WITH China’s iron business in trouble and facing losses, Malanzhuang Iron Mine is spending 2.4 million yuan (US$390,000) planting trees and shrubs on slag heaps.

Since 2008, the company has spent more than 28 million yuan in Qian’an City, Hebei Province, undoing the damage done by the largest open iron ore mine in Asia. The Malanzhuang mine is a joint venture between the Shougang Group, a leading steelmaker, and Tangshan City, which administers Qian’an.

On the outskirts of Qian’an, some 200 kilometers east of Beijing, 20 hectares of dense shrubbery covering what was once a large tailings reservoir are now home to numerous wild birds.

Liu Zuoli, general manager of Malanzhuang, believes harmony with the natural world is part of productivity and reflects the value of labor.

“We don’t abandon tailings reservoirs like we used to, leaving them barren and a source of sandstorms,” Liu says.

In 2007, the country’s top leaders pushed an ecological agenda up the list of national priorities, a great advance after nearly three decades of rapid growth that paid no heed to pollution or damage to the ecosystem. In 2012, the greening of society was incorporated into China’s overall development plan.

Over the past seven years, Qian’an has spent 2 billion yuan on the treatment and restoration of nearly 200 tailings reservoirs, with 1,500 hectares of mining areas restored to something close to their former glory.

Song Xiaojie, 35, is chief technical consultant for vegetation restoration at the mine. She plants trees with her colleagues every spring.

“Repairing the ecosystem is an indispensable part of our work,” she says.

In 2013, the city created three major zones — eco-agriculture, new industries and residential — as part of its efforts to create a more “livable city.” Forest coverage in Qian’an reached 40.8 percent last year, nearly double the national average. The city has cut iron and steel capacity by nearly 10 million tons.

Restoration of mining areas is just one aspect of building a better Qian’an. The city signed an agreement with Hollywood China Investment Group in May to build a Paramount theme park within five years. The core scenic area of the project will cost upward of 30 billion yuan and the park is expected to attract up to 30 million tourists each year.

Environmental protection is also now important when evaluating township officials, accounting for 20 percent of an official’s total score in Qian’an, for example.

“Qian’an boomed because of mining and became strong through the associated industries. Going forward, Qian’an will be prosperous thanks to its greenery,” says Zhang Shuyun, the city’s mayor.

Rule of law

With World Environment Day marked around the country last week, it’s a good time to take stock of China’s progress on the environment. In January, the new Environmental Protection Law came into effect with tough measures, including higher fines, against polluters. The new rules allow NGOs to initiate environmental lawsuits.

Record fines have already been imposed this year. In March, Zhangjiakou City in Hebei fined a sewage center 6.74 million yuan for discharging four to five times the national limit of pollutants. Beijing slapped a fine of 3.9 million yuan on a food company for water pollution.

In that time, Qian’an’s environmental protection bureau handled more than 50 environmental pollution cases. In April, Qian’an Intermediate People’s Court sentenced a factory owner to one year in prison for water pollution.

Suspects in two other cases are awaiting trial. All three cases came to the attention of the police through public tip-offs.

The weapon of litigation is proving useful in the green war. Last month, a court in Fujian heard an environmental damage lawsuit filed by two NGOs. It was the first filed by NGOs for environmental damage since the law took effect.

“The rule of law in environmental protection is our basic goal,” says Zhang Boju, executive director of Friends of Nature, one of the organizations which brought the action. “We should use the law to protect our green mountains and to clean up our rivers.”

With smog choking many cities and water pollution everywhere, the public has become hyper-aware of environmental problems and wants to see substantial progress.

Much remains to be done. A water resource official from Ya’an, a major refuge for giant pandas in Sichuan Province, recently complained he has no legal basis to ask small hydropower stations to allow more water downstream in case of drought.

“Public action is far from enough. Of course citizens should play a bigger part in environmental monitoring, but we must also do more to pollute less and save energy in everyday life,” Zhang says, citing this year’s World Environment Day theme — “Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care.”

An industrial park is under construction in Ya’an with recycling at its heart. With forest coverage of 63 percent, the highest in Sichuan, Ya’an was made one of 55 ecological demonstration areas last year.

In the recycling park EMIN Micro-crystalline Technology produces micro-crystalline stone from leftovers from granite production. Ya’an has rich granite resources.

“Our production process has zero emissions of carbon dioxide and other waste,” says Wang Ganglin, deputy general manager of the company.

Ya’an is moving polluting plants out of key ecological areas and planning a national giant panda park. The government of underdeveloped Ya’an has made eco-tourism a key strategy of its development plan while adopting the strictest regulations to protect its waterways and forests.

Recycling on an industrial scale is being promoted elsewhere in China, including Qian’an, which boasts a provincial-level recycling demonstration park.

China’s green future

China is committed to decreasing the share of fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 80 percent by 2030 and cutting carbon dioxide emissions 40 to 45 percent from the 2005 level by 2020.

A series of global ecological crises has shown that the Earth is unable to support further industrialization.

Developed, capitalist countries suffer from a fundamental conflict between the logic of capitalism and the natural world, according to Zhao Lingyun, an eco-economist and former head of Hubei Academy of Social Sciences.

Zhao said the developed powers have alleviated their own ecological crises by seeking ecological hegemony, exploiting the resources of other countries and transferring their ecological burdens abroad.

But he said China has advantages in building a green society.

President Xi Jinping recently said coordinated regional growth and green development must be carried out fully, and green development will be prominent in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) for social and economic development.

In its first report on public awareness of the ecology, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said 78 percent of those surveyed agreed the environment was a matter for everyone. And 99.5 percent of respondents promised to work toward the goal of a society in balance with nature.