This city in the clouds has "carbonized" an ecological path, and the natural oxygen bar is "heading towards the clouds"!

Zhouning County, Ningde City, Fujian Province has an average altitude of about 800 meters. Its air quality meets the national second-level standard all year round. It has a pleasant climate and profound cultural heritage. It is known as the "natural oxygen bar" and "city in the clouds". It is a national key ecological functional area, a national ecological civilization construction demonstration area, and the hometown of Chinese carp culture. In recent years, Zhouning County has worked hard to implement the concept of "three reservoirs + carbon reservoir", continuously realizing "forests become better", "water is clearer", "money becomes more", "grain is more abundant", and magnifying the ecological benefits. "Carbon" has created a kinetic energy conversion path with good ecology and prosperous industries, so that the ecological dividends can benefit thousands of households.

Over the years, Zhouning County has vigorously promoted afforestation, forest tending, and mountain closure and afforestation, building a forest ecosystem with forests and trees as the main body, appropriate total amount, reasonable distribution, diverse tree species, and beautiful landscape, and effectively improving the level of urban and rural greening integration. Over the past 30 years, the county's forest area has increased by 425,400 acres, and the forest coverage rate has increased from 42.8% in 1987 to 72.96%. 112 "green villages" have been built, and the soil erosion rate has dropped from 9.33% in 2015 to 6.03%.

File photo: Zhou Ning, Fujian

With forests locking water and mountains and waters relying on each other, multi-directional "carbon fixation" is achieved. Zhouning County continuously produces "green kinetic energy" by building a pumped-storage power station. In August 2022, the Zhouning Pumped-storage Power Station with a total installed capacity of 1.2 million kilowatts was put into operation at full capacity, which can reduce the coal consumption of the power grid by 207,900 tons and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 415,800 tons each year. At the same time, Zhouning also steadily promoted the "coal-to-electricity" transformation of tea enterprises, fully completed the "electric tea production" transformation, achieved 5.8 million kilowatt-hours of electricity substitution, and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by about 5,440 tons.

Relying on its good ecological advantages, Zhouning County adheres to the principle of "industry ecology and ecological industrialization" and comprehensively promotes the development of "3+N" characteristic agricultural industries such as alpine cool flowers, alpine potatoes, and alpine mist tea. As the county with the highest altitude in Fujian Province, Zhouning County is surrounded by mountains and has 100% excellent air quality. The unique alpine cool climate makes Zhouning County one of the main alpine potato production areas in Fujian, and each "little potato" has become a "golden bean" for the people to increase their income and become rich.

File photo: Zhou Ning, Fujian

Famous for its ecology, it also thrives because of its ecology. Zhouning County has dug deep into the "green ecology" and "cool resources", carefully created the "Carp Township Blessings·Cloud Zhouning" all-region tourism brand, integrated ecological construction into all-region tourism, continued to polish the "Carp Culture", "Three Repository Culture", "Ancient Silver Mine Culture" and other characteristic IPs, and done a good job in the "tourism +" integration article, promoting the deep integration of tourism with culture, sports, health care, etc., adding more than 100 agricultural tourism comprehensive development projects, so that more "green beauty" can be transformed into "economic value", and strive to create a high-quality development situation for all-region tourism.

The people of Zhouning use "a piece of green" to understand the "Siku Quanshu" of the forest, protecting the natural and ecological environment like protecting their eyes, and have embarked on a path of green development.

Review expert: Gao Zhiling, Professor of College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Hebei Agricultural University

China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Xinhuanet

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