As we mark the world's 57th Earth Day on Wednesday, this year's theme,"Our Power, Our Planet", carries a clear message: environmental progress is built through everyday action — from innovators advancing solutions to communities protecting ecosystems.

While the message resonates far beyond any single country, China's experience offers a particularly powerful example of what collective, everyday action can achieve.

The country supports 17 percent of the global population with only 30 percent of the world's per capita forest area, less than 40 percent of its per capita farmland, and just 6 percent of its freshwater. Yet China has proven that limited natural resources need not be a barrier to development. Nor must development and conservation be adversaries. Instead, by jointly participating in conserving resources, people can collectively benefit — both ecologically and economically.

Over the past decade, China has contributed one-fourth of the world's new forest area, ranking first globally in planted forest area and forest coverage growth. In 2025 alone, the country added nearly 3.6 million hectares of green space through afforestation and restored or treated 4.9 million hectares of degraded grasslands.

These are not abstract statistics, but the result of actions driven by the country's central leadership. President Xi Jinping has participated in Beijing's voluntary tree-planting event for 14 consecutive years; at this year's event on April 30, he called for mobilizing the whole of society to take part in afforestation efforts.

While the central leadership provides direction, the country's forest area would not have expanded significantly without everyday actions from communities, farmers and local innovators.

Yet daily actions need a lasting engine to keep them running. What sustains such actions is a practical mechanism that continuously benefits participants. This is the real secret behind China's afforestation success: when people see tangible rewards for protecting nature, they become willing partners in conservation.

Take the country's booming underforest non-timber economy for example. By the end of 2025, its total output value had surpassed 1.3 trillion yuan ($190.67 billion) — roughly the GDP of Ukraine in 2024, and a significant jump from about 1 trillion yuan in 2024. According to the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, this sector alone employed 34 million people — almost the entire population of Peru — last year. In other words, millions of families now depend on forest conservation, and not logging, for their income.

This under-forest non-timber economy has effectively resolved the perceived tension between economic development and ecological protection, allowing farmers to earn a living without cutting down trees.

In Zhejiang province's Xinchang county, for example, local authorities have established State-owned asset platforms to acquire use rights to previously idle forestland from farmers, then brought in private companies for development. This mechanism transforms farmers from passive owners of forest use rights — from which they hardly make any profit without felling trees — into shareholders who receive regular dividends. Farmers no longer face a choice between protecting the forest and feeding their families. They can do both.

Thanks to this approach, use rights to more than 6,300 hectares of low-efficiency forestland have been transferred since 2020, with 3,600 hectares now planted with Chinese torreya, a high-value nut tree. The project generates over 16 million yuan in additional annual income for the county. To date, 209 villages have received a cumulative total of 24 million yuan in dividends.

This Earth Day, the lesson from China is worth remembering: when conservation puts food on the table and provides dividends for villagers, it is no longer a sacrifice. It becomes a shared goal.

With consistent effort, science-based policies, and the active participation of millions, the path to a sustainable future is not just imaginable; it is already being walked — one tree, one share, one daily action at a time.

- Hou Liqiang, China Daily