Beijing, Dec 6 (IANS): China will increase its green cover by building 20,000 national forest villages by 2020 in the country.

Faced with a problem of severe pollution, China has spent over $100 billion on trees and its total forest cover area is almost 22 per cent.

China will continue to enhance the ecological environment in villages, bring the green coverage rate in rural areas to 30 per cent and build 20,000 national forest villages by 2020, said Liu Dongsheng, Deputy Director of the China's National Forestry and Grassland Administration.

Liu was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying that that China will vigorously protect rural ecological resources, continuously strengthen public space, garden greening, beautification, reinforce the construction of road water system and the system of shelter forests for farmlands.

According to the statistics, during the 12th five-year plan period (2011-2015), the country completed greening of a total of 13.826 million hectares of rural areas and 1.637 million km of roads.