China News Service, Hainan Baoting, September 26 (Zhang Yuehe) Facing the "15th Five-Year Plan", Baoting Li and Miao Autonomous County, Hainan Province has clearly proposed to build a demonstration area for ecological civilization construction and strive to become the "two mountains" transformed top students.
The picture shows the picturesque Baoting Shenyu Island Cultural Tourism Area, which is complemented by mountains and rivers. Photo by Meng Mingzhu
Baoting, once rated as "China's Most Beautiful County", serves as the core hosting area of Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park and is also a national ecological civilization construction demonstration area. What is particularly eye-catching is that this Li and Miao Autonomous County relies on its advantages in ecology, location and resources, adheres to ecological priority, innovation-driven, coordinated development, and expanded opening up, promotes the construction of the China-Europe (Baoting) Green Digital Innovation Cooperation Zone, and deepens international cooperation in digital economy and green development.
Huang Xinghui, deputy director of the Ecological Environment Bureau of Baoting Li and Miao Autonomous County, said in a recent interview that during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, we will closely focus on the goal of striving to transform "two mountains" into top students. On the one hand, we will focus on ecological protection, continue to consolidate and expand ecological advantages, and on the other hand, we will focus on mechanism innovation, open up channels for realizing the value of ecological products, and promote high-level protection and high-quality development in both directions.
Focus on protection: consolidate and improve ecological advantages
In terms of consolidating and improving ecological advantages, Baoting focuses on "protection" and focuses on building a solid rainforest ecological foundation and implementing systematic protection and restoration projects; guarding the treasure house of biological diversity and improving the comprehensive level of protection and governance; maintaining a good environmental foundation and in-depth combating pollution prevention and control; seizing green development opportunities and accelerating the pace of low-carbon transformation and development; improving governance systems and consolidating ecological environment protection capabilities.
According to the plan, Baoting will continue to improve the natural protected area system. By 2030, it will ensure that the ecological protection red line area is no less than 539.02 square kilometers, the land natural protected areas account for no less than 24.67% of the land area, and the completion rate of beautiful rivers and lakes reaches 100%. It will coordinate the management of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grass and sand systems, restore rare animal and plant habitats, promote comprehensive management of watersheds such as the Lingshui River, and actively strive to become a national forest city.
Huang Xinghui emphasized that we must strictly adhere to the red line of ecological protection and orderly clear out human activities that do not meet the control requirements in core protected areas; continue to protect excellent air quality, ensure the safety of drinking water, strengthen soil and groundwater risk management and control, and build a solid ecological safety barrier for water, air, and soil; and improve ecological security risk prevention and control mechanisms. system, promote the transformation of ecological environment monitoring and law enforcement to digital intelligence; deeply explore the rainforest culture and Li and Miao ethnic culture, promote world heritage applications, and guide enterprises and the public to jointly participate in the construction of ecological civilization; rely on the China-EU Green Digital Innovation Cooperation Zone to build a digital carbon management platform and explore innovative practices for carbon neutrality across the region.
The picture shows the rise of outdoor camping at the foot of Qixianling Mountain in Baoting. Photo courtesy of Baoting County Party Committee Propaganda Department
Focus on development: open up channels for value realization
How to explore the path to realize the value of ecological products? Baoting continues to make efforts from the three dimensions of industry, system and market.
Baoting makes good use of the value of the ecological products of the Tropical Rainforest National Park to realize national pilot opportunities, develops efficient agriculture with tropical characteristics, extends the deep processing chain of agricultural products, and promotes the deep integration of agriculture and tourism; it organically combines tropical rainforest resources with Li and Miao culture, understory economy, forest health care, and outdoor sports to develop biodiversity experience products; relying on the Tourist Highway around the Tropical Rainforest National Park, it lays out ecological education and leisure experience stations, consolidates the physical carrier of value transformation, and strengthens ecological characteristic industries.
Chitian Reservoir is an important urban centralized drinking water source in Sanya, but 89% of the water resources come from Baoting. Since 2019, Sanya and Baoting have successively signed horizontal ecological protection compensation agreements in the Chitian Reservoir Basin, and continue to promote the work of "protecting clean water upstream and providing compensation downstream", so that the Chitian Reservoir Basin can release greater comprehensive benefits.
Huang Xinghui said that it is necessary to continue to amplify the demonstration effect of national typical cases of ecological compensation in the Chitian Reservoir Basin, deepen institutional and mechanism innovation, improve the ecological compensation system chain, and build a diversified ecological compensation pattern with government leadership, market supplementation, and social participation.
In addition, Baoting actively cultivates business entities such as enterprises and cooperatives to support ecological product brand building, market operations and certification; it applies carbon labels to agricultural products sales, eco-tourism and other scenarios to enhance the added value of local ecological product brands; it guides social capital to participate in the development of forestry carbon sequestration projects and broadens the market-based realization channels for ecological products.
"We will resolutely shoulder the responsibility of ecological protection, continue to do a good job in both protection and transformation, and truly transform the ecological advantages of green waters and green mountains into tangible development advantages." Huang Xinghui said. (over)
