China to take measures to build more ecologically sound civilization

The reform program on ecological civilization construction has been reviewed and adopted by China's central government, an official of the country's top economic planning department said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Based on the program, nine provinces and cities will implement a national park pilot, and ten provinces and cities will be selected to start trials to reduce pollution abatement by a third part, said Lian Weiliang, vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Since government has put in place carbon trading pilots spanning seven cities and provinces, 42 million tons of carbon were traded at 1.24 billion yuan ($195 million) , Lian said.

149 compulsory energy saving standards were published to force enterprises to update industrial structures and save energy.

According to Lian Weiliang, the commercial logging of natural forest has been banned in China's northeastern provinces, and the deforestation in State-owned tree farms is decreasing.

Lian said, along with reform in the national forestry centre and tree farm, forested areas will increase 110 million mu (7 million hectares) and the forest stocks will increase to 1 billion cubic meters by 2020; In northern provinces, the amount of wood logging will decrease by 4 million cubic meter each year, and the commercial logging of forests (about 1.2 million cubic meter of wood) will be reduced by 20 percent.