The Yangtze River Economic Belt is a crucial region for China’s economy, encompassing 11 provinces and municipalities that contribute over 40% of the country’s GDP. As part of our ambitions to better protect our nature, Carlsberg China is committed to taking part in protecting the vital water sources that support this region.
The selected regions for the partnerships’ projects are home to four of our breweries in China and Laos which face heightened water risk from declining water quality and deteriorating ecosystem services. In partnership with WWF, we started a project in 2024 to restore wetlands and purify water sources located in Chongqing, Yunnan and Jiangsu. The Mekong River basin and Yangtze River Basin are also priority ecoregions for the WWF. As well as holding rich freshwater biodiversity, these areas are home to hundreds of millions of people.
The partnership's first three projects are in China along the Yangtze River. Tailored to the local conditions of each site, these projects were designed to address various objectives, including sewage treatment, water recharge, and biodiversity conservation. For example, in Kunming, Yunnan Province, our efforts successfully restored a critical habitat for the Black-necked Crane, the world's only alpine crane species.
By the end of 2024, a total of 365,000 m³ of water had been replenished across these project sites.