China's construction land use per unit of GDP down 18.9 pct in 5 years

HANGZHOU, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The area of construction land use per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in China had decreased 18.9 percent in five years by 2022, as the nation has been working to save resources and safeguard its natural ecology, an official has said.

During a forum on natural resources and ecological civilization held on Monday in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, Minister of Natural Resources Wang Guanghua said that through the strict control of sea reclamation, the nation has ensured a natural coastline retention rate of no less than 35 percent.

The ministry has also supported the development of clean energy, such as photovoltaic power and wind power, in an effort to steadily push forward in pursuing the nation's goals of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, Wang said.

According to the official, China has organized and implemented an integrated protection and restoration project that covers mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grasslands and sand, with its total treatment area reaching 80 million mu (about 5.33 million hectares) in recent years.

At the same time, the country has completed the ecological restoration of nearly 4.35 million mu of abandoned mines, renovated and restored 2,000 km of coastline, repaired 600,000 mu of coastal wetland, and become one of the few countries in the world to see a net increase in its area of mangroves, Wang said.