Wudang district: preserving ecological environment is top priority

Wudang district in Guiyang, Guizhou province has been boldly exploring ways to transform and upgrade its green development, and putting the “Two Mountains” theory into action, since the area was among the first batch of practice and innovation bases for the theory of “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets.”

It has given full play to renewable energy and has improved local ecological conditions, which is continuously enhancing the senses of happiness and gain among locals. 

In 2019, the quality of Wudang district's centralized drinking water source reached the standard of 100 percent. It maintains first place among areas in Guiyang with a forest coverage rate of 57.95 percent. Days with 'fine' air quality in Wudang district were up to 352 last year, with a good rate of 96.4 percent. The decline of its energy consumption per GDP met provincial and municipal targets.

From the beginning of the project to build Wudang district into a garden, Wudang will deeply promote the practice and innovation of the “Two Mountains” theory, and maintain the baselines of economic development and ecological improvement. It will seek new routes to high quality development, exploring win-win results.  

Wudang district has the strictest systems for protecting the environment and maintains clean mountains, sky, water and land to steadily improve ecological and environmental quality. 

In recent years, Wudang district has been delivering environmental law enforcement to tighten ecological protection supervision and maintain ecological conservation red lines, environmental quality baselines, resource utilization limits and negative lists of environmental access. It has taken the lead in exploring big data monitoring for ecological protection by developing conservation based on legal reform, funding increases and social resource application. 

Wudang has drawn up a Wudang district “Two Mountains” base construction monitoring index system, with an emphasis on resource utilization, environmental quality, protection and harnessing, green growth, green development, and “Two Mountains” education. It has also established a “Two Mountains” ecological environment intelligent cloud platform and is further using big data to explore both ecological resource digital supervision and intelligent ecological protection work , with the aim of becoming a provincial leader in river cloud regulatory platforms. Data on major river basins, areas and enterprises are collected online so as to cultivate an environmental protection industrial system led by a green "Internet of Things", and to innovate a “Two Mountains” institutional guarantee. 

Wudang aims to win the battle against pollution in response to prominent problems raised by the central government and provincial Party committee. It will vigorously promote the comprehensive treatment of the Wudang section of Nanming River, especially improving the water quality of the Songxi River and Huanxi River. Pollution regulation of industrial waste gas, straw burning and dust raising, comprehensive improvement of damaged hills, and control of livestock pollution are being pushed to realize the steady enhancement of environmental quality. Meanwhile, the centralized treatment rate of urban and rural sewage is intended to reach 100 percent depending on human settlement improvements, Gaoyan refuse landfill renovations and improvements to township sewage treatment facilities. 

For the past few years, Wudang has been committed to promoting an integrated development between ecology and tourism. It is striving to become a significant scenic area in the world famous tourist city, as well as an all-for-one health tourism resort and destination for people in Southwest China, South Central China and the Pan-Pearl River Delta. 

The district committee and government aim to propel high-quality economic development, with the main line of industrial development depending on leadership in healthcare, big data fusion and tourism promotion. Relying on ecological resource superiority and industrial strength - Wudang is a pharmaceutical manufacturing hub and a provincial medical logistics distribution center - the district strives to develop an individual characteristic path of transforming and upgrading green development, centering on six sections, to cultivate a new growth impetus and mobilize the development of ecological agriculture, industry and tourism services. 

Moreover, Wudang district has gained ecologically beneficial economic effects by rapid development of its health industry. It has been successively approved as a demonstration area for promoting Guizhou’s great health industry, a practice and innovation base for the theory of “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”, and the National Western Center for Big Data in Health Care.  

The area will further transform its ecological qualities into developmental superiority, guided by a great health industry, following a path of green and low carbon development. 

A sound ecological environment benefits locals a lot. In recent years, Wudang district has been promoting forest parks, wetland parks, mountain parks, urban parks and community parks, with 72 currently in the scientific planning process. It has formed a new park layout system oriented by the panoramic construction of a high-quality garden city within the overall planning of regional environmental resources. Meanwhile, the environmentally-friendly slow traffic system combined with water corridors, air corridors, bridges and green paths has helped to create a new urbanization pattern with unique topographical characteristics.

Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets. In 2020, Wudang district is putting forward a strategy of developing agriculture and rural areas as priorities, and is exploring a rural revitalization model with Wudang characteristics, so as to become a city-level rural revitalization demonstration area and realize high-quality economic development alongside high-level ecological protection.