Mountainous Guizhou balances growth, green drive

GUIYANG, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Speaking of his takeaways from the recently concluded Eco Forum Global Guiyang 2023, Tamas Hajba, senior advisor for China and head of the OECD Beijing Office, mentioned a keyword -- "balance."

Faced with the complexity of economic development, social development, climate goals, and biodiversity conservation, "how you balance these goals and how you make it work for the long-term development is extremely important," Hajba told Xinhua during the event.

He noted that Guizhou Province, where the forum took place, has accumulated numerous good climate and environmental protection practices while achieving rapid modernization.

As one of the country's earliest designated ecological civilization pilot zones, Guizhou in southwest China has been striving to balance ecology protection and economic growth.

Located in the upper reach of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River, Guizhou is known as the ecological barrier of the two rivers. Its distinct natural conditions -- karst landscape, interwoven river valleys, and mountainous land with thin soil layers-- render the local ecology system fragile.

Guizhou once had the largest poverty-stricken population at the provincial level. Economic growth is essential to improving people's livelihoods.

Eradicating absolute poverty does not come at the cost of environmental degradation. Rather, protecting and improving the environment should be the prerequisite for poverty reduction, said Gao Xiang, president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), at the forum.

Guizhou has followed the tenet. Industries have been meticulously picked to suit local conditions. A case in point is Chama Township of Qinglong County, once home to the impoverished Qingshan Village. Local land hosts only a thin layer of soil, which is only capable of low crop yields.

The township now boasts over 14,000 mu (933.3 hectares) of Chinese pepper as its pillar industry. The plant is drought-tolerant, with a sophisticated root system and powerful water retention capacity.

The choice proved rewarding as it greened the hills previously resigned to rocky desertification and deepened villagers' pockets.

"Now, as long as you wish, you can find work to do every day and earn some 80 yuan (11.15 U.S. dollars) per day and a monthly income of over 2,000 yuan," said Luo Wenmei, a resident of Qingshan Village.

Planting tea trees is another choice for some previously poverty-stricken and landlocked areas in Guizhou to improve locals' livelihood while expanding green coverage.

Sanjiaotian Village in Leishan County of Miao-Dong Autonomous Prefecture of Qiandongnan, with an elevation of about 1,200 meters, now boasts a landscape of undulating hills layered with lush tea trees.

However, only a handful of ancient tea trees used to dot these hills without proper protection. It was not until six years ago that tea tree seeds from southeast Fujian Province were introduced here and planted in large swaths of land.

Now, across Leishan County, with a population of 164,000, the total acreage of tea plantations reached 163,000 mu, about one mu per capita. Fang Qiqin, a resident of Sanjiaotian Village, can earn over 20,000 yuan from her family's three-mu tea tree land each year once spring tea gets sold, plus a 300-to-400-yuan daily wage from a local tea-leaf processing factory.

Today, Guizhou boasts forest coverage of over 62 percent. The annual per capita net income of people lifted out of poverty reached 13,200 yuan, according to official data.

Wei Xia, a research fellow with the Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences, noted that Guizhou has integrated ecological protection and economic development. "Lush mountains and lucid water increasingly become people's immovable assets of happiness and 'green cash machines'."

The two-day Eco Forum Global Guiyang 2023, China's only national-level global forum themed on ecological civilization, concluded Sunday in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou.