Yahoo News 5 Jan 11;
BEIJING (AFP) – Huge population pressures, scarce rainfall and climate change have made China the world's biggest victim of desertification, a problem that could take 300 years to reverse, state media said Wednesday.
Overgrazing, excessive land reclamation and inappropriate water use also make it especially difficult to halt deserts from encroaching on large areas of land in the nation's arid north and west, the China Daily reported.
"China is still a country with the largest area of desertified land in the world," Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration, was quoted as saying.
About 27 percent of China's total land mass, or about 2.6 million square kilometres (1.04 million square miles), are considered desertified land, while another 18 percent of the nation's land is eroded by sand, the report said.
Experts believe that 530,000 square kilometres of the nation's deserts can be returned to green land, but the process will take 300 years at the current rate of reversing desertification by 1,700 square kilometres annually, it said.
Some of the worst land erosion in the world occurs in the basin of the Yellow River, China's second largest river, with 62 percent of the area affected by water and soil erosion, the paper said in a separate report.
China Says Will Take 300 Years To Turn Back Deserts
Ben Blanchard PlanetArk 5 Jan 11;
At the current rate of progress it will take 300 years to turn back China's advancing deserts, a senior official said on Tuesday, bemoaning the low level of investment in fighting a serious environmental problem.
Over a quarter of China's land area is covered by desert, or land which is turning into desert in which soil loses its fertility, putting crops and water supplies at risk for the world's second-largest economy.
"The area of land being desertified is enormous, and prevention work most hard," Liu Tuo, head of China's anti-desertification efforts, told a news conference.
"There is about 1.73 million square km of desertified land in China, and about 530,000 square km of that can be treated. At our present rate of treating 1,717 square km a year, I've just calculated we'll need 300 years," he added.
"Investment is seriously insufficient, with a huge gap existing for our needs at present," Liu said.
In some parts of China, which he did not name, regional governments were not taking the problem seriously enough.
"They say it is important, but their actions show that's not the case," Liu said.
Climate change could exacerbate China's desertification problem, he added.
"Climate change could cause extreme weather, such as drought, which will have a very serious impact upon desertification."
Still, Zhu Lieke, deputy head of the State Forestry Administration, claimed a measure of success for managing to reduce overall the area of desertified land in the past five years, though by less than half a percentage point.
"Generally speaking we have bought the situation under initial control," Zhu said.
