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Academician Liu Shirong of the Chinese Academy of Engineering emphasizes using systems thinking to oversee the overall situation and expand the pathways for transforming "lucid waters and lush mountains" into "invaluable assets." The "15th Five-Year Plan for Forestry and Grassland Protection and Utilization" adopts a systematic approach to guide the overall situation, uses scientific principles to direct practice, and drives development through reform and innovation. It safeguards the bottom line of ecological security and broadens the routes for converting ecological assets into economic value, providing solid forestry and grassland support for building a beautiful China and achieving the modernization of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature.
Guiding by Scientific Concepts and Demonstrating Systematic Governance
First, the plan embodies the leadership of scientific concepts and highlights the thinking of systematic governance. It organically integrates the coordination of forestry and grassland resources, territorial space, and ecosystems with scientific protection, systematic governance, and rational utilization, creating a unified approach to forestry and grassland resource management and territorial space governance. Placing forestry and grassland resource protection and governance within the broader framework of territorial space management is an innovation. This aligns with the requirements for the integrated protection and systematic governance of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands, and deserts, while also reflecting the combined "three greens" and "four reservoirs" concepts. It deeply explains the multi-functional and multi-value characteristics of forestry and grasslands, charting a practical path for the ecological-to-economic value transformation.
The plan, based on the ecological foundation and resource endowments, defines an overall greening pattern that prioritizes expanding greenery in the north and improving quality in the south. It assigns differentiated functional roles to areas such as the "Three Norths" project zone, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau ecological barrier zone, the Yangtze River key ecological zone, the southern hilly and mountainous belt, and the coastal belt. This tailored, precise approach reflects respect for natural laws and a pragmatic governance philosophy, strategically shifting the concepts and pathways of forestry and grassland planning. The cultivation and utilization of forestry and grassland resources have been upgraded to a multi-dimensional system integration of scientific protection, systematic governance, and rational utilization, transforming single-resource management into integrated territorial space governance and shifting from single ecological management to cross-domain, cross-region, and full-chain systematic protection and governance.
Clarifying Development Goals and Emphasizing the Main Line of High-Quality Development
Second, the plan sets clear targets with binding and guiding force, building on the past and signaling a progressive development process. By 2030, the forest coverage rate is targeted to reach 25.8%, and the forest stock volume is set to hit 22.4 billion cubic meters. These two binding indicators align with the Nationally Determined Contributions goals, while also considering the realistic potential for forest resource growth, the strategic need for building territorial ecological and security barriers, and the "dual carbon" strategy for addressing climate change. Additionally, the total value of the forestry and grassland industry is expected to rise from the current 11 trillion yuan to 14 trillion yuan, demonstrating a firm commitment to promoting ecological industrialization and industrial ecologicalization, as well as the green development concept of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature and the leadership of high-quality development.
The plan ensures the achievement of these goals through the deployment of six major tasks and nine key project frameworks. Notably, in terms of precision improvement of forest quality, it arranges for forest management tasks covering over 100 million mu, explicitly promoting adjustments to forest and tree species structures, increasing the transformation of pure coniferous plantations, and raising the proportion of valuable tree species cultivation. This helps address long-standing issues of low forest stand quality and weak ecological functions in pure plantation forests, fundamentally finding a new path for development.
Promoting Reform and Innovation to Fully Activate Endogenous Development Drivers
Third, the plan elevates reform and innovation to the level of governance effectiveness, achieving qualitative breakthroughs in multiple areas. In the reform of the collective forest rights system, it proposes promoting cooperative wealth-sharing models among farmers, village collectives, state-owned forest farms, state-owned enterprises, financial institutions, and social capital. For state-owned forest farm reform, it explores income distribution incentive mechanisms. In sustainable forest management, it promotes joint management between forest farms and villages. These measures directly target bottlenecks and difficulties in grassroots forest management practices, potentially unleashing significant reform dividends.
In the area of carbon sinks, the plan explicitly implements projects to enhance the carbon sequestration and sink capacity of forest ecosystems. Based on current research, through sustainable forest management and utilization, and by leveraging four pathways--carbon protection, increase, expansion, and extension--it helps to strengthen China's forestry and grassland carbon sinks, playing a key stabilizing role in achieving carbon neutrality. In the field of technological empowerment, the plan particularly emphasizes the "space-air-ground integrated" monitoring system and the "Artificial Intelligence in Forestry and Grassland" initiative, promoting the deep integration of digital technology with forestry and grassland management. This reflects a new global development trend. As a major scientific nation moving toward becoming a scientific power, China's modern forestry and grassland management must integrate into the modern research system, including big data and AI. Furthermore, the plan incorporates the development of national reserve forests, along with new business forms such as under-forestry economy and forest health tourism, into the industrial system, fully showcasing the open and forward-looking stance of the forestry and grassland sector.
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