HUNAN FORESTRY

The operation consists of planting and rehabilitating about 58 600 hectares of forests in the Province of Hunan, People's Republic of China. The plan is to afforest about 6 100 hectares of abandoned lands, to further diversify the tree species composition in about 27 300 hectares of existing forests, to tend some 24 900 hectares of low quality young forests, and to enrich the underwood species composition of some 300 hectares of forests. The project will also include a biodiversity conservation and forest protection component, as well as the necessary investments in forest infrastructure, and a capacity building component.

The operation contributes to the Bank's environmental sustainability and Climate Action objectives. This project is fully in line with the EU's policy, as defined in the EU Strategy on China, which was adopted in 2016 and calls for an increased cooperation on climate change and in the EU-China 2020 Strategic Agenda for Cooperation, of which one of the main themes is sustainable development, including, explicitly, climate-change adaptation and mitigation and environmental protection. This commitment was also highlighted in the joint statement on climate change at the 2015 EU-China summit, where both sides expressed their commitment to low-carbon development and to cooperate in the context of the United Nations' climate conventions. The project is also in line with China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), which includes green growth as a primary target. The Plan contains ambitious targets in afforestation, including increasing the forest coverage rate to 23% (from 21.7% in 2015) as well as the forest stock to 16.5 billion m3 (from 15.1 billion m3 in 2015).

The implementation of this project is expected to optimise the forest structure in order to significantly improve the stability, stress resistance and environmental function of the forest's ecological system. The increased forest area, coverage rate and quality will increase the resilience of forest ecosystems against climate change and will contribute to climate change mitigation by increasing carbon stocks. In addition, when implemented, the project will improve the biological diversity and ecological resilience on degraded lands. The newly-planted and rehabilitated forests will also improve soil stability, water-retention capacity and air quality in industrial and urban areas. In addition, the project will improve fresh water quality in rivers through decreased siltation. Investments and capacity building on forest fire prevention will mitigate the fire risk in the region.

The Bank will require the promoter to ensure that the implementation of the project will be done in accordance with the Bank's Procurement Guidelines.