China needs forest management rather than reforestation for carbon sequestration.

A a “close-to-nature” approach for carbon sinks, planted forests (afforestation and reforestation) have a priority to combat climate change in China. During the past decade, the Chinese government invested billions of dollars in a large-scale tree-planting (e.g., the Six Key Forestry Programs). At the U. N. Climate Summit (New York, 2009), Hu, China’s President, also committed that China should endeavor to increase forest coverage by 40 million ha to energetically increase forest carbon sinks by 2020 from the 2005 levels. Obviously, it is afforestation that makes remarkable contributions to carbon sinks in China. However, excessive and monoculture afforestation to implement China’s carbon sequestration programs may be inefficient and cause unintended disastrous environmental consequences, especially in arid and semiarid regions. In fact, forest’s functions in carbon stock increasing are addressed by two Kyoto Protocol activities: afforestation/reforestation and forest management. Afforestation/reforestation has a top priority for carbon sink in China, whereas forest management has been almost thoroughly ignored. Further, from 2000 to 2010, although roughly 15 million ha of plantation were planted, which prompted the total forest coverage and forest stock being increased from 16.55% to 20.36% and 11.27 to 13.36 billion m, respectively; China’s average forest stock, forest biomass carbon and forest carbon density still remain far less than international level. For example, China’s average woody forest volume was 85.88m/ha accounting for only 78% of the world, the plantation was even lower; meanwhile, the mean forest carbon stock in biomass (40.4 t/ha) was much lower compared to the global average of 71.6 t/ha. The gaps indicate the poor quality of China’s forest, which however implies the huge potential for carbon sink in the activities of forest management. Shao et al. estimated that if China followed forest management activities of the U.S., the increasing forest productivity would boost China’s forest carbon sequestration from 96 to 152 Tg C/yr without requiring additional forestland area (Table 1). In addition, if the existing carbon stock of forest biomass can be increased by 10% between 2010 and 2020, the cumulated carbon sinks will be much larger than 683 Mt of the Chinese official afforestation target; moreover, this amount is also much less than 65% of the latest international level. Scholars have been questioning that large-scale afforestation efforts in China have failed in the environmental restoration and carbon sequestration because of the negative chain ecological problems. For example, afforestation with unmatched species in afforestation regions may damage the local water balances, even exhaust limited groundwater resulting in trees death or dying; in arid or semiarid regions, it will finally lead to an enlarging desertification. In addition, monoculture plantations or exotic species can also reduce biodiversity when it replaces natural ecosystems. Compared with this above, forest management may have many positive impacts on environmental recovery. Forest management emphasizes natural approaches instead of monoculture tree planting for environmental restoration. Afforestation can be replaced by the native vegetation recovery. In northern China’s arid and semiarid regions, it is much more reasonable that small halophytic shrubs, savanna and steppe vegetation, and some herbaceous plants grow on aeolian sands and other land vulnerable to wind erosion.Meanwhile, a better mixture of plant species and appropriate measure of human activities will make a promotion to increasing biodiversity. In the socioeconomic aspect, with a cumulative afforestation cost and decreasing suitable forestland, forest management can reduce the investment, as well as provide excessive jobs in a large area and promote rural development. Hence, forest management rather than the large-scale afforestation meets the complex requirements of environmental restoration; and it is an efficient approach for forestry carbon