Chongqing- "By 2024, Chongqing plans to expand its forest reserves to over 280 million cubic meters and elevate the total forestry industry output to 175 billion yuan (about USD 24.1 billion)," said Cao Chunhua, director of the Chongqing Forestry Bureau, at a press conference on June 21.

A bamboo sea in Fuling District, Chongqing. (Photo/Fuling District)

Chongqing, designated as a national pilot area for reforming collective forest rights, has initiated a plan to improve its forestry reserves and enhance the value of its industry. With its diverse urban, rural, mountainous, and reservoir landscape, Chongqing plays a vital role as an ecological barrier along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

Cao continued, "As of the end of 2023, our forest coverage has reached 55.06 percent, with collective forest land representing over 90 percent of this area."

The plan focuses on six tasks to reform collective forest rights, such as separating ownership, contracting, and management rights. This separation allows for legal transfer and re-transfer of forest land management rights while maintaining ownership. The program encourages farmers to lease, share, or cooperatively manage forest land, facilitated by a city-wide unified trading platform for forest rights.

The initiative aims to revamp Chongqing's forestry industry, maximizing forests' multifunctional benefits to drive industrial growth. The city promotes wood and bamboo as sustainable building materials, supporting research and their applications and advocating for bamboo as an alternative to traditional materials.

The plan also involves expanding green industries like forest recreation and nature education to boost economic and ecological sustainability.

Tourists gather tea leaves at the Maoshan Forest Tea Base in Jiangjin District, Chongqing. (Photo/Jiangjin District)

Cao mentioned that Chongqing is leading the way in implementing various ecological compensation mechanisms, such as the forestry ecological stamp, land stamp, and carbon credit stamp systems. They are also working on a forestry carbon sink measurement and monitoring system and creating a forestry carbon-inclusive platform.

Forestry ecological stamps enable businesses that impact forestry ecological value to compensate by purchasing stamps. Forestry land stamps facilitate transferring construction land indices from rural areas to forestry, increasing land for afforestation and greening. Forestry carbon credit stamps help enterprises offset carbon emissions, aligning business practices with environmental sustainability goals.

Cao highlighted the plan's innovation: using Digital Chongqing's resources to manage forest rights. The plan includes creating digital scenarios, improving real estate and forest transaction systems, and integrating geographic and remote sensing data for real-time sharing.

Lu Mansheng, a green finance expert at the Chongqing Operations Office of the People's Bank of China, revealed plans to broaden green financial support. This includes areas such as forestry carbon sinks, forest rights trading, and sectors like eco-tourism and forest recreation. 

Lu added that the focus will be developing green financial products linked to collective forest rights reform, promoting loans against forestry carbon sinks, and piloting financial mechanisms for forestry eco-products.

Financial institutions are encouraged to innovate, broaden loan services, reduce interest rates, and extend loan periods to bolster the forestry sector.

Chongqing's balance of forest rights mortgage loans reached 16.08 billion yuan as of May this year. (Graphic/Zheng Ran)