page_title: Afforestation
section_title: China
hierarchical_section_title: Afforestation / Countries and regions / China
caption_attribution_description: English: A view from the embankment on the right bank of the Yangtze near Panjiawan Town, Jiayu County, Hubei. The round building is a water pumping station, taking water from the river for the town's water supply system. The surrounding area is designated as a water source protection area. 中文: 湖北省咸宁市嘉鱼县潘家湾镇:从长江堤防看法
context_page_description: Afforestation is the establishment of a forest or stand of trees in an area where there was no previous tree cover.
  Many government and non-governmental organizations directly engage in programs of afforestation to create forests, increase carbon capture.
  Sometimes special tools, such as a tree planting bar, are used to make planting of trees easier and faster.
  The rate of net forest loss decreased substantially over the period 1990–2020 due to a reduction in deforestation in some countries, plus increases in forest area in others through afforestation and the natural expansion of forests.
context_section_description: China has deforested most of its historically wooded areas. China reached the point where timber yields declined far below historic levels, due to over-harvesting of trees beyond sustainable yield. Although it has set official goals for reforestation, these goals are set over an 80-year time horizon and have not been significantly met by 2008. China is trying to correct these problems by projects like the Green Wall of China, which aims to replant a great deal of forests and halt the expansion of the Gobi desert. The Green Wall of China Project has historical precedences dating back to before the Common Era. However, in pre-modern periods, government sponsored afforestation projects along the historical frontier regions were mostly for military fortification.
  A law promulgated in 1981 requires that every school student over the age of 11 plants at least one tree per year. As a result, China has the highest afforestation rate of any country or region in the world, with 47,000 square kilometers of afforestation in 2008. However, the forest area per capita is still far lower than the international average.
  According to Carbon Brief, China planted the largest amount of new forest out of any country between 1990 and 2015, facilitated by the country's Grain for Green programme started in 1999, by investing more than $100bn in afforestation programmes and planting more than 35bn trees across 12 provinces. By 2015, the amount of planted forest in China covered 79m hectares.
  From 2011–2016, the city Dongying in Shandong province forested over 13,800 hectares of saline soil through the Shandong Ecological Afforestation Project, which was launched with support from the World Bank. In 2017, the Saihanba Afforestation Community won the UN Champions of the Earth Award in the Inspiration and Action category for "transforming degraded land into a lush paradise".
caption: Strips of forest are planted along hundreds of kilometers of the Yangtze levees in Hubei province[9]
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