CRI听力:Environmental Protection a Highlight for Western Development

China is now renewing its calls for greater development of the country's vast western regions and making ecological conservation a highlight as the western development campaign enters its second decade. Chen Zhe has more.



Reporter:
China's western regions have achieved an average annual economic growth rate of nearly 12 percent over the past 10 years. The forest coverage rate in the area has increased to 17 percent from 10 percent during the same period.

But the vast area still suffers from various ecological problems. Many officials have issued calls for more efforts to tackle them.

Liu Xinle is Vice Chairman of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

"The ecological conditions remain fragile in Inner Mongolia. We will take measures to move people to urban areas, move animals to grazing areas and move industries and businesses into industrial zones to restore the natural conditions."

Liu also says local governments will continue to carry out sandstorm reduction projects, gradually improve policies on reconverting farmland into grassland and raise the subsidies for herdsmen in ecological conservation areas.

The western region is considered an important ecological security barrier. It holds most of the country's major water resources, wetlands, grasslands and forests, but also suffers from the most serious grassland degradation in the country.

In a move to protect the environment, the central government is accelerating the implementation of an ecological compensation mechanism in west China and will increase transfer payments for key ecological function zones.

Chen Yao, Professor of Regional Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, praises the move.

"Under the regulation, those benefits from environmental protection efforts are expected to compensate the protector. For example, we can raise the fee to compensate for water protection expenses. The measure shows the government's effort to support environmental protection in the western regions."

In the meantime, the government is also adopting a differentiated land use policy to reduce land construction costs for the development of industrial zones and encourage the use of unexploited land such as bare mountains and deserts.

Chen Yao says the policy will be good for the environment.

"Encouraging the use of bare mountains will benefit the environment because the land development will also involve building environmental protective belts. The differentiated land use policy will serve to balance environmental protection and economic development."

The government also plans to build five key ecological zones and undertake 10 ecological projects in western China in the next decade.

For CRI, I'm Chen Zhe.