Ecological and environmental protection in Yunnan province by natural disaster reduction (2015-2020)

Mountain regions constitute the main part of Yunnan province. Due to its monsoon climate interacted with complicated geographical landscapes, many types of natural disasters have occurred in Yunnan province. They often result in significant life and property losses and cause severe ecological and environmental damages. Natural disaster reduction thus becomes very important for ecological and environmental protection in Yunnan. In this paper, natural disasters are analyzed by examining their causing factors and risk maps are graphed with the help of remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS). Based on our research results and the disaster reduction experience during the 12th five-year plan period, core natural disaster indicators for Yunnan province are proposed and calculated under the Sendai framework. In addition, the natural disaster reduction efforts in Yunnan of the 13th five-year plan (2015-2020) have been separated into 10 tasks and 33 projects. 40 billions of funding has been allocated. The risk of natural disaster will be greatly reduced once the tasks and projects are successfully implemented. Main conclusions of the paper include: 1) The Jingsha, Lancang and Nujiang regions of Yunnan which are characterized by steep mountains and deep valleys provide the essential geographical conditions for geological disasters; Xiaojiang and Honghe fault zones are most active and have high seismicity; weather disasters are more likely to occur in the northern part of Yunnan; and forest fires are mainly distributed in the central region of Yunnan. Comprehensive natural disaster risk is obtained which shows “V” characteristic along north-south and northwest side. 2) By analyzing the correlation between natural disaster losses and GDP, two inflection points (7000 RMB and 27000 RMB) are identified for GNI per capita in Yunnan. 3) There is an upward trend in natural disaster risks in Yunnan during the 13th five-year plan period. 4) Core indicators for disaster reduction include disaster damages/GDP and disaster-caused death rates. These two indicators have values of 1.5% and 5.3 respectively. Both of them have a target value of 1.3 in the whole country level. 5) 40 billion RMB are dedicated to 33 natural disaster reduction projects during the 13th five-year plan period in Yunnan which mainly allocated in the fields such as reinforcement of dilapidated buildings of schools and rural area, helicopter rescue team, seismic and meteorological refinement monitoring network, scientific research projects etc.. Natural disaster risks will be greatly reduced and ecological environment will be protected with the successes of these projects.