China's Tibet achieves carbon neutrality

LHASA -- Southwest China's Tibet autonomous region has achieved overall carbon neutrality, said Yan Jinhai, head of the regional government, during a forum opened Sunday on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau ecosystem.

The Namjagbarwa forum on the building of a national ecological civilization highland in Tibet kicked off Sunday in the region's Nyingchi city. Speaking at the opening ceremony, Yan said Tibet is able to make greater contributions to China's dual carbon targets.

Currently, the carbon sink of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau ecosystem amounts to 162 million tonnes per year, accounting for 8 to 16 percent of China's total ecosystem carbon sink, according to the experts attending the forum.

Based on data, combined with the findings of China's second scientific research survey on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the annual carbon sink of Tibet's ecosystem in recent years reached around 47.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, with its annual carbon emission totaling about 11.5 million tonnes, indicating that the region has actually been in a state of carbon neutrality, the experts explained.

More than 120 government officials, experts and scholars including famous academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering are at the two-day forum.

China has made remarkable progress in promoting the green and low-carbon energy, with proportion of clean energy sources increasing, according to a white paper released by the State Council Information Office earlier this year.

From 2012 to 2021, China planted 64 million hectares of trees, carried out desertification prevention and control over 18.53 million hectares of land, and added or restored more than 800,000 hectares of wetland, data from the paper titled "China's Green Development in the New Era" showed.

During the period, renewable energy also played a more significant role in the country's energy mix and its green industries continued to grow. In 2021, the output value of China's energy conservation and environmental protection industries exceeded 8 trillion yuan (about $1.1 trillion), said the paper.

China has announced that it will peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.