摘要
As a developing country with a large population and a fragile ecological environment, China is particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Beginning with the Rio Conference of 1992 China has played a progressively enhanced role in combating climate change. A series of policies and measures to address climate change have been taken in the overall context of national sustainable development strategy, making positive contributions to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change, among which forestry linked policies have been given increasing priority to over the years. At the UN Summit on Climate Change in September 2009, China's President committed the country to an unprecedented increase in forest carbon sink through augmenting forest coverage by 40 million ha and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion m3 by 2020 compared to the 2005 level. For realizing it China has evolved the Forestry Action Plan to Cope with Climate Change that sets forth five basic principles that include combining the targets of forestry development with the national strategies on climate change, increasing forest size and improving forest quality, increasing carbon trading and controlling emissions, combining government guidance with social participation, slowing down climate change, and adapting to the change. Further, in order to make it people's program rather than a top-down government initiative, China is speeding up the trend of decentralization and privatization of forest management through collective forest tenure reform that are geared towards releasing direct governmental control over forest management, decentralizing the powers of forest administrations to lower levels and promoting community participation in forest management. These comprehensive steps have changed the face of forestry in the country but both the government and the scientific community realize that this is merely a beginning in the long and arduous task of combating climate change.
As a developing country with a large population and a fragile ecological environment, China is particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Beginning with the Rio Conference of 1992 China has played a progressively enhanced role in combating climate change. A series of policies and measures to address climate change have been taken in the overall context of national sustainable development strategy, making positive contributions to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change, among which forestry linked policies have been given increasing priority to over the years. At the UN Summit on Climate Change in September 2009, China’s President committed the country to an unprecedented increase in forest carbon sink through augmenting forest coverage by 40 million ha and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion m3 by 2020 compared to the 2005 level. For realizing it China has evolved the Forestry Action Plan to Cope with Climate Change that sets forth five basic principles that include combining the targets of forestry development with the national strategies on climate change, increasing forest size and improving forest quality, increasing carbon trading and controlling emissions, combining government guidance with social participation, slowing down climate change, and adapting to the change. Further, in order to make it people’s program rather than a top-down government initiative, China is speeding up the trend of decentralization and privatization of forest management through collective forest tenure reform that are geared towards releasing direct governmental control over forest management, decentralizing the powers of forest administrations to lower levels and promoting community participation in forest management. These comprehensive steps have changed the face of forestry in the country but both the government and the scientific community realize that this is merely a beginning in the long and arduous task of combating climate change.
