Evaluation plan launched for nation's 'forest chiefs'

An evaluation and supervision plan for China's "forest chiefs" was launched recently to encourage local officials to better shoulder their responsibility to protect forests and grassland.

The plan, released by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, has been implemented since late last month.

It mentioned the use of several major metrics to evaluate forest chiefs, including their administrative region's vegetation area, natural resources management, construction of natural reserves, wildlife protection and disaster prevention and control.

The forest chief system, initiated by the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, sees top Party or government officials at the provincial, city, county and township levels assume the role of forest chief in their areas of administration.

Forest chiefs are in charge of the protection and development of forest and grassland resources and must come up with targets in areas such as forest coverage, forest stock volume and the treatment of desertification.

Under the plan, the administration will give annual scores to all forest chiefs based on their performance according to multiple methods of monitoring, including satellite surveillance, big data and regular inspection.

"A comprehensive score will be given to every province, municipality and autonomous region that has forest chiefs," the administration said in a notice. "Problems found in the supervision will be urged to be solved through reforms."

Every five years, another evaluation will be conducted by the administration, which will include the evaluation of forest coverage, comprehensive vegetation coverage, wetland protection rate, forest stock volume and sandy land control.

This five-year evaluation is expected to show whether the aims of regional five-year plans have been achieved.

Results from the annual and long-term evaluation will be reported to the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council. The results will be an important indicator of local officials' governance ability.

In January last year, the State Council released a guideline on comprehensively implementing a forest chief system across the country. Since then, 25 provincial-level regions have initiated pilot forest chief systems.

Since 2017, East China's Anhui and Jiangxi provinces have taken the lead in trying out the forest chief system, providing the foundation for nationwide implementation.

Between 2017 and 2020, Anhui added 388,000 hectares of forest while reducing the incidence of forest fires by 80 percent, the provincial forestry department said.

In Central China's Hunan province, where the forest chief system was launched early last year, 779,333 hectares of forest were planted in the past year and more than 70 percent of the province's wetlands were under protection.

Hu Changqing, director of the Hunan Provincial Forestry Department, told a conference recently that Hunan aims to plant another 260,000 hectares of forest and restore at least 6,666 hectares of grassland this year.