China has planted more than 170 million acres of new forest since 1990

Story: 2025 C.E.  |  Last updated: April 20, 2026

Since 1990 C.E., China has added enough forest to cover an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined — more than 170 million acres of new tree cover planted and restored across a country that was losing forest at an alarming rate just decades before. The scale of China’s reforestation effort is now the largest in human history, and its effects on carbon storage, biodiversity, and rural livelihoods are rippling far beyond its borders.

At a glance

• China reforestation: China has added more than 70 million hectares (roughly 173 million acres) of forest since 1990 C.E., according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, making it the single largest contributor to global net forest gain over that period.
• Carbon sequestration: China’s forests now absorb an estimated 800 million tonnes of CO2 per year, according to research published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, directly supporting the country’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060 C.E.
• Grain for Green: The government’s flagship Grain for Green program, launched in 1999 C.E., paid tens of millions of rural farmers to retire degraded cropland and convert it to forest or grassland — the largest payment-for-ecosystem-services program ever attempted anywhere in the world.

How China grew a forest the size of two states

In the mid-20th century, China faced severe deforestation. Decades of agricultural expansion, fuel harvesting, and industrial logging stripped hillsides bare across much of the country. Soil erosion accelerated. Rivers flooded more violently. Dust storms swept across northern cities.

The government’s response was methodical and, over time, massive. Starting in the 1970s and accelerating through the 1980s and 1990s, China launched a series of ecological programs — the Three-North Shelter Forest System (nicknamed the “Great Green Wall”), the Natural Forest Protection Program, and eventually the Grain for Green initiative. Each targeted a different dimension of the problem.

Grain for Green proved to be the most consequential. Farmers in western and central provinces were paid to stop plowing slopes steeper than 25 degrees and plant trees or grass instead. By the mid-2010s, the program had enrolled more than 40 million farm households. What had been eroded hillside became young forest.

What the numbers actually show

NASA researchers using satellite data found that China accounts for roughly 25% of all net new leaf area added globally since 2000 C.E. — despite covering only 6.6% of Earth’s land surface. That finding, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, surprised many scientists who expected tropical forests to dominate the picture.

China’s 9th National Forest Inventory, completed around 2018 C.E., counted forest cover at approximately 220 million hectares — up dramatically from around 125 million hectares in the early 1990s. Forest stock volume, a measure of total tree biomass, increased even faster, because many of the planted trees have now matured and store far more carbon per hectare than young saplings do.

At roughly 800 million tonnes of CO2 absorbed per year, China’s forests offset the equivalent of about 6% of the country’s current annual emissions. That number will grow as planted forests continue to mature.

Beyond carbon: water, wildlife, and rural income

The environmental payoffs extend well past climate. Reforested hillsides hold soil in place, reducing the sediment load washing into rivers downstream. Communities in the Yellow River and Yangtze basins have reported measurable improvements in water quality and a reduction in the severity of seasonal flooding — outcomes that the United Nations Environment Programme has cited as a model for nature-based climate adaptation.

Biodiversity has also responded. Restored forest corridors in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces now provide habitat for species including the giant panda and the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, both of which had been squeezed into ever-smaller fragments of suitable land. The recovery is partial and still fragile — but it is real.

Rural income shifted, too. In provinces where Grain for Green operated at scale, families that once relied entirely on marginal cropland now earn government payments for stewardship roles. That income diversification has reduced poverty pressure in some of China’s most historically disadvantaged regions. Research consistently shows that communities with direct financial stakes in forest health tend to produce better long-term outcomes than top-down conservation alone — a pattern also visible in Indigenous land stewardship efforts at COP30, where 160 million hectares of territory gained formal recognition.

An honest look at limits

China’s reforestation story is not without complexity. Critics and ecologists have raised valid concerns about monoculture planting — vast stretches of a single species like poplar or eucalyptus that store carbon but support far less biodiversity than natural mixed forest. Some planted forests have failed to survive in arid northern regions where rainfall cannot sustain them.

Water use is another tension point. In dry regions, some large-scale plantations have drawn down groundwater rather than replenishing it. The World Wildlife Fund has urged China and other reforestation programs worldwide to prioritize native species diversity over raw tree-count metrics. These are solvable problems, and China’s forestry agencies are actively researching and adjusting species mixes — but they are real, and they matter for any country looking to replicate this model.

It is also worth holding this alongside a broader ecological truth: reducing deforestation remains more immediately beneficial for climate than replanting, because mature forests store far more carbon than young ones, and that stored carbon takes decades to rebuild once lost.

A signal for what’s possible

The broader implication is harder to dismiss. China’s experience shows that large-scale ecological recovery is achievable within a single human generation. That proof of concept matters as nations debate how aggressively to pursue nature-based solutions alongside the energy transition.

The FAO estimates the world needs to restore 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 C.E. to meet global climate and biodiversity targets — a goal that currently feels distant but looks more plausible when measured against what China has already accomplished. Marine protected areas like Ghana’s Cape Three Points reserve suggest a similar logic: ecosystems respond when given the space and time to recover.

China’s forests are a data point about what focused, long-term commitment from governments and communities can produce. Reforestation alone cannot resolve the climate crisis. But when paired with emissions reductions, it becomes a meaningful and measurable part of the solution.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Wikipedia — Reforestation

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• Indigenous land rights and 160 million hectares at COP30
• Ghana protects its coastline with a new marine reserve
• The Good News for Humankind archive on reforestation

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