A view of a bamboo forest in Huzhou, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/WeChat account: huzhoufabu]

Huzhou in East China's Zhejiang province recently unveiled a guideline to bolster financial support for biodiversity conservation.

Huzhou is rich in biological resources and is home to species including the crested ibis, the Chinese merganser and the parrotia subaequalis, all of which are under national protection.

According to the newly released guideline, the local government will channel more capital to industries related to biodiversity conservation.

Financial institutions will be incentivized to roll out more financial products to facilitate biodiversity protection and strengthen cooperation with international agencies in green finance, according to the document.

In 2017, Huzhou was designated a national pilot zone for green finance, which refers to structured financial activity that has been created to ensure a better environmental outcome.

To date, green loans worth 3.86 billion yuan ($593.85 million) have been allocated by local authorities to promote the restoration of abandoned mines.

In addition, Huzhou has set up a trading platform in Anji county that allows enterprises and farmers to redeem rewards for planting bamboo, which is considered an effective carbon sink and an important nature-based approach to mitigating global warming.

Thanks to the platform, the number of bamboo plant species in the city now exceeds 70.