Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, launched a huge afforestation project in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province, on Thursday.

Novartis will cooperate with the Sichuan Provincial Forestry Department in planting about 5 million trees on nearly 4,000 hectares of mountain land in five counties in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan from 2011 to 2014.

The main investor for the project is Novartis, while the Dadu River Afforestation Bureau in Sichuan is the project owner. Both sides will invest about 100 million yuan for the implementation of the project.