Chongqing to Become GreenerSouthwest China's Chongqing Municipality is to increase its forest coverage rate to 40 percent by the year 2010 through large-scale afforestation projects. According to a local government's development program, Chongqing will invest 10 billion yuan (1.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the protection of natural forest, speeding up tree-planting on barren hills and land, and turning 183,333.3 hectares of sloping farmland into forest and grassland in the coming ten years. The city proper plans to plant some 30,000 hectares of trees this year alone.Chongqing launched an afforestation project along the Yangtze River, the longest in China, ten years ago. So far, the project has seen 884,666 hectares of land covered by vegetation. According to local forestry department, the project has helped raise Chongqing's vegetation coverage rate to 23.1 percent. |
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