BEIJING, Jan. 1 -- Chen Quanguo, Party chief of the Tibet autonomous region, said protecting every mountain, every river, every tree, every blade of grass is essential during the regional economic conference on Tuesday.

The regional government has adopted four measures to improve environmental protection and economic development.

The first measure creates strict standards for emissions on new projects, guaranteeing that they do not harm the ecology.

The second takes strict control measures on the exploitation of mineral resources and sets the protection of the environment as a priority.

The third measure schedules tight ecological conservation to be done between 2013 to 2030, launches forestation projects along four rivers to create tree coverage of more than 66,670 hectares.

The fourth strengthens the supervision of ecological conservation and implements administrative measures on regional environment protection.

These measures ensure that key rivers and lakes in the region maintain a high water and air quality and to control total pollutant emissions within the State-approved range.

Ecological and environmental conservation was one of the highlights of economic development in 2013, Chen said.

"Tibet invested 4.8 billion yuan over the construction of ecological shelter zones and carried out a total compensation of 2.8 billion toward subsidies for grassland ecological conservation".