great Wall, has suffered from a poor survival rate of the trees planted.
Efforts to curb logging have also had unintended consequences. Following the 1998 flooding, a logging ban was enacted in 13 provinces to better protect the Yangtze and Yellow rivers. But that drove up imports, triggering fears of damage to vulnerable forests in Southeast Asia. Subsequent agreements between China and timber-exporting nations in Southeast Asia have helped alleviate some of those concerns.
The plan to restrict logging in natural forests will largely be felt in northeast China. Last year China banned commercial logging in natural forests in Heilongjiang Province, the state news agency Xinhua reported. The government has budgeted 2.35 billion renminbi a year, about $380 million, to help cover the living costs of laid-off forestry workers and to promote other forest-related industries, according to chinadialogue, an independent website that reports on environmental issues.