China Paper industry will be more dependent on their our forests
This is the 12th year of our implementation of China's Grain for Green Project (GTGP), this project by providing farmers with grain and cash subsidies to change the crops in the steep hillside to forests and green spaces, has benefited more than 120 million farmers in 30 million households in our country according to the research of <American Academy of Sciences journal> .
Then at the moments of the global sustainable development boom surging and the rapid expansion of China's paper industry, what kind of challenges is China's forest governance facing , and what kind of impact will cause on the industry ? Reporter of <First Financial Daily> made an exclusive interview with Philip Lawrence--sustainable forest development experts.
Chinese forest governance is facing three major challenges
Philip thinks the more important thing is to intervene in more standard for implementation of control to Chinese Forest governance in the following areas.
"The first is to control soil erosion, some parts of China, especially such as northwest like Inner Mongolia, soil erosion has been a very dangerous thing." Philip said, soil erosion brought by rain washing causes 20 million tons of sediment being washed into the Yangtze River every year; debris flow landslides and floods caused a lot of lives and property damage because of the lack of natural forests barrier. So this is the first to be improved.
The second point is the problem of illegal logging. Philip said that the destruction to the headstream of the Yangtze River by proliferation of illegal logging was a big problem . However, the Chinese government has actually involved more control in this regard, and promoted a series of projects, such as using aerial seeding and other technology to make large amounts of plant gathering. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has carried out the work of the absorbing the the local people in the farm district into sustainable forest development projects,to let them get a fixed allowance and no need to rely on the benefits of illegal logging for living.
"The last point is still to consider the function of the sloping fields in the soil erosion. If the angle of sloping fields is greater than or equal to 25 degree , and there are crops on the fields, this kind fields can be converted to forest land." Philip introduced.The typical example in this regard is returning farmland to forest project, the government can achieve the purpose of Grain for Green by paying a reward to the farmers who have land using rights every year.
The influence of forest cultivation on paper industry
At present, China's pulp, paper and printing industry have shown a trend of rapid development. Especially by drive of the domestic consumer market growth , the printing industry grows at a rate of 12%. Then the question we are facing at the moment is, Where can we find so much raw material to meet the needs of China's growing paper industry?
In this regard, Phillips analyzes, at the same time the rapid growth of China's pulp and paper industry, a considerable portion of raw material paper fiber depends on importing from developed countries. For example, in 80 million tons of paper products in China, there are 15 million tons of recycled paper imported from the United States, 900 tons imported from Europe, some imports from Australia, South Korea and Japan.
However, Phillips pointed out that the paper consumption in the developed countries in recent years had shrunk greatly, this caused the reduction of recovered paper exports to China. In the past 10 years, the U.S. newsprint consumption has dropped 50 percent, the European newsprint production capacity had closed nearly 20 percent over the past few years . And this downward trend in the consumption of other analog paper is obvious. So in the future, China may need more reliance on direct fiber supply from domestic forests.
"China's paper industry must still partly rely on imported foreign recovered paper as fiber raw materials, one of the reasons is China's local forests are still in cultivation period, of course this is good for China's own environment . and the maturity cycle of a lot of paper forest is only 7 to 9 years, I believe that the forest supply can catch up with demand soon. "Philip said.
While some researchers believe that the project of Grain for Green has over-reliance on government-funded finance ,the burden of the budget pressure is in the local government .This Results that if the subsidies were to end, new forest could be converted back into cropland and natural forest logged again. But Philip thought, the project of Grain for Green in China has achieved great success, China spent almost $ 700 million direct investment to cultivate the natural forest projects, which in fact also provides better national forest assets for the related industries of the country, such as the paper industry.
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