January 2015: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is undertaking activities to restore degraded lands and improve local livelihoods in the western region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), through a US$5.25 million technical assistance grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

The grant will support government efforts to: broaden measures to combat land degradation; restore grassland areas; boost land productivity on 1.8 million hectares; and strengthen the ‘PRC-GEF Partnership on Land Degradation in Dryland Ecosystems.’ The PRC-GEF partnership, which also includes ADB, the World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), was established in 2002 and has promoted new concepts in sustainable land management (SLM), including ‘integrated ecosystem management,’ ‘payment for ecosystem services’ and ‘public-private partnerships.’

The GEF grant will also support activities in, inter alia: strengthening sustainable forest management (SFM) on approximately 442,000 hectares of land in the Qinghai province; promoting tree planting; and introducing forestry best practices. In addition, the project will establish 16 SLM sites to: illustrate innovative approaches to forest, grassland and farmland management; and promote alternative, climate-friendly livelihoods for communities in affected areas, including ecotourism, the development of green products and clean energy. These activities will be carried out from February 2015 until the end of January 2018, and will cost a total of US$23.3 million, the balance of which will be supplied by the Government of China. [GEF Press Release]