China spent $100 billion on reforestation. So why does it have 'green deserts'?
| Hongya County, China
Standing on a hillside, Liu听Minfang听looks down at the lush landscape that surrounds her home in the remote mountains of southwestern China. Terraced slopes that farmers once used for growing crops are now filled with cedar trees and bamboo.听A waterfall cascades听down a distant cliff. In the valley below, a muddy river flows through a patchwork of rapeseed fields and rice paddies.
The landscape has changed a lot since Ms. Liu was a child. The fields have long been here, but most of the听trees听are new, planted over the past 18 years as part of the largest reforestation effort in the world. China has spent more than $100 billion on trees in the last decade alone. Nearly 22 percent of the country is now covered in forest, compared to 19 percent in 2000, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Places like Hongya County, Sichuan province, have been entirely transformed.听
鈥淚t looks completely different,鈥� says Liu, who is raising two young boys while her husband works in a car factory more than 600 miles away. 鈥淢y children wouldn鈥檛 recognize the old valley.鈥澨�
Much of China鈥檚 forest expansion comes from the Grain-for-Green program. Launched in 1999,听the program has funded the reforestation of 31.8 million hectares, an area slightly larger than New Mexico, according to the State Forestry Administration.听And the work isn鈥檛 over.听In March, Premier Li Keqiang promised the government would restore 800,000 hectares of marginal farmland into forest and grassland, an area larger than Delaware.
After a half century of blistering economic growth, China is increasingly looking back at the environmental havoc it wreaked and searching for a greener path forward. It has boosted renewable energy, declared a 鈥�war on pollution,鈥� and vowed to lower carbon emissions. But if Grain-for-Green is an indication, preserving biodiversity may represent a new challenge in China's push to go green: protecting and restoring natural spaces with an eye to not just quantity, but quality.
The program has drawn both admiration and skepticism from conservationists around the globe. Many have praised it for its sheer scale; others have pointed to its success in fortifying parts of China against natural disasters such as flooding and sandstorms. But recently scientists have discovered that large swaths of newly planted forests provide few habitats for China鈥檚 many threatened species of animals and smaller plants. The country鈥檚 biodiversity is at risk.
Xu Jianchu, a professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany, first warned that China鈥檚 new forests weren鈥檛 as green as they seemed in 2011. In听听published in the journal Nature, he argued that government policies encourage the planting of fast-growing tree species, many of which are non-native and therefore unsuitable for local wildlife. More recently, in听听published in May, he suggests official estimates of China鈥檚 tree-planting campaign have overstated its successes, partially by mistaking shrubland for forests.
鈥淭ree coverage is not the issue anymore,鈥� says Dr. Xu. 鈥淏ut under the trees, it's empty. That鈥檚 the major problem we now face.鈥�
World Bank
Clear-cut hillsides
The lives of farmers听in any country are inextricably linked to the land. This is something Zhang Xiugui, a 67-year-old farmer with thin black hair and dark eyes, has known well since he was a boy growing up in the countryside of Hongya County.
Back then, in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Chairman Mao Zedong declared grain and steel production the key pillars of economic development. Mao鈥檚 goal was to achieve national self-reliance and rapid industrialization. Farmers plowed up pastures and clear-cut forests as the whole country听was听mobilized.
鈥淐hairman Mao told us to make steel,鈥� Mr. Zhang recalls, 鈥渟o we cut down all the trees on the mountains.鈥� Backyard kilns took their place. So too did corn and wheat fields, the result of Mao鈥檚 dictum to grow grain everywhere, along with a hundred pseudo-scientific schemes for better yields. China鈥檚 Great Leap Forward was underway.
Mao鈥檚 visions of socioeconomic engineering helped pave the way for the Great Famine, a subject that to this day remains听taboo in China. More than 30 million people starved to death between 1958 and 1962; Zhang鈥檚 parents were among them. After they died, Zhang was taken in by a听woman he came across at a nearby construction site. Together they survived off a diet of rice, green vegetables, radishes, and potatoes.
The Chinese government moved away from Mao鈥檚 economic policies in the late 1970s, but the environmental destruction left in their wake 鈥� to say nothing of the human toll 鈥� would take decades to undo.
A turning point听came in听1998,听when devastating floods along the Yangtze River in central China killed 4,150 people and caused an estimated听. The disaster was exacerbated by the shortage of trees along the river, which in the past had secured its banks and absorbed rainfall.听From the 1950s into 1980s, the Yangtze River basin lost half of its forest coverage,听听in 40 percent of the region.
The fear of reoccurring floods spurred the Chinese government to start the Grain-for-Green Program in 1999. The program works by paying farmers to restore forests and grasslands where they had previously planted crops, helping to better protect against flooding and landslides.
For each of the program鈥檚 first eight years, the government paid Zhang 700 to 800 yuan, just over $100, to plant cedar trees on his small plot of land. The government later cut Zhang鈥檚 subsidy in half and stopped it all together two years ago. Now he depends on money from his three children, all of whom found work in China鈥檚 flourishing cities. Zhang misses the subsidies, but he doesn鈥檛 miss what Hongya County looked like before Grain-for-Green.
鈥淚 prefer how it is now,鈥� he says, standing on the side of a tree-shaded road. 鈥淭he mountains are green and the water is blue.鈥�
Unintended consequences
Since its launch听in 1999, the Grain-for-Green program has had considerable success in achieving two of its primary goals: soil retention and flood mitigation. Both increased nearly 13 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to a government survey launched in 2012. The program has also helped many of the 32 million farming households it has enrolled climb out of poverty.
But as Grain-for-Green grew over the years, scientists began to wonder about its unintended consequences. Although the 2012 ecosystem assessment found that the program had helped improve everything from food production to carbon capture, biodiverse habitats were the one exception 鈥� they decreased 3.1 percent.
听published last September in the journal Nature Communications听raised more听cause for concern. It found that the overwhelming majority of forests restored under the Grain-for-Green program contain only one tree species, creating monocultures that fall far short of native forests鈥� biodiversity. Hua Fangyuan, the lead author of the study and a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, says the shortfall is a missed opportunity.
鈥淭he land under the Grain-for-Green Program is in what鈥檚 typically called 鈥榳orking landscapes,鈥� or landscapes which support the livelihood of rural communities,鈥� Dr. Hua says. 鈥淎lthough these landscapes are outside protected areas, there is increasing realization among the conservation community that they serve important roles for biodiversity conservation.鈥�
Hua鈥檚 research revealed a significant drop in bird and bee populations, common indicators of biodiversity, at Grain-for-Green sites around Sichuan. Forests comprised of a single tree species actually support fewer species of birds and bees than cropland, the very land targeted for restoration. The few Grain-for-Green forests with two to five tree species are only slightly better for birds; bees were found to suffer from reforestation regardless.
鈥淲e call them green deserts,鈥� says Wu Jiawei, a conservationist in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, who helped with the study. 鈥淭he fear is that some species will disappear and never come back.鈥�
Mr. Wu, an avid birdwatcher,听is especially attuned to the changes caused by the Grain-for-Green program. The study found that forests planted under the program had 17 to 61 percent fewer bird species than native forests. The reason is most likely that these new forests don't have the diversity of resources, such as food and nesting habitats, necessary to support the ecological needs of many species.
Liu has noticed the changes too, if in more anecdotal ways. Her family still has a small vegetable garden and a hillside plot filled with a few dozen white tea plants, but most of their crops have been replaced with cedar trees and a scattering of bamboo.
鈥淪parrows now fly into our kitchen to look for food,鈥� Liu says. 鈥淭here are no longer as many crops for them to eat.鈥�
Going native
The spread听of monoculture forests听isn鈥檛 the only threat to biodiversity in China. Environmental protections have taken a backseat to economic development across the country for much of its modern history, often with serious consequences.
The Chinese government has classified as threatened species 鈥� those likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future 鈥� nearly 3,800 kinds of trees, flowers, and other plants (10.9 percent of all vascular plant species found听in China)听and more than 930 kinds of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles听(21.4 percent of all vertebrate species), according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
It gets worse from there, according to by a group of Chinese conservation organizations. Of the 1,085 endangered plant and animal species in China the report examined, the habitats for 738 of them worsened between 2005 and 2015.The giant panda is a rare exception. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a leading environmental group that tracks the status of plant and animal species, removed it from its endangered list last September. The panda is now classified as 鈥渧ulnerable.鈥�
As public awareness about environmental issues grows, the Chinese government has pledged to improve its conservation efforts. Yet it denies that the Grain-for-Green program has caused any harm. The State Forestry Administration, China's forestry regulator, says in an emailed statement that the program 鈥減rotects and improves the living environment for wildlife鈥� and that it has actually led to an increase in biodiversity in places like Sichuan. It blames the planting of monocultures to a lack of experience in the program鈥檚 early years and says it鈥檚 working to plant more mixed forests.
For now, the highest levels of government are pushing to keep the Grain-for-Green program and others like it alive as China seeks to remake its image as an environmental steward. President Xi Jinping has called to transform China into 鈥渢he ecological civilization of the 21st century.鈥� He has also stressed the country's potential听as a global climate leader, particularly in the wake of the US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. But the challenge is how to improve Grain-for-Green for the sake of biodiversity.听
Hua and Xu see opportunity in a new government policy for ecosystems across China.听Introduced last year, the draft policy says ecosystems should be protected based on their ecological value and the services they provide听鈥撎齭ervices like flood mitigation and carbon sequestration听鈥撎齱ith compensation paid to local landowners.听But in order to improve reforestation, the policy should encourage the restoration of native forests and include biodiversity as an explicit goal, say Hua and Xu, who are working alongside Princeton University ecologist David Wilcove on related research.听
鈥淣ow that we have the political will to restore China鈥檚 forest landscape, why aren鈥檛 we doing it more properly?鈥� Hua asks. 鈥淭here is this missed potential. China can do better.鈥�
Xie Yujuan contributed reporting.
