Program overview

Since the severe flood disaster in 1998, the “advices on post-disaster reconstruction, remediation of rivers and lakes and construction of water resource infrastructure by the central government” requested full stop of logging of natural forest in the middle and upper reaches of Yangtze River and Yellow River and transformation of forest logging enterprises into forest protection and tending companies, the State Forestry Administration (SFA) formulated “the implementation plan for the natural forest protection program in the upper reaches of Yangtze River and the upper and middle reaches of Yellow River” and “the implementation plan for the natural forest protection program in key regions of national forests in northeastern China and Inner Mongolia”. The State Council has held 2 Premier’s office meetings to examine the above implementation plans and 2 approved implementation plans, the natural forest resources protection program was then formally incepted.

Scope of the program

The upper reaches of Yangtze River (the Three Gorge Reservoir as the border) include 6 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities under central government) of Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Chongqing, Hubei and Tibet, and the upper reaches of Yellow River (Xiaolangdi Reservoir as the border) include 7 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities under central government) of Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Henan and Shanxi. The key regions of national forests in northeastern China and Inner Mongolia include Inner Mongolia (including Inner Mongolia Forest Industry Group Corporation), Jilin, Heilongjiang (including Heilongjiang Forest Industry Group Corporation and Daxinganling Forestry Croup Corporation), Hainan, Xinjiang (including The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps) etc., a total of 17 provinces (autonomous regions) involving 724 counties, 160 major enterprises, 14 nature reserves (Table 2-1).

Table 2-1, Scope of the natural forest protection program

 Objectives and tasks

The main objectives of the program are to rehabilitate and revitalize natural forests and ultimately to realize harmonized development of resources, economy and society in forest regions. The tasks of the program are: Firstly, to control degradation of natural forest resources and strengthen forest management and protection. In order to turn down the trend of continual sharp declining of natural forest resources, stop logging and reduce timber production, fully forbid commercial harvest of natural forests in the upper reaches of Yangtze River and the middle and upper reaches of Yellow River, reduce the timber production in key regions of national forest in northeastern China and Inner Mongolia, from 18.536 million m³ in 1997 to 11.021 million m³ in 2003. The annual commercial timber production in the entire program region will be reduced by 19.905 m³, a decrease of 62.1% when the target of program is met. Secondly, to accelerate afforestation in program regions in the upper reaches of Yangtze River and the middle and upper reaches of Yellow river (Table 2-2). By 2010, it is planned to increase forest area by 8.67 million m³, improving the forest coverage from 17.5% to 21.2%, an increase of 3.7%. Thirdly, to appropriately reallocate the surplus employees of the state owned forestry enterprises. The program region has a total of 1.446 million in-job employees, and 0.765 million surplus employees due to logging ban and reduction of timber production need to be reallocated, of which 0.509 million workers (25,000 workers were reallocated in 2002) are in the key regions of national forest in northeastern China and Inner Mongolia, and 0.256 million workers are in the upper reaches of Yangtze River and the middle and upper reaches of Yellow River.

Table 2-2, Tasks of forest resource protection and afforestation in the upper reaches of Yangtze River, the middle and upper reaches of Yellow River of the natural forest protection program

Unit: 10⁴ ha

Main policy measures

The first policy measure was the strengthening of management and protection of forest resources. Mountain closure and individual contacts were used to greatly strengthen forest resources in the program regions. A subsidy of 10,000 RMB per person per ha was provided by the government based on an average of 380 ha of forest managed and protected per capita. The second measure was the acceleration of development of ecological forests for public interests. Artificial planting, aero seeding, mountain closure were used for afforestation in barren mountains and barren lands in the program regions, aero seeding mountain closure were subsidized with 750 RMB and 210 RMB per ha for a successive 5 years. For artificial planting, the subsidy was 3,000 RMB per ha in Yangtze River system and 4,500 RMB per ha in Yellow River system. The third measure was the subsidy as a social pooling fee for pension provided to the staffs of forest industrial enterprises. The central and local governmental finance provide subsidies as the fees for forest industrial enterprises to join the basic pension system. The fourth measure was the subsidy for enterprises’ expenditure on social responsibilities. The governmental costs of public security, procuratorate , court of justice, legislation, medical care, hygiene, education and integrated administration and enterprise covered by enterprises in the past were covered by central and local governmental finances, with criteria of 15,000 RMB per person per year for the costs of public security, procuratorate, court of justice, and legislation, 6,000 RMB/year per person for the costs of medical care and hygiene in the Yangtze River and Yellow river regions and 2,500 RMB in key regions of national forest in northeastern china and Inner Mongolia, 12,000 RMB/year per person for the cost of education. And actual government expenditure in 1997 was taken as the baseline cost for the subsidies. The fifth measure was the subsidy for the basic living costs for the laid-off workers, and a special fund was arranged for this subsidy by each of the program provinces with their own criteria. The sixth measure was the lump sum fee for resettlement of surplus employees when production of enterprises was reduced. In principle, the resettlement fee should not exceed 3 times of the average salary of employees in the previous year. The seventh measure was the subsidy by the central governmental finance for the income reduction of the local finance due to the reduction of timber production through transfer payment. Moreover, the bank debts of forest industrial enterprises who unable to repay due to the reduction of timber production were written off as bad debts based on verification; under-forest industries in forest regions were encouraged, support to employees engaged in crop farming, livestock breeding and other income generating practices were provided through bank loan when requirement for bank loan were met.