24/05/05

Chinese tree scheme to help climate, wildlife and locals

Plantation of Paulownia trees in Henan province, China Copyright: Toad Gully Growers / James Lawrence (www.toadgully.com.au)

By: Mike Shanahan

We encourage you to republish this article online and in print, it’s free under our creative commons attribution license, but please follow some simple guidelines:

You have to credit our authors.
You have to credit SciDev.Net — where possible include our logo with a link back to the original article.
You can simply run the first few lines of the article and then add: “Read the full article on SciDev.Net” containing a link back to the original article.
If you want to also take images published in this story you will need to confirm with the original source if you're licensed to use them.
The easiest way to get the article on your site is to embed the code below.

For more information view our media page and republishing guidelines.

The full article is available here as HTML.

Press Ctrl-C to copy

<div class="article-wrap">
<div id="article-introduction">
<h1>Chinese tree scheme to help climate, wildlife and locals</h1>
<h4>By: Mike Shanahan</h4>
</div>
<br />
<br />

<div id="article-body">
<p>Future projects of the world’s largest tree-planting programme will attempt to address the problem of climate change while bringing benefits to local communities and conserving biodiversity.</p>
<p>The Chinese State Forestry Administration announced this month (11 May) that future tree planting projects will be guided by standards created by the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance, a group of academic institutions, companies and environmental organisations.</p>
<p>The alliance devised the standards to allow government agencies and the private sector to identify land use projects that bring multiple benefits — reducing the threat of climate change whilst providing livelihoods for local people, as well as conserving native plants and wildlife (see <a target="_self" href="/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=1411&language=1" rel="noopener noreferrer">New standards to link climate, biodiversity and poverty</a>).</p>
<p>According to the alliance, China’s new tree-planting projects will be designed with the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism in mind. This allows industrialised nations that have ratified the climate change protocol to offset their emissions of ‘greenhouse gases’, which cause global warming, against investments in projects in developing countries that reduce greenhouse gas concentrations.</p>
<p>Planting trees can help mitigate climate change because trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.</p>
<p>Although China has planted millions of trees since the 1990s, this work has tended to involve large areas being covered with plantations of a single species, often not native to China.</p>
<p>The State Forestry Administration’s future projects will use primarily native species and ensure local participation in the creation and sustainable use of plantations as, for example, sources of timber or fuel.</p>
<p>Chunfeng Wang, deputy director of the administration’s Carbon Sequestration Management Office, says the new projects will be assessed and potentially extended to existing reforestation projects.</p>
<p>
<p3>The Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance standards were developed over two years then field tested in Africa, Asia and South America and reviewed by specialists before being launched this month at the 2005 Carbon Expo in Cologne, Germany.</p3></p>
<p> </p>
<p>"By the end of the year, US$50 million worth of land use projects worldwide will be using the [Climate, Community and Biodiversity] standards," said John Niles, the alliance’s manager. "This represents a tremendous paradigm shift in land management for many parts of the world."</p>
<p><em>Read more about climate change in SciDev.Net’s </em><a href="/climate"><em>change climate</em></a><em> dossier.</em></p>

</div>
<div class="quick-links-wrapper">
<h3>You might also like</h3>
[related-articles]
</div>
<p>This article was originally published on <a href="https://www.scidev.net" target="_blank">SciDev.Net</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.scidev.net/global/news/chinese-tree-scheme-to-help-climate-wildlife-and/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(e,t,n,r,i,s,o){e["GoogleAnalyticsObject"]=i;e[i]=e[i]||function(){(e[i].q=e[i].q||[]).push(arguments)},e[i].l=1*new Date;s=t.createElement(n),o=t.getElementsByTagName(n)[0];s.async=1;s.src=r;o.parentNode.insertBefore(s,o)})(window,document,"script","//www.google-analytics.com/ga.js","ga");var _gaq=_gaq||[];var _gaq=_gaq||[];_gaq.push(["_setAccount","UA-3223906-8"],["_trackEvent","article interaction","republished","https://www.scidev.net/global/news/chinese-tree-scheme-to-help-climate-wildlife-and/",null,true])
</script>
</div>

Future projects of the world’s largest tree-planting programme will attempt to address the problem of climate change while bringing benefits to local communities and conserving biodiversity.

The Chinese State Forestry Administration announced this month (11 May) that future tree planting projects will be guided by standards created by the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance, a group of academic institutions, companies and environmental organisations.

The alliance devised the standards to allow government agencies and the private sector to identify land use projects that bring multiple benefits — reducing the threat of climate change whilst providing livelihoods for local people, as well as conserving native plants and wildlife (see New standards to link climate, biodiversity and poverty).

According to the alliance, China’s new tree-planting projects will be designed with the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism in mind. This allows industrialised nations that have ratified the climate change protocol to offset their emissions of ‘greenhouse gases’, which cause global warming, against investments in projects in developing countries that reduce greenhouse gas concentrations.

Planting trees can help mitigate climate change because trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.

Although China has planted millions of trees since the 1990s, this work has tended to involve large areas being covered with plantations of a single species, often not native to China.

The State Forestry Administration’s future projects will use primarily native species and ensure local participation in the creation and sustainable use of plantations as, for example, sources of timber or fuel.

Chunfeng Wang, deputy director of the administration’s Carbon Sequestration Management Office, says the new projects will be assessed and potentially extended to existing reforestation projects.

The Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance standards were developed over two years then field tested in Africa, Asia and South America and reviewed by specialists before being launched this month at the 2005 Carbon Expo in Cologne, Germany.

"By the end of the year, US$50 million worth of land use projects worldwide will be using the [Climate, Community and Biodiversity] standards," said John Niles, the alliance’s manager. "This represents a tremendous paradigm shift in land management for many parts of the world."

Read more about climate change in SciDev.Net’s change climate dossier.