On July 20, the founding ceremony of a "green carbon fund", jointly sponsored by CNPC, the State Forestry Administration and China Green Foundation, was held in the Great Hall of the People.

The Chinese government always stresses the importance of afforestation as a key way of tackling world climate change brought by environmental deterioration and issued its first national action plan addressing the issue of climate change on June 4.

The new green carbon fund, under the management of China Green Foundation, will mainly mobilize enterprises, organizations and individuals to join tree planting and other forest protection activities.

China National Petroleum Corporation attaches great importance on developing biological energy resources, and is active in promoting forestry carbon sequestration so as to make its due efforts in tackling global climate change and improving energy resources configuration. As the first donator, CNPC offered the fund 300 million yuan (39 million U.S. dollars) for afforestation, which will absorb and attach 5 to 10 million tons of carbon dioxide within the next 10 years.

Background links

Carbon sequestration is the process, activities and mechanism of carbon dioxide elimination in atmosphere. Forestry carbon sequestration refers to a process of planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide via photosynthesis and fasten the carbon in forest cover and soil in a form of bioenergy.

Forest is the largest carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystem. It is reported that each cubic meter grew of tree can absorb 1.83 tons of carbon dioxide and release 1.62 tons of oxygen. Preventing global warming may be realized in two ways: one is to reduce the emission of industrial carbon dioxide; the other is to increase forestry coverage. As a matter of fact, tree planting and afforestation is an effective way to relief climate change.