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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

China Moves to Curb Deforestation

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

8/17/98

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

China has become acutely aware of the myriad of ecosystem functions

provided by forests--including water run-off control and buffering

from flooding. The concern remains that China will see that it is in

its interest to maintain functional forest ecosystems, and decide to

purchase industrially harvested timbers from other countries.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: China moves to curb deforestation

Source: Reuters

Status: Photocopy, contact source for permission to reprint

Date: August 14, 1998

BEIJING, Aug 14 (Reuters) - China's cabinet has issued a circular

calling for greater protection of its forests after environmentalists

linked deforestation to the country's devastating floods this summer,

state media said on Friday.

The State Council issued an emergency circular recently calling for

greater protection of forest resources and forbidding the opening up

of new lands at the expense of forests, the official Xinhua news

agency and newspapers said.

The amount of forest resources would be increased, they said, adding

that all forest land used by construction projects was to be frozen

for one year effective immediately.

Occupation of forest land needed the direct approval of the cabinet,

the circular said.

China's forest resources are rapidly dwindling due to over-

exploitation of land resources in some forest regions, it said, adding

that the situation would worsen if this trend was not reversed,

leading to a decline of basic living conditions in these areas.

The protection and cultivation of forests is vital to ecological and

environmental protection, and economic growth should not be achieved

at their expense, it said.

Efforts should be made to ferret out all activities involving the

destruction of forest resources, and governments at all levels should

ensure that some occupied land revert to forests by the end of 2000,

the circular said.

Crimes involving the destruction of forest resources should be

severely punished, the circular said.

Deforestation has been blamed on China's devastating floods this

summer which has killed more than 2,000 people.

``There is a human hand in this year's floods in the form of

deforestation and intensive land development,'' wrote Lester Brown and

Brian Halweil of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC. In an

essay made public on Friday, the pair briefly chronicled how rocketing

demand for farmland and housing in the aftermath of a Chinese

population boom led to the disappearance of 85 percent of trees in the

Yangtze river basin.

``The forests that once absorbed and held huge quantities of monsoon

rainfall, which could then percolate slowly into the ground, are now

largely gone. The result is much greater runoff into the river,'' they

said.

The effects of environmental abuse and ill-advised government policies

have been

largely ignored by the Chinese press. The government-dominated media

have chosen instead to lay blame on natural phenomena, such as La

Nina.

La Nina is the monicker assigned to a spell of unusually cold surface

temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. La Nina generally follows

occurences of the opposite phenomenon, known as El Nino.

Brown and Halweil were quick to note in their article that the nature

and local human activity were not the only factors which could be

blamed for this summer's floods, pointing to so-called greenhouse

gases emmissions.

``At the global level, the human influence on the floods is less

direct but no less real. The global temperature during the first seven

months of this year was the highest of any comparable period on

record,'' they said, while admitting no conclusive connection could be

drawn between the floods and temperature.

``Higher temeratures mean more evaporation, more intense storms, and

more rapid snow melt,'' they said.

``We can expect even worse floods in the years ahead.''

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