China increases its forested area by over 10 percent in 10 years

China’s first major reforestation efforts seem to have worked. The 10-year Sloping Land Conversion Program has turned some 37 million acres back into forest or grasslands, after farming on steep slopes in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins led to severe erosion and its knock-on effects. Or says the final research assessment — one has to be rather sceptical of published academic studies in China, even when published in China’s peer-reviewed academic journals — here’s why. However, if the scheme has indeed been a a success then it will have given a 10-20% increase in China’s national forested area. It’s also interesting in that the scheme aimed to be a decentralized, voluntary grassroots participation-based initiative, and as such it was a rare departure from the bureaucratic Big State Project model in China.

Short URL: http://www.jurn.org/news/?p=633

Posted by jonahjameson on May 16 2011. Filed under Nature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry