The first-ever private equity fund aimed at improving the ecological environment of the Silk Road Economic Belt was initiated Sunday in Beijing.

The Green Ecological Silk Road Investment Fund backs projects on ecological solar panel construction, clean energy and ecological remediation in China and other countries along the Belt.

The fund, which has first round investment of 30 billion yuan (US$ 4.8 billion), was launched by several top enterprises in China including Elion Resources, China Oceanwide, Chint Group, Huiyuan Juice, Macrolink, JuneYao, Ping’an Bank and Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city.

The Belt mainly passes through central and western China as well as central Asia and the Middle East, all of which suffer from worsening desertification and drought problems. For example, 66 percent of land in Kazakhstan is deteriorating, and nearly 1.8 trillion hectares of land in the country are facing the threat of desertification.

[Cooperation Progress]

For its first project, the fund will use 5 billion yuan (US$ 790 million) in investment capital to establish an ecological solar panel industrial chain in the corridor between Beijing and the city of Zhangjiakou in Hebei province. This will help create a renewable economy for electricity generation, tree planting, grass planting and farming.