June 25 marks China's 32nd National Land Day. Just before the special day, Guangdong announced that the province aims to build a system for high-quality protection and efficient usage of natural resources by 2025.
And it will realize the modernization of natural resources governance capacity by 2035, announced Chen Guangrong, Director General of the Department of Natural Resources of Guangdong Province, at a press conference on June 22.
The province recently issued a document on exploring new modes of natural resources protection with endemic features.
In terms of carbon emissions, Chen Guangrong noted that Guangdong will increase the "green" carbon sink capacity by giving full play of forests, wetland, oceans, and soils. It will also expand "blue" carbon sink space by investigating and monitoring the carbon reserve in mangrove forests, salt marshes, and sea grass beds. "The province will press ahead with the market-oriented trading of carbon sequestration, and research carbon dioxide storage technology."
"The province has 1,899 billion square meters of arable land, with three harvest in every year." Chen mentioned about the arable land on the conference, "Although Guangdong is endowed with superior light, temperature, and water conditions, it still has limited per capita arable land. By 2020, the per capita arable land only has 153 square meters, less than 1/5 of the country." The province is carry out a policy on arable land protection, that is if a patch of arable land will be altered into other land form, a piece of other land with equal size should be turned into arable land for compensation.
"We have designated permanent basic farmland for special protection, and cultivated a large scale of paddy fields," Chen added. "So far, 244 million square meters of land has been cultivated."
Guangdong is advancing projects to protect and restore major ecosystems, said Chen Junguang, Head of the Forestry Administration of Guangdong Province, and specifically, the province is promoting protection and restoration of mangrove forests, implementation of forest chief system, and protection of ancient and famous trees.
"Guangdong has the largest mangrove area in China, accounting for about 40% of the country's total. This year, we will build a 6.7 million-square meters mangrove demonstration area, 67.3 billion square meters of forests for water conservation, and 4,000 million square meters of national reserve forests," Chen Junguang added.
Author: Ariel
Editor: Wing, Steven, Monica, Will, Jerry
