The information office of the Guangzhou municipal people's government recently held a press conference on the construction of Guangzhou wetland ecological protection, including that of the Haizhu district and the city's overall environment during the past 10 years.

The Guangzhou forestry and landscape bureau, Guangzhou urban planning survey and design institute, experts and scholars introduced the relevant situation of wetland ecological protection construction in Guangzhou.

The Haizhu wetland has transformed 10,000 mu (667 hectares) of orchards into the south lung of Guangzhou, attracting a group of large enterprises such as Tencent and Alibaba to gather around the wetland, driving the transformation and upgrading of surrounding industries, and becoming the ecological core of the Pazhou Artificial Intelligence and Digital Economy Pilot Zone.

Guangzhou has one provincially important wetland, and this year is actively promoting the application and identification of one internationally important wetland and two other provincially important wetlands.

Fu Jingyan, director of the Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainable Development of Jinan University and deputy director of the Resource Economics Committee of the Chinese Society of Natural Resources, said that the protection and construction of wetland parks have three important roles in the sustainable development of Guangzhou: ecological value, social value and economic value.  From the perspective of social value, the Haizhu wetland reduces the surrounding average temperature by 0.5 C-1 C, and reducing the heat island effect will contribute to energy conservation and carbon reduction.

The Haizhu wetland. [Photo/WeChat account: gzhzfb]