context: The 2018 Party and State institutional reform set up the State Forestry and Grasslands Administration under the Ministry of Natural Resources by merging the former State Forestry Administration and supervision and management of grasslands responsibilites under the former Ministry of Agriculture. At the county level, responsibilites was merged into the local natural resources department. A new agency overhaul was announced in 2023, to be completed at the local level by the end of 2024.
The State Forestry and Grassland Administration recently announced that 50 percent of the counties, cities and districts in Gansu Province have established forestry and grassland agencies at the local level, according to a report by The Paper. Similar agencies have also recently been set up in Xinjiang, Hunan, Shandong and Liaoning.
The new agencies are primarily responsible for
- supervising and managing the protection and development of forests, grasslands, wetlands, deserts and wild animal and plant resources
- organising ecological protection and restoration efforts
- conducting afforestation activities and preventing forest and grassland fires
The restoration of the specialised agencies at this level provides a stronger institutional foundation for advancing the forest chief scheme reform, enhancing administrative efficiency, modernising forestry and grassland governance and promoting the high-quality development of these sectors.