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GhanaHero.Com PSB: China's Model for Forest
Recovery
By GhanaHero.Com PSB
March 23, 2016
Did China Just
Create a Model for Recovery of the World’s
Forests?
TakePart.com
"The first
real eye-in-the-sky look at China’s forests has
revealed something surprising: They’re a lot
bigger than they used to be.
According to
satellite data analyzed by researchers at
Michigan State University, tree cover increased
significantly on about 1.6 percent of China’s
territory—that’s nearly 61,000 square
miles—between 2000 and 2010.
Meanwhile,
tree cover dropped on only 0.38 percent of
China’s land—14,400 square miles—during that
same period.
“Amid China’s devastating
environmental problems, such as air pollution
and water pollution, forest recovery is the
major exceptional success,” said study coauthor
Jianguo “Jack” Liu, an environmental and
sustainability scientist at MSU.
The
study was published Friday in the journal
Science Advances.
The researchers attributed
the forest gain to China’s Natural Forest
Conservation Program, which has banned logging
in many of the country’s forests and set up
systems to prosecute illegal logging. The NFCP
also compensates businesses and households for
monitoring forest health and conserving trees
rather than cutting them down.
China
instituted the NFCP in 1998 as a response to
unsustainable logging in the 1980s. That massive
deforestation caused mountain soil to erode and
collect in rivers, which worsened floods
throughout the last decades of the 20th century.
According to the paper, China invested about $14
billion in the NFCP during its first 10 years.
Other programs that aided reforestation
during this period included the Grain-to-Green
program, which paid farmers to convert hillside
cropland back into forests. The authors wrote
that these were important but probably had less
effect, as they usually covered territories too
small to be observed from space.
Liu
acknowledged that the researchers don’t yet have
data for what’s been happening since 2010 but
added that they “believe that the trends and
relationships observed in our study should
continue, given that the NFCP was renewed for an
additional 10-year cycle.”
The
composition of the regrown forests and their
value to native wildlife aren’t yet clear, Liu
said, because satellite images do not reveal
whether the new forests are a result of natural
recovery or plantation-style replanting...//
//...What Liu and his colleagues found,
however, is that the additional forest could
play a role in mitigating the effects of climate
change by storing more carbon in the trees and
ground. How large a role remains to be
determined, but given the amount of territory,
it could be significant...//
//...But
there is a dark side. The researchers noted that
while China has reduced logging within its
borders, it has also become a major importer of
lumber and wood products from other countries,
such as Indonesia, Russia, and Vietnam.
China
is also driving deforestation beyond its borders
as a grower of palm oil in Africa.".....//
//... Julian Newman of the Environmental
Investigation Agency, which has tracked the
illegal timber supply chain in Asia, called
China’s sourcing from other countries “a massive
displacement of deforestation.”....//..."
Want to read more?: YAHOO -
https://www.yahoo.com/news/did-china-just-create-model-recovery-worlds-forests-180024271.html.
SOURCE:
TakePart.com. Did China Just
Create a Model for Recovery of the World’s
Forests? 18 March, 2016.
(https://www.yahoo.com/news/did-china-just-create-model-recovery-worlds-forests-180024271.html).
Brought to you courtesy
www.GhanaHero.com.
(Read Mo! Listen Mo! See
Mo! Reflect Mo!).
GhanaHero.com Public
Service Bulletin (PSB) 105-20160319-CH.
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Under: GhanaHero.com PSB-China's Model for
Forest Recovery
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