APEC forestry ministers will meet on Chinese soil for the first time in 15 years when the Ministerial Meeting on Forestry opens in Shenzhen on 27 July, with no such gathering held in China since then-President Hu Jintao opened the inaugural Beijing meeting in September 2011. That is according to APEC meeting records, which track the ministerial from Beijing through Cusco, Port Moresby and Chiang Mai without a return to China.
China began building its case last week, when Gong Yumei, the director of the APFNet Coordination Centre, an affiliate of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, told a Beijing press conference that the network has funded more than 50 demonstration projects across 20-plus Asia-Pacific economies, totalling more than $45 million in investment.
“These projects act both as ‘test beds’ for locally tailored forest restoration,” Gong said of a portfolio she also described as ‘green seeds’ spreading ecological concepts and technologies across the Asia-Pacific. Funding targets developing member economies through degraded forest rehabilitation, multifunctional forest enhancement and community livelihood improvement.
Among the 50 is an urban forestry demonstration at Bang Kachao, the river-wrapped Bangkok peninsula known as the city’s green lung, where APFNet is testing how to protect and restore tree cover in one of Asia’s densest urban regions. Gong wants the work there to yield a model that other crowded cities can copy.
Running from 27 to 28 July under the theme Building a Green Asia-Pacific, Sharing Ecological Well-being, the Shenzhen meeting will draw representatives from member economies, the APEC Secretariat and international organisations for policy dialogues on forest conservation, sustainable management and technological innovation, Xinhua reported.
Asia-Pacific economies hold more than half the world’s forest area, 60 per cent of global forest product output, and 40 per cent of forest product trade, according to figures released by Li Yunqing, a deputy head of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, alongside the APFNet total. Li added that the region accounts for nearly half of the world’s mangrove resources.
Australia and the United States co-sponsored the Chinese proposal that created APFNet at the 2007 Sydney APEC Leaders’ Meeting, which also committed the region to lifting forest cover by at least 20 million hectares by 2020. The cover goal was beaten, with the region adding 27.9 million hectares by 2020, as assessed by the ministers at Chiang Mai.
Spread across 18 years and 50 projects, APFNet’s headline figure works out at less than $1 million per project, modest money for a program China now presents as proof of regional forestry leadership. It follows Beijing reporting its own forest stock climbing towards 21 billion cubic metres, a domestic estate expanding as China overhauls its state forestry farms to secure timber supply.
