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China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990
- yesbut 1y agofinally some good news.
- maerF0x0 1y agoMy immediate thought, yeah isnt that because they don't really naturally have the kinds of softwoods forests good for making boards and paper? And until more recently they were taking recycled paper/fiber from america in empty shipping containers returning. The real news is that it's also slightly happening in other developed countries too, another rhetoric point towards Steven Pinker's concept that as nations get richer they become more environmentally conscious, cause they can afford to care about it.
- smallnix 1y agoAt least some projects run longer I understand: > Last year China completed a project, begun in 1978, to plant a 2,000-mile-long belt of trees
- xhkkffbf 1y agoI've seen some neat videos on YouTube that sound impressive. Are they impressive in real life? Anyone have any personal experience?
- vondur 1y agoI’d heard that project wasn’t going so well. The trees weren’t really suited to the areas where they were planted, and many died off. I suppose even if only a small percentage survive, it’s still better than desert.
- FooBarWidget 1y agoThey had setbacks for sure, but they learned from them and continuously adjusted their methods.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoChina is very large, has 90% of the population living on 40% of the land in the southern and eastern portion of the country, and some massive deserts that they don't want to expand. This leaves a lot of room for tree planting programs.
- dj_gitmo 1y ago> The real news is that it's also slightly happening in other developed countries too, another rhetoric point towards Steven Pinker's concept that as nations get richer they become more environmentally conscious, cause they can afford to care about it. I'm not sure it's environmentalism. It's efficiency. From the article. > In richer countries, where farming has become more efficient, deforestation has slowed or even reversed You simply don't need as many people living in villages, farming marginal land. New England re-forested because the land was never that good for farming, and it made a lot more sense to work in factories.
- legitster 1y ago> Steven Pinker's concept that as nations get richer they become more environmentally conscious, cause they can afford to care about it. I think in this case it's more of a correlating factor. The countries struggling with deforestation have very little state capacity to enforce property rights or any sort of environmental regulations. Whereas in the developed world it's much easier to stop illegal logging or homesteading.
- munk-a 1y agoI agree and would also add that food security is also a massive factor. With a high food insecurity clamping down on illegal expansion of farmland is politically toxic - but as land use efficiency rises and cities grow conservationalism becomes a much more important agenda to back. People like nature - all things held equal we want to live in a beautiful natural world... but if that world comes at the cost of having food on the table. Whether that inefficiency is technologically, environmentally (e.g. New England's poor soil) or conflict driven doesn't significantly change public opinion.
- conductr 1y ago> as nations get richer they become more environmentally conscious, cause they can afford to care about it. Thus far, getting rich has been dirty business. This is what leads people to care more so than them being able to afford to care. Their richness is a side effect of their pollution, thus, caring is a side effect of richness but that's not the root cause. Pollution -> Money -> Caring. If you removed the money, people still care they just can't afford to do anything about it. I'm not familiar with Pinker or this theory, just poking at it :)
- renewiltord 1y agoMuch of Europe used to be forest. It just all got whacked in the few centuries prior to today. So you have Europeans making tiny recoveries to their rampant destruction of their environment celebrating that fact while preventing others from doing what they did. There is one path to this: first clear cut your forests so you can build your industry; then build your industry so you can be prosperous; then rebuild your forests. If you had 100 acres of forest, and cut it down to 1 acre, then you can build 1 acre at the end and claim a 100% improvement. The next year another acre still is 50% improvement. Can any who have retained their forest boast such improvement? China is following this path and we will celebrate it. As always, do not do what the developed nations say you should. Instead do what they did. After all, Norway did not become prosperous by keeping their oil in the ground.
- sarchertech 1y ago> There is one path to this: first clear cut your forests so you can build your industry; then build your industry so you can be prosperous; then rebuild your forests. Sure if you need to bootstrap to the 18th century. It’s much faster and cheaper to skip a few hundred years ahead by importing equipment.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agoChecking in on the relative wealth of the countries who are only just now developing
- evoseven 1y agoYou are wrong. In Gaule, most of the country was farmland. Wood consumption was huge.
- nitwit005 1y ago> Much of Europe used to be forest. It just all got whacked in the few centuries prior to today. The deforestation goes back much further than that. Europe experienced significant deforestation in the middle ages. It was a major issue for many countries long before industrialism.
- aiauthoritydev 1y agoIndia too has been adding more green cover than ever. Higher CO2 in atmosphere leads to faster growth of forests. But more important factor is urbanization for India. As people move to cities the need to cut down trees goes down.
- navigate8310 1y agoDoesn't that put pressure on the cities itself especially the peripheral counties to pave way for housing and concrete roads?
- roncesvalles 1y agoCities tend to expand up. Almost all buildings in Mumbai that are under 5 stories are targeted for "redevelopment" i.e. a developer buying it out and building something taller in its place.
- navigate8310 1y agoThat is too costly for cities that have cheap and abandoned agricultural land waiting to be deforested and build upon.
- devnullbrain 1y agoYes, and it's a good thing. Either way, you need to fit the needs of the same number of people. If they're in a dense city near everything they need, they use less space. Policies to limit urban sprawl just an expensive way to create more sprawl elsewhere - and roads to it.
- Freedom2 1y agoDoes this mean that you can drive in the forest for an entire day and still be in the forest?
- coliveira 1y agoThis is common in Brazil.
- iagooar 1y agoProbably, yes. This is possible in Sweden, if you go from South to North, you can travel for multiple days by car and if you avoid highways, you will not leave the forest at all.
- Freedom2 1y agoThe joke I'm making is that many Texans like to make that statement about Texas (with regards to size and driving) and claim it's unique to that state and to the US without realizing that it's common for many other parts in the world as well.
- supportengineer 1y agoYou can do that in Virginia if you drive slowly enough, stay off the Interstate. For example if you go from Cumberland Gap to Virginia Beach, a distance of 499 miles, it will take you 10 hours and 25 minutes.
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- trhway 1y agoWhile Russia cuts more and more timber for export to China. In return for the support in the war (drone components, etc) China asks for even more and more timber and fresh water from Baikal.
- coliveira 1y agoI don't think they're giving away the timber. It is a commercial exchange like any other.
- trhway 1y agoYes, it is a massive sale of natural resources with huge discounts in exchange for the war support.
- cpursley 1y agoSource for the discounts? (reddit and x are not a sources btw)
- themafia 1y agoThey've been selling forestry products for decades. North Korea is also a big customer. Unsurprisingly, nations with existing and exclusive economic ties, tend to "support" each other. North America does this with South America readily.
- olalonde 1y agoWhat "war support"? China trades with Russia, as it does with Ukraine. It doesn't support a side in particular.
- trhway 1y agoThere are a lot of thing which are clearly "war support", yet it would be a long and frankly pointless discussion, so i'll just refer to China's own words: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/04/europe/china-ukraine-eu-war-intl https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/04/europe/china-ukraine-eu-war-i... "Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat that Beijing can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine..."
- legitster 1y agoIt's really hard to understate how deforestation ravaged China - their forestry cover declined by almost half during The Great Leap Forward as the CCCP at the time pushed hard to exploit the land. As a result, there were severe and noticeable problems with flooding and desertification. So starting in the 70s they invested heavily in the "Three-North Shelter Forest Program" (aka the Great Green Wall). Although, probably more importantly, economic liberalization meant farming became more efficient and people could move towards cities and free up the land again. I think more fascinating has been Russia's surge in forestry growth, also very notable in the report. Unlike China their forests have expanded almost completely accidentally. Communist-era collective farmlands have slowly been getting abandoned. Their frontier has been shrinking and the forests have crept in, tree growth being aided by longer growing period and thawing permafrost.
- mistrial9 1y agoas an American that was my understanding also.. small nit (understate deforestation) -> (overstate deforestation).. the phrase means "even if I talked for ten minutes with all the emphasis I can find, it would not be enough to show it.. you cannot OVERstate how serious the impact was..
- ivan_gammel 1y agoAccording to WWF, there was some targeted effort on reforestation and sustainable forest management in Russia, which they claim to have assisted.
- RobotToaster 1y agoChina was already extensively deforested in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
- holoduke 1y agoAnd Europe in the golden era. A squirrel could jump tree to tree from north Scotland al the way to the south. Timber, grazing, charcoal are the prime reasons why everything is gone
- sodikidos 1y ago[flagged]
- tuktoyaktuk 1y ago[dead]
- jillesvangurp 1y agoI've been binging a lot of videos on things like rewilding and other approaches that can be used to restore landscapes. The Chinese have successfully executed a number of large scale projects over the decades. They started this early. Where other countries talked about doing things, the Chinese went ahead and did those things. One of their projects is allowing them to undertake infrastructure projects in the desert. They simply stick bales of straw into ditches to stop soil being blown away by wind. The straw traps soil, water, and breaks down over a few years allowing plants to take hold. It's a simple approach that works. Very pramatic, dig a ditch, stick in some straw. Done. Repeat. Outside of China, the green wall in Africa is a very pragmatic approach that involves digging a lot of half moon shaped ditches to trap rain water. Simple and effective. Other approaches involve using fences to stop sheep and other grazers from preventing anything vaguely green tinted shoots from being eaten and giving them a chance to actually turn into trees. What I like about these approaches is that some relatively simple measures can have big effects. People spend a lot of time hand wringing over seemingly insurmountable problems. The Chinese are showing that in addition to the power to destroy landscapes, we also have the power to remake them. It works. They aren't tree huggers. Better landscapes also mean local economies benefit. Deserts don't feed people. Water retention means agriculture gets a second chance. What I admire in the Chinese is the pragmatic can do attitude. Their motivations are of course self serving. They value having clean air in their cities, clean drinking water, and a landscape that can support agriculture and infrastructure. And in the end that's the best kind of motivation you can get. It's something worth copying. Whenever economy, science, and environment align, everybody wins. A lot of areas in the rest of the world that are subject to desertification, pollution, etc. are fixable. And there's value in fixing them that needs more attention. I don't see this as a green/left topic. If you exist on this planet, why wouldn't you want something to be done to clean up the mess we've all created in the last centuries? Breaking out this topic from the usual left/right day to day politics is key. The rest is just work. The Chinese put the rest of us to shame with hard work.
- seb1204 1y agoAny YouTube playlist that you can share?
- pksebben 1y agoThis seems like gross, and I wonder what the net is. It seems impossible that there's no deforestation in the places mentioned int the article, and unlikely that the net is positive.
- AuthAuth 1y agoThis sounds big but its less than the bare minimum required. Their coal emissions are insane. In my opinion its all anyone should be talking about when it comes to climate change.
- Mistletoe 1y agoAren’t they bringing on incredible amounts of solar we could only dream about? Edit: for the downvoters https://gemini.google.com/app/6da2be1502b764f1 https://gemini.google.com/app/6da2be1502b764f1
- kulahan 1y agoThey're building an insane amount of nuclear. It's the only thing with a hope in a country where a "small" city has like 6 million people.
- pinkgolem 1y agoAre they? They build 10x more solar power (total numbers compared, in percentages solar nearly tripled since 2021, nuclear had a 10% increase) That seems more like a modest increase. Honestly solar seems to have an exponential growth, nuclear linear at best. Numbers from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China
- munk-a 1y agoAnd nuclear power - they have a large carbon deficit to make up so you shouldn't think of them as a green economy by any measure but... I think their strongest advantage is that there is a strong environmental pressure within the country and (while industrialists will be industrialists) there is no faction or movement within China that is dedicated to an anti-environmental agenda. There's a lot of work to be done and there's a lot of friction, corruption and economic pressures constraining that work but there seems to be a genuine desire to do that work.
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- gnarlouse 1y agoI'm starting to think that we're the baddies.
- kulahan 1y agoEcologically speaking, the US is an absolute monster of a nightmare. The American carbon footprint is incredible.
- munk-a 1y agoThe US was positioned to leverage technological and economic advantages to embrace and profit massively off of next gen energy infrastructure. It is a tragedy of our era that anti-conservationalism was able to gain such a strong foothold in the body politic.
- potato3732842 1y ago> It is a tragedy of our era that anti-conservationalism was able to gain such a strong foothold in the body politic. It was the entirely predictable result of the policies we adopted. You don't get to be sloppy and shortsighted and then sail off into the sunset without consequences. Kicking the industrial layers of the economic pyramid overseas and telling people to learn to code is what you do when you want a quick win and don't care if people will rightly hate you in a couple decades (IMO it's a miracle we're discussing this now and not in 2002). Behaving that way isn't socially/politically sustainable and it doesn't take a genius to figure it out.
- PeaceTed 1y agoHumans think on a scale of seconds, minutes, hours, and days. Nature operates at a scale of years, decades, centuries, and millennia. This mismatch is our biggest problem.
- votepaunchy 1y ago> embrace and profit massively off of next gen energy infrastructure Our children’s generation will never forgive us for abandoning nuclear energy abundance. Truly a crime against humanity.
- marricks 1y agoThis and Bill Gates saying... > “the doomsday outlook [on climate change] is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” I guess it's cool there's something to be hopeful about, westerner's just seemed excited to make money off of melting ice in Greenland.
- 9dev 1y agoBill Gates is fundamentally anthrophilic, so his concern is above all human suffering. I think that’s a valid viewpoint, but also shortsighted; keeping this planet habitable will require tough decisions and sacrifices, and should stay the utmost priority, out of sheer necessity.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- telchior 1y agoThe population as a whole has a rapidly dwindling appetite for tech billionaires trying to impose "tough decisions and sacrifices" on everyone else, so Bill's probably in the right lane. He has already been the target of a vast array of conspiracy theories.
- hooverd 1y agoah, the classic "you are a sacrifice I'm willing to make"
- ratmeadow 1y agoOh no, to save the world we'll have to take the train to work instead of a car...
- akimbostrawman 1y agoShortly followed by eat the bugs and live in the post. Only for us plebs ofc....
- dustractor 1y agoMeanwhile we're speedrunning DustBowl 2.0 just in time for its 100th anniversary.
- chemotaxis 1y agoHow so? US forest cover bottomed out in the 1920s or 1930 and has been going up since. If anything, in the West, the forests aren't logged enough, which increases wildfire risk. China isn't following a particularly unique path, they just did a speedrun of economic development - they had nearly everyone living in extreme poverty in the 1980s. Before long, they'll be looking for cheap markets to outsource manufacturing and extractive industries to... which is why they're lending money to forgotten African nations. Keeping Russia an international pariah and making them economically dependent on China is probably up their alley too.
- fwip 1y agoI think it's due to topsoil depletion, which is only partly affected by local forests. Trees reduce wind speed which helps reduce erosion from wind, but much of our topsoil is lost due to our agriculture practices.
- lovegrenoble 1y agoCanada has added 20 million acres, India 22 million acres, Russia 52 million acres - an area about the size of Kansas.
- softwaredoug 1y agoThe US reforested significantly in the twentieth century as well, which helped keep some of the US cooler than it should have been relative to the climate change norm. https://news.agu.org/press-release/a-century-of-reforestation-helped-keep-the-eastern-us-cool/ https://news.agu.org/press-release/a-century-of-reforestatio...
- teleforce 1y agoThanks for the info. Honest questions how much forest the US and UK added since they are probably the loudest in the issue of deforestration?
- TiredOfLife 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoPlease avoid generic tangents and flamebait on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- TiredOfLife 1y agoIt's neither of those. If I plant a tree near my house, but cut down all of my neighbor trees, it would show that I have planted one tree while my neighbors none.
- tomhow 1y agoThe comment was downvoted and flagged by several other community members so I don't seem to be out of step with community sentiment on this. I can accept that you sincerely felt it was an important thing to write, but all we can go on is what it looks like on the page, and what it looks like is trying to activate reactions in people with out-of-context controversy.
- hereme888 1y agoWise to use forests to contain deserts. Problem is that China still plays a big role in importing deforestation-linked commodities and fund overseas projects that exacerbate global loses. There are low tree survival rates and falsified coverage, like the Three-North Shelterbelt program which is plagued by inefficiencies over its 40 years of operation. It's also hard to balance afforestation without causing scarcity of water and displacement of native forest habitats. For example, instances where shrubs are misclassified as forests inflate the report figures. China seems to be the global leader in biodiversity loss, with about 80% of its coral reefs and 73% of its mangroves gone since 1950. Everyone knows their abusive fishing practices, and the millions of tons of plastic pollution into the ocean every year. So, keep up the good environmental efforts, China, and hope you do even better.
- gchamonlive 1y agoHonest question, aren't coral reefs also very sensitive to climate change? How much of that loss is because of regional activities and how much is due to global environmental changes?
- margalabargala 1y agoConsidering that China is responsible for ~25% of cumulative CO2 emissions to date, there's not much difference between the regional and global inputs.
- gchamonlive 1y agoIsn't this 75% less responsibility than total responsibility in case it's only due to regional activities?
- margalabargala 1y agoSure, but 25% of responsibility for something like this is well into "consequences of your actions" territory. If the world had 25% less GHG emissions to date, warming may well still be sub 1C, and the reefs might be fine.
- lovelearning 1y ago> Drawing on national reports prepared for FAO, ... > Since 2005, the FRA has relied on data provided by a network of officially nominated national correspondents... My understanding is that these reports are heavily based on data reported by respective governments. I think "officially nominated national correspondents" means bureaucrats of different governments. But the governments of Russia, India, China are all known to lie. A lot. About a lot of things. I would know. My default stance is to be skeptical of such claims based on national reports. Independent verification using satellite imagery seems like a better approach.
- abhaynayar 1y agoHow many football fields is that though?
- zahlman 1y agohttps://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i2d=true&i=Divide%5Barea+of+texas%2Carea+of+football+field%5D https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i2d=true&i=Divide%5Barea+... About 130 million.
- Bud 1y agoIt should be noted that massive tree-planting efforts do not magically create "forest". They create tree plantations. Forest is a complex ecosystem that takes some time.
- zahlman 1y ago> Since 1990 ... surpassed by China, which managed to add a staggering 173 million acres.... > Over the last three and a half decades China has planted roughly 120 million acres of forest Where did the rest come from?
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- yanhangyhy 1y agoI don’t know how it is in other countries, but nearly thirty years ago when I was in elementary school, a Chinese propaganda slogan stuck with me: “If you want to get rich, build roads first; have fewer children, plant more trees.” Every part of that slogan has been put into action, continuously, for decades. Although low birth rates have now become a problem, back then it seemed like a solution. Xi Jinping may be a rather dull person, but his most famous saying is “Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets.” As for building roads — the Belt and Road Initiative speaks for itself. We’ve built bridges in Croatia, in Bangladesh, in Mozambique, and roads and railways all over the world. That slogan is probably engraved in every Chinese person’s memory.
- uvaursi 1y agoMy grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I ride a Mercedes, my son rides a Land Rover, and my grandson is going to ride a Land Rover…but my great-grandson is going to have to learn Mandarin.
- yanhangyhy 1y agoLOL. Probably no longer needed. China currently has no real solution for the low birth rate. I guess they are 99% relying on industrial robots and household robots(in the future).So China will desperately invest in the robotics sector. (The recently released 15th Five-Year Plan likely includes this). By then, language likely won’t be an issue—AI can replace everything.
- uvaursi 1y agoEnlighten me - hasn’t Xi and the government recently demanded 2-3 children from each woman? I imagine they’ll push heavily for births again.
- yanhangyhy 1y agothe government is trying to encourage more births through subsidies and other measures. In fact, experience from developed countries has already shown that this approach doesn’t work. Moreover, the subsidies the Chinese government provides are far lower than in developed countries and far below the actual cost of raising a child. The most common nationwide subsidy is 3,600 RMB per child per year, which is basically ineffective. For a woman on maternity leave, the government will subsidize her based on her salary, which can be substantial—in places like Shanghai it could reach 200,000–300,000 RMB—but still not enough to stimulate population growth. To put it in a darker perspective: the only way to truly boost birth rates would be to reduce women’s rights or compensation, which is unlikely in any civilized country. A historical example is Romania. So in my understanding, China has only two viable paths: solve the cost of raising children through household robots or by means of coercion, the government could require state-owned enterprise employees and Communist Party members to have children. China has 100 million Party members and roughly tens of millions of SOE employees. SOE employees usually have stable benefits and income, so childbirth could be tied to salary, benefits, or promotion opportunities. To some extent, this could be argued as reasonable—after all, they are supported by taxpayers and arguably should contribute to society. But it still counts as a rather dark idea, and I imagine it would be a last-resort option.
- Myrmornis 1y agoA very worrying number of people nowadays seem to think that forests are a thing to counter climate change. What is the species composition being planted? Is it appropriate to the location? Reforestation must be about recreating _forest ecosystems_, not about creating the photosynthetic counterpart of a vast fucking solar farm.
- AoifeMurphy 1y agoOf course, planting is one thing, maintaining is another. Many areas turn green for a few years and then fade back to desert. The real challenge is building an ecological culture, not just a green map.
- jo32 1y agoOne more interesting thing: https://english.news.cn/20251022/ab149540692140f3836a60e22dde6969/c.html#:~:text=In%20addition%2C%20certain%20pastures%20equip,control%20and%20clean%20energy%20development. https://english.news.cn/20251022/ab149540692140f3836a60e22dd...
- dukeofdoom 1y agoI always wondered why Western democracies want carbon taxes, when just reverting more land back to managed forests, seems like a much more reasoned solution. It would trap carbon, help wild life, and provide fresh air, and jobs in forestry, and renewable resources like wood. Seems to me Carbon Taxes primarily benefit the banks, and grow bureaucracy.
- beloch 1y agoHow much of this is the result of reversing the deforestation caused by the Great Leap Forward and other anti-nature policies of the mid twentieth century? It's not a bad thing if this is mostly just restoring forests ravaged by bad policy, but it's a bit odd to compare this reforestation, quantitatively, to what's going on in countries that didn't have a "war against nature".
- feverzsj 1y agoThey've been doing deforestation for thousands years. The "Yellow" River is one of the results.
- swagasaurus-rex 1y agoI think they’re doing a great thing. My area has seen some wildfire smoke season near the end of summer. It never happened when I was a kid. Now every summer there’s wildfire smoke for several days or several weeks. The climate appears to be changing and heavily forested areas of midwest US and canada are on fire every summer. Planting trees could be great for the environment, but without the moisture it could become a tinderbox for wildfires.
- blitzar 1y agoWildfires are only a problem for the matchboxes filled with trinkets we build adjacent to the pretty trees and live in - the forest likes the cleansing.
- graemep 1y agoHow do you know whether that is caused by climate change or worse management of forests. I suspect many governments are spending less on prevention because they can blame the consequences on climate change - whereas if climate change is increasing the risk they should be spending more on reducing it. > Planting trees could be great for the environment, but without the moisture it could become a tinderbox for wildfires. Trees also change the climate locally so might be part of the solution for that too.
- Stevvo 1y agoI'm curious how much of it is fake; at-least some of it is. To get financial incentives from the central government, local governments have pained rocks green and planted plastic trees to make it look like they planted trees in satellite photos.
- HexPhantom 1y agoI do wonder about the quality of those forests. Monoculture plantations aren't the same as biodiverse ecosystems. Still, if the goal is to stabilize soil, reduce dust storms, and push back deserts, it's a step in the right direction
- ksynwa 1y agoWondering if I should also pitch in a backhanded compliment for doing something good or if we already have enough of those in this thread.
- carabiner 1y agoNYTimes in 4 days: "Analysts mention that the radical forestry has military applications for Chinese forces training for a potential Western European conflict."
- casey2 1y agoIt's all desert forests though.
- shadyKeystrokes 1y agoGive me less articles more GPS coordinates. I distrust the digital tree pulp and want to see the original tree pulp.