Green Technology to Alleviate Poverty in Western China
BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) — Farmers living on the arid mountains bordering Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan in southwest China are being urged to consider growing a new crop from a local tree. From 2007, the Jatropha Curcas L tree, which grows wild, will be used to produce bio-diesel and prevent soil erosion.
Farmers had traditionally used the tree to contain livestock and its uniquely fragranced seeds provided oil for lamps.
Thanks to a United Nations project, more than 1.3 million farmers in three counties of the provinces with ethnic minorities comprising 45 percent of the population, will be extracting oil from the seeds of the Jatropha Curcas L tree to improve the ecosystem, increase their energy supply and annual incomes.
Entitled “Green Poverty Reduction in China”, the 8.58 million US dollar project, jointly established by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Chinese government, is targeting minority communities in ecologically fragile and remote regions of China. (more…)
