China’s great log forward

Every year, China plants trees over an area the size of Ireland. The country may be the biggest polluter on Earth, but its reforestation efforts are enough to make Saint Greta look twice. In the last decade, the ‘Great Green Wall’ project has cost more than £73 billion, and the country aims to expand its forest cover to 24 per cent by the end of 2025 (the total area of the five largest European countries combined). So this week’s announcement that China has signed up to a deal to end deforestation by 2030 together with world-leading tree-cutters like Brazil and Indonesia is not, in fact, a huge surprise – or commitment – on Beijing’s side.

Of course, it wasn’t always like this. Mao Zedong thought he could overturn the laws of nature. China’s farmlands increased by 50 per cent between 1949 and 1978 – most of which came at the loss of forests in Yunnan and Manchuria (20 million hectares of these farmlands would, each year, suffer from drought or flooding caused by a lack of trees).