“RMB 9.38 million!” On 3 July, the first VEP (Value of Ecosystem Product for a specific territorial unit) rights project ever listed on Zhejiang (Lishui) Eco-Product Exchange—Henggang Village in Songyang County—was successfully concluded. By bundling the ancient village’s historical landscape, ecological assets and tourism potential into a single tradable package, the deal offers a “Lishui model” for unlocking the value of traditional villages and marks another milestone in the marketization of ecological products.

Over the past 25 years of the new century, Lishui has never forgotten President Xi Jinping’s instructions. Anchored to the strategy of “ecology first, green development”, the city has played its ecological card, walked the green path and lived off its natural capital. With the resolve to cut off a limb to save the body, it has protected its environment to the utmost; with pioneering courage, it has blazed trails in eco-civilization; and with a drive for excellence, it has turned the entire prefecture into a grand garden of beauty. For 20 consecutive years its Ecological Environment Index has ranked first in Zhejiang, making Lishui the only prefecture-level city in China whose air and water quality both place in the national top ten.

Safeguarding Green as the Foundation, Deepening the Ecological Bedrock

Hailed as “China’s No. 1 Eco-City”, Lishui cloaks 80.3 percent of its territory in forest—an ecological endowment that has long kept it at the top of both provincial and national rankings. This abundant “green capital” is the city’s greatest source of confidence.

Last year alone, the Xitou Village of Longquan City was named one of the “World’s Best Tourism Villages”, the Qingtian Rice-Fish system was selected as a flagship case for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the “International Urban Carbon Neutrality Index (Lishui Index)” was launched at COP29, and Lishui was listed among the second cohort of “Bio-diversity Charismatic Cities” at COP16. These milestones are the cumulative reward of unremitting ecological protection and restoration, rooted in a city-wide consensus that green development must come first.

Over the past 25 years, Lishui has modernized its ecological governance with top-tier environmental standards, rigorous oversight and science-based compensation mechanisms. A red-line control system covers the entire prefecture; every district operates under a “regional energy & environmental assessment + block-level energy & environmental standards” regime; a negative list governs industrial entry; and high-pollution, high-emission sectors are strictly screened out.

Digitization underpins it all. Lishui’s “Sky Sentinel” platform channels satellite remote sensing, IoT sensors and citizen reports into an integrated “sky-eye + ground-eye + human-eye” monitoring network and an “air-space-ground” ecological-product data warehouse, enabling smart governance that turns lucid waters and lush mountains into tangible assets.

Five symbiotic farming systems—rice-fish, forest-mushroom, wild-rice-duck, tea-goat and terraced-field polyculture—cut fertilizer and pesticide use while closing nutrient loops and fostering harmony. Abandoned mines such as Jinyun Quarry, Suichang Gold Mine and Jingning Iron Mine have been ecologically rehabilitated into new cultural-tourism spaces, letting green mountains regain their vitality.

To polish the “most beautiful core zone” of the Grand Garden of Zhejiang Province, Lishui launched a quality-upgrade campaign targeting three weak spots: areas around the central city and scenic zones, along major transport corridors, and at urban–rural interfaces. Guided by the principle of “micro-renovation, refined improvement and management for tangible public benefit”, Lishui City keeps refining its landscapes, raising the aesthetic and ecological quality of mountains and rivers, and crafting beautiful venues where nature and culture shine together.

High-standard protection has delivered premium ecological quality. Public satisfaction with Lishui’s environment has ranked among Zhejiang’s top for 17 consecutive years, its Bio-diversity Friendliness Index has led the province for two straight years, and the city has been chosen for the first national pilot on deepening climate-adapted urban development.

Pursuing Green Through Reform and Upgrading

Guided by the principle that “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”, Lishui keeps deepening ecological reforms and innovative practice, forging a high-quality green-development model that makes the green “backdrop” even brighter and the gold “luster” of prosperity more radiant.

Building on its ecological strengths, Lishui is advancing the creation of a national biodiversity-conservation demonstration zone. It has pioneered a smart biodiversity-monitoring network, issued a local technical standard—the Biodiversity Assessment Index—and is steadily constructing integrated biodiversity observation stations. Twenty smart-monitoring plots and more than 600 smart-sensor points now cover the prefecture, enabling automated, round-the-clock tracking of select species.

As the nation’s first pilot zone for national-park establishment standards, Lishui has blazed a trail for future parks nationwide. In 2020, its “Lishui Model” for national-park creation was selected as one of China’s Top Ten Reform Cases. In 2022, the Qianjiangyuan–Baishanzu candidate area was listed among the country’s 49 prospective national parks. By 2025, the Baishanzu sector had been named a flagship case in Zhejiang’s efforts to advance integrated Yangtze River Delta development.

To reach carbon-peaking and carbon-neutrality goals, Lishui is steadily building a carbon-neutral pioneer zone. It has mapped out a creation roadmap, completed a citywide greenhouse-gas source-and-sink survey, and established a regional carbon-neutrality index framework. While advancing a provincial pilot for synergistic pollution-and-carbon reduction in eco-healthy cities, the city has drafted implementation plans and sector-specific guidelines—most recently for the synthetic-leather industry—promoting a new, cost-efficient model of integrated governance in short-process steel, synthetic leather and stainless-steel production.

Chosen as the country’s first and the only climate-finance pilot city of Zhejiang Province, Lishui has focused on the “dual-carbon” priority fields (six sectors plus innovation) and eight core tasks, constructing five climate-finance systems and carving out a replicable, Lishui-style pathway. By end-2024, Lishui’s climate-finance balance reached RMB 88.1 billion, accounting for 83.8 % of its green-credit portfolio.

Leveraging its ecological endowment and energy resources, Lishui is creating an integrated “wind-solar-hydro-storage” base to serve East China. Lishui’s first single-project, ten-billion-yuan investment—the Jinyun Pumped-Storage Power Station, the largest of its kind under construction in southwestern Zhejiang—has already been synchronized with the East China Grid. Six pumped-storage projects are now under way, with a combined installed capacity of 7.297 GW and a total investment of about RMB 47.1 billion, giving Lishui the largest project count and capacity of any prefecture-level city nationwide.

By the end of 2024, Lishui’s total installed power capacity (including provincially dispatched plants) reached 6.0062 GW, of which 5.9227 GW—98.6 %—comes from renewable sources.

Turning Green Gains into Shared Prosperity

Seizing its role as the nation’s first pilot city for translating ecological value into market value, Lishui has spent years distilling “high economic worth” from its “high ecological beauty”, converting natural assets into capital that enriches its people.

Economic valorization of ecology focuses on five pillar industries—quality agriculture, cultural industries, tourism, forestry and the “water economy”. Lishui has pioneered a family of place-based brands built around the character “mountain(Shan)”: “Lishui Shangeng”, “Lishui Shanju”, and “Lishui Shanquan”, each charting an innovative course for eco-industrial growth.

Launched in 2014, “Lishui Shangeng”, was China’s first prefecture-level public brand spanning an entire region, all product categories and the full supply chain.  Via e-commerce and live-streaming, the cured duck of Jinyun County, the rice-fish rice of Qingtian County, the chrysanthemum buds of Suichang County and the sweet orange pomelos of Qingyuan County fly off digital shelves; cumulative sales have topped RMB 16 billion in the past three years.

Transformed from simple farm-stays, “Lishui Shanju” has become the “golden key” to rural revitalization, forging win-win models among enterprises, village collectives and households.  More than 3,300 homestays employ 12,000 people; during this year’s May-Day holiday alone they hosted 1.062 million visitors and generated RMB 200 million in revenue.

Pristine water, crisp taste and distinctive packaging have catapulted “Lishui Shanquan” into the spotlight, earning a “Gold Award for Premium Natural Mineral Water” and annual sales approaching RMB 40 million—a vivid demonstration of “lucid waters and lush mountains” becoming “mountains of gold and silver”.

Placing a price on nature and blazing the trail, Lishui also set up Zhejiang’s first regional eco-product exchange—the Zhejiang (Lishui) Eco-Product Trading Platform—turning every shade of green into real gold.  By February 2024 cumulative trading volume on the platform exceeded RMB 10 billion; by April, forestry-carbon transactions had passed 1,000 deals, offsetting 40,600 t of CO2 with turnover above RMB 3 million.

In 2024 Lishui recorded its sixteenth consecutive year of leading Zhejiang in rural income growth and its ninth straight year topping the province in income growth for low-income farm households.

Safeguarding “lucid waters and lush mountains”, Lishui keeps enlarging “mountains of gold and silver”. Lishui city continues to explore new strategies that let development and protection reinforce each other, ensuring the “green-development benchmark and vibrant city of beautiful mountains and rivers” shines in both form and spirit.