BFU determined to create a clean, beautiful world

Beijing Forestry University, a national key institution, featured in forestry, landscape architecture, forestry engineering and agro-forestry economics in China, has enhanced cooperation with higher institutions all over the world to promote global green development.

Environmental protection and climate change have become the major challenges facing mankind. To construct a clean and beautiful world and leave to future generations of a planet, where people could survive and thrive, was its responsibility, the university said.

It is working on solutions to fulfill its responsibilities by cooperating with more than 180 universities, research institutes and NGOs across 30 countries and regions in the areas of education, scientific research and technologies.

Canada is an important partner for China in terms of timber trade, and is one of the top four importing countries of wooden materials.

In 2012, BFU launched a double degree educational program, approved by the Ministry of Education, with the University of British Columbia, one of the world's top 40 universities, to educate undergraduates majoring in forest sciences and wood science with dual-language competence and professional skills, as well as international perspective.

The cooperation intends to make a positive contribution to Sino-Canadian relations, the university said.

As one of the Chinese universities with the most international students majoring in forestry, the university has attracted students from 53 countries and regions, who are provided with English-language courses and diversified scholarships.

BFU has also organized training projects for developing countries every year, as commissioned by the Ministry of Commerce. Since 2005, about 400 officials and technicians in forestry and ecological protection fields from 95 developing countries have participated, it said.

Within the direct administration of the Ministry of Education, BFU has cultivated more than 100,000 students from home and abroad since it was founded in 1952.

Fourteen graduates have become academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, making contributions to the forestry, economic and social development of China.

BFU said it had participated in editing the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. It also joined many international projects related to land desertification and control, together with the United Nations Environment Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the United Nations Development Programme, as part of the global effort to improve environmental protection and sustainable development.

Since 1990, students from the Landscape Architecture School of BFU have won the championship of the World Congress International Student Competition held by International Federation of Landscape Architects nine times consecutively, representing one third of the award winners.

BFU is making efforts to promote forestry education and make a contribution to sustainable development. It said it is also working closely with major forestry colleges and universities in the Asia-Pacific region and has initiated the Asia Pacific Forestry Education Coordination Mechanism. In November 2016, BFU, as one of the initial members, joined the Silkroad Agricultural Education and Research Innovation Alliance.

On the way to becoming an international, competitive, research-oriented university with distinctive academic features, BFU will continue to maintain close relationships with governments, research institutes, enterprises and universities around the world, it said.

"We expect to design majors that create beauty as well as a university that can create beauty," said Song Weiming, president of BFU.