Purpose of Review

In tandem with China’s rapid urbanisation and economic growth, some negative impacts on the eco-environment and human wellbeing have arisen, such as the urban heat island effect, air pollution and lack of recreational spaces. To address the degradation of urban eco-environment and improve residents’ quality of life simultaneously, China’s central government launched the National Forest City action in 2004, which essentially promotes urban forests as nature-based solutions (UF-NBS) and contributes to achieving sustainable development goals. Whilst this key national action has been implemented for about two decades, it has received limited scholarly attention within and beyond China. This paper is the very first to summarise comprehensively the development of the action, focusing on its rationale, evaluation and management.

Recent Findings

By establishing urban forests as cost-effective solutions to various environmental and social issues, the action integrates novel knowledge and best practices accumulated in Europe and North America into China’s traditional ideology, pertinent to the human-nature relationship in urban landscape design, and further adapts and renovates these to the country’s unique socioeconomic context. It highlights the multi-functionality of urban forests underpinned by a set of key performance indicators covering both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the National Forest City’s planning, construction, management and review. Additionally, it reflects a dynamic interaction within the science-policy-practice continuum hinged on field experiments, knowledge transfer, public engagement, policy agenda and greening actions. Challenges, such as unbalanced geographical distribution and KPIs on ecological integrity and functionality of urban forests, should be addressed for further refining and scaling-up this action.

Summary

China’s National Forest City action promotes UF-NBS as a pathway to sustainable urbanisation, serving as a demonstrative exemplar for other developing and developed countries that may wish to avoid their dependence on traditional development pathways. This paper sheds light on how to implement urban forests as effective and sustainable NBS to addresses global societal challenges.