Nippon Paper Industries Co., Ltd. (President: Takahiko Miyoshi), Japan's leading paper and pulp manufacturing company and a core member of the Nippon Unipac Holding Group, and Nippon Paper Development Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Kita-ku, Tokyo, President: Ikuo Kuwajima) have received an order for Phase Ⅲ work in "The Project for Afforestation for Conservation of Middle Stream of the Huang He" in the Ningxia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.
The two companies were responsible for the Phase Ⅱ work last year, which involved afforestation of an area of approximately 1,800 hectares, installing square-shaped straw sand flow break and constructing a forest road (as reported in the News Release of October 23, 2003). The work was given high marks in China. The Phase Ⅲ work, the order for which has been jointly received by the companies, is scheduled to take place in the final year of the project and is therefore an important mission that concludes the project. The companies will be undertaking plantation across another 1,000 hectares as well as supplementary planting in areas where they made plantations in previous years and repairs to forest roads.

"The Project for Afforestation for Conservation of Middle Stream of the Huang He" was initiated in October 2001 as a project for forest restoration in a devastated area subject to desertification, and was subsidized by grant aid under an ODA program run by the Government of Japan. Located nearly at the center of the Sanbei region, which covering north, northeastern and northwestern China, the Ningxia Autonomous Region has particularly suffered from desertification in the zone along the middle stream of the Huang He River. With three objectives-preventing sand blows by restoring vegetation in the desertified area, improving the welfare of local residents and introducing techniques for use in other dry districts-the project is designed to create an environmental conservation forest with 1,100 willow, poplar and other trees planted in a desertification area of 4,200 hectares over a period of three years, divided into three phases.

Paper manufacturing is a typical resource-recycling industry. With the basic principle of harmony with nature, the Nippon Unipac Holding Group has been undertaking a group-wide initiative to operate in a way that contributes to the sustainable development of society. Within "The Project for Afforestation for Conservation of Middle Stream of Huang He," Nippon Paper Industries and Nippon Paper Development will have developed an approximate total of 2,800 hectares of environmental conservation forest when they complete the Phase Ⅲ work. Nippon Paper Industries and Nippon Paper Development hope that the achievements in the region will be recognized as a symbol of friendship and collaboration between the Government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of Japan and that they will serve to conserve the global environment in the future as a model for implementation of environmental conservation policies for cultivating an abundance of greenery in a way appropriate to the 21st century.

Environmental Afforestation of the Middle Stream of the Huang He, in the Ningxia Autonomous Region