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May 15 is National Low Carbon Day. On this day, eight departments, including the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Natural Resources, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Water Resources, China Meteorological Administration, and the National Health Commission, jointly issued the first batch of pilot cities for deepening climate-adaptive urban construction. The list was announced at the 2024 National Low Carbon Day main event. A total of 39 cities (districts) across the country were selected, including Lishui City.
The first batch of pilot cities for deepening climate-adaptive urban construction includes cities of various sizes, from megacities to small cities, across seven geographical regions of China. These cities exhibit distinct characteristics in terms of development levels, climate types, and resource endowments, making them typical examples at the national or provincial level with strong potential for demonstration and driving effects.
For many years, Lishui has effectively coordinated actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change. It has been successively included in major national reform pilot projects such as the National Ecological Civilization Demonstration Zone, the National Pilot for Ecological Product Value Realization Mechanism, the National Pilot for Climate-Adaptive Urban Construction, the National Climate Investment and Financing Pilot City, the National Carbon Monitoring and Assessment Pilot City, and the National Forestry Carbon Sequestration Pilot City. At the end of 2023, Lishui became one of the first cities in China to be selected for the UN’s Resilient Cities 2030 initiative, with its achievements in climate change adaptation recognized both domestically and internationally.
In terms of policy planning, Lishui has successively introduced and implemented relevant plans such as the “Special Plan for Underground Utility Tunnels in Lishui’s Central Urban Area” and the “Implementation Opinions on Promoting Sponge City Construction in Lishui”. The “14th Five-Year Plan” of Lishui City also emphasizes deepening climate change adaptation efforts. At the beginning of its establishment as a city, Lishui included the sides of the Daxi section of the Oujiang River Basin in its overall urban plan as “urban wind corridors”, setting up ecological green spaces and avoiding the construction of high-rise buildings. This reserved wind paths, reduced wind resistance from buildings, increased shading vegetation, and used the “l(fā)and-sea breeze” from Daxi to enhance air circulation within and outside the city. This design guides fresh mountain air into the urban area, effectively mitigating the urban heat island effect and the pollution island effect.
In terms of external cooperation, Lishui City collaborated with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) on the “Promoting Climate Risk Management and Risk Transfer - Comprehensive Mechanism Pilot Cooperation Project” research topic. Additionally, in partnership with the Policy Research Center of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Lishui launched the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) for the first time in mainland China, assessing the comprehensive impact of air pollution and weather conditions on public health.
In terms of ecological migration, Lishui has implemented the “Large Relocation and Rapid Concentration, Secure Housing for the People” action for 20 consecutive years. By combining geological hazard surveys and ecological investigations, the city has consistently advanced ecological relocation projects such as the Baishanzu National Park ecological relocation, geological disaster avoidance relocation, and poverty alleviation relocation. From 2000 to 2023, the city achieved the relocation and risk mitigation of 167,000 households, totaling 540,500 people. In the past five years (2019-2023), the number of geological hazard points in the city decreased by 92.64%, and the number of people threatened by geological hazards decreased by 94.85%.
In terms of ecological governance, the integrated protection and restoration project for mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands, and sands in the source area of the Ou River was included in the first batch of ten national demonstration projects for integrated protection and restoration in 2021. The central government invested 2 billion yuan in this project.
In the field of digital disaster prevention and mitigation, leveraging the opportunity of being one of the first national pilot cities for carbon monitoring and assessment, Lishui has begun to establish a high-precision greenhouse gas monitoring network across the city. The “Garden Cloud” smart collaborative digital platform has been built, gradually forming a disaster risk digital early warning and forecasting system that combines “Sky Eye (satellite remote sensing big data) + Ground Eye (ecological sensing IoT) + Human Eye (grassroots comprehensive network of four platforms)”. Meteorological warning information coverage has reached 97.8%. Additionally, a digital twin pilot for managing the Ou River Basin has been launched, creating a river basin digital twin application scenario with the “four pre” functions of forecasting, warning, rehearsal, and planning. The goal is to develop a province-leading, nationally advanced smart flood control model project.
In the field of climate finance, relying on the national climate investment and financing pilot, Lishui has utilized green insurance to mitigate and hedge climate risks by formulating the “Lishui City Catastrophe Insurance Implementation Plan”, providing catastrophe insurance coverage of 175 million yuan. The first national forestry carbon sink “future revenue rights + insurance policy” pledge loan was launched. Innovative insurance products such as the bamboo forest carbon sink price index insurance and the “Zhejiang Forestry Carbon Sink” - Asian Games carbon neutrality policy have been introduced. Agricultural product weather index insurance has been implemented, achieving full coverage of fiscal subsidies for policy-based rice safety cost insurance. As of the end of December 2023, Lishui’s green insurance premium income reached 403 million yuan, providing risk protection of 289.52 billion yuan.
“Being selected as a national pilot city for deepening climate-adaptive urban construction is both a recognition of our previous work and a preparation for further enhancing our ability to adapt to climate change,” said Chen Lingmin, a fourth-level investigator of the Lishui City Ecological Environment Bureau. Lishui has always adhered to the concept of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, pioneering a path of high-quality green development by integrating the dual-carbon strategy with climate change adaptation actions. In the future, Lishui will continue to explore and practice in-depth climate-adaptive urban construction. This includes integrating climate investment and financing with the local economy, industries, finance, and environmental protection to initially establish a climate investment and financing financial system aimed at synergistic effects in reducing carbon emissions, pollution, and increasing greenery and growth. Financial institutions will be guided to focus on the two major areas of mitigating and adapting to climate change, promoting the allocation of financial resources in these areas.