China to World: We're Green, Honest!
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 07. 5.07
Photo credit: zamario
Does China have a softer, greener side, after all? The nation, straining under accusations of rampant industrial pollution and unchecked carbon emissions, last month unveiled a new conservation strategy for safeguarding its plant biodiversity. The plan: To allow 37 million acres (15 million hectares) of farmland to revert to forest over the next three years, in addition to extending nature reserves, protecting biodiversity hotspots, and creating a plant-monitoring system.
China is home to 10 percent of all known plant species, with half of those unique to the country. Around 5,000 species are under threat. To complicate matters, the Ministry of Land and Resources in April reported that more than 10 percent of China's farmland is polluted, posting a "severe threat" to the nation's food production.
Arable land shrank by almost 760,000 acres (308,000 hectares) in the first 10 months of 2006, according to government officials. Reports blamed excessive fertilizer use, polluted water, heavy metals, and solid wastes—the results of the nation's rapid economic growth.
Still, China's government has pledged to spend heavily to clean up the country's heavily polluted environment. "The Chinese government is working hard to develop the economy and improve our sustainable environmental practices," says Jia Jiansheng of the department of wildlife conservation in the State Forestry Administration, Beijing. :: New Scientist and :: BBC News
See also: :: China Has a Plan for Climate Change, :: Building a Green China, and :: China's Climate Change Report: "It's Getting Hot in Here"
I question the sincerity of this 'reversion'.
Huge amounts of marginal land is still farmed in China, where there's little return for the investment. That the Chinese government is ordering farmers to abandon it may only be a way to cut subsidies to poor farmers rather than a genuine 'green' effort, whatever the outcome may be.
Moreover, the huge migration from the rural regions to the cities is going to result in a good deal of farmland going unused anyway. It may simply be the government projection of the amount of land that goes untilled as a result of labor migration.