Beijing will provide at least 100 million yuan (US$14.46 million) per year to each of the five districts including Mentougou, Pinggu, Huairou, Miyun and Yanqing, and provide no less than 50 million yuan per year to Fangshan and Changping districts respectively, in a bid to promote ecological protection and green development in the city's ecological conservation area, according to a policy issued on Nov. 5.
Wang Yingjie, deputy inspector of the Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission, said at Monday's press conference that Beijing's ecological conservation area includes the seven districts that will be receiving financial support. She said that in total the ecological conservation area takes up more than two-thirds of Beijing, and it serves as an important ecological barrier and water reserve, as well as the city's "oxygen bar" and "backyard garden."
According to Wang, among the newly released 16 policy measures in five respects, the most important one is to guard clear water and green hills. The capital will strengthen planning and management, strictly control the development of real estate properties, limit the scale of construction, and enforce the prohibition and restriction catalogue for newly added industries. All kinds of activities that fail to conform to the district's functional orientation will be prohibited, while more efforts will be put into demolishing and controlling illegal constructions. In all, Beijing will ensure that its regional ecological space will increase while its intensity of land development will decrease.
The capital will also strengthen the joint building and sharing of multiple projects. It will use more of the municipal financial funds, municipal fixed assets investment and other government-led funds in this respect. By establishing a green development fund, issuing green bonds and other methods, Beijing is aiming at attracting broad participation and investment from private entities.
At the same time, Beijing has established and improved a pairing and cooperation mechanism to promote complementary advantages and win-win cooperation between its ecological conservation area and other regions. For instance, the city established pairing cooperation relationships between districts such as Dongcheng and Huairou, Xicheng and Mentougou, Chaoyang and Miyun, Haidian and Yanqing, Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone and Pinggu, Fengtai and Fangshan (mountainous area), and Shunyi and Changping (mountainous area), with the goal of cultivating and strengthening the leading functions and industries of each district in the ecological conservation area.
Beijing will also adhere to the principle that landscapes, forests, fields, lakes, and grasses are a living community. It plans to comprehensively promote the establishment of national forest cities in all districts, and gradually build a greening system in each of them. It will continue to carry out a new round of afforestation work of 1 million mu (66,667 hectares). And by 2020, more than 30,000 mu (2,000 hectares) of wetland will be constructed and restored.
At the press conference, Wang said that in recent years, through several key projects such as afforestation, management of sandstorms and ecological restoration in the Yongding River, the average annual concentration of PM2.5 in the seven districts of Beijing's ecological conservation area in 2017 was much lower than the average level of the whole city. The forest coverage rate reached 53.25 percent, 10.25 percentage points higher than that of the whole city, and the green space per capita was 25.9 square meters, 60 percent higher than that of Beijing.
