Forest chief mechanism boosts eco development

A bird's-eye view of forests in Dapeng. File photo.

After nearly one year of implementing the forest chief mechanism, Shenzhen, a national forest city, launched an assessment at a meeting Tuesday over the tasks in afforestation, wildlife and ecological environment protection and violation clampdowns.

Data showed that the city has established a four-tier forest protection mechanism involving municipal, district and subdistrict government departments and communities. By the end of this September, the city had set up 1,786 forest chiefs at different levels and designated 373 grassroots supervisors and 1,133 forest guards.

The forest chief responsibility mechanism ensured that mountains are under supervision, forests under afforestation and trees under care. Those who fail these duties are accountable for negligence.

On Monday, environmentalists spotted six black spoonbills at Futian Mangrove Nature Reserve, this year’s first batch of migratory black spoonbills to spend winter in the city. During the autumn and winter periods every year, hundreds of thousands migratory birds flock to the city.

In recent years, water quality of Shenzhen rivers had been greatly improved through the implementation of river chief mechanism. The mechanism, which started in Bao’an District in 2012 and expanded citywide, had helped the city to eliminate 159 blackened and stinky rivers by the end of 2019. Maozhou River, the most polluted in Guangdong Province, and Shenzhen River had reached their best levels since 1992. Maozhou River, which is also the border river with Dongguan, has become a model of Shenzhen water treatment. In 2019, Shenzhen was commended by the State Council as one of five cities that made remarkable achievements in water treatments. In 2020, Shenzhen won the title of National Model City of Ecological Construction. The river chief mechanism, which has made remarkable results in river and lake protection, was encouraged by the State Council’s inspection. Now, the three-tier river chief mechanism has involved 1,017 participants from government, 249 from police departments and 150 from social organizations and 700 volunteers.

In March 2021, Shenzhen officially implemented Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) auditing and reporting system, the first of its kind in China. The system measures the total economic value of all ecosystem products and services supplied to human well-being in a region annually, and can be measured in terms of biophysical value and monetary value after pilot programs in Yantian and Dapeng, two areas in the city that had won title of Natural Oxygen Zones of China for their sea, mountain and human resources, ecological environment, all-region and all-season tourism, and ecological building achievements.

Natural ecological tourism is the leading industry of Dapeng, the first area in the city to apply GEP. Since 2015, Yantian has begun to implement a working mechanism of dual accounting, dual operating and dual promoting of both GDP and Urban GEP. In terms of Urban GEP, the district takes into account living environment indicators including city planning, urban administration, city development and the economic value of the maintenance and improvement of the living environment. In 2019, its tourism revenue reached 10 billion yuan (US$1.39 billion), up by 10.55% year on year.

Shenzhen is a pilot city of national low-carbon program and carbon emission transaction program and a demonstration area for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The city has also become a leader among mega cities with the lowest energy consumption and carbon emissions.

In the past decade, Shenzhen’s economy kept growing while its energy structure kept optimizing. The energy consumption for per 10,000-yuan GDP, carbon dioxide emission and water use were about one third, one fifth and one eighth of the national average.