China vows renewed drive to curb desertification
© 2001 Reuters
June 19, 2001
BEIJING - With fast-growing desert claiming more than a quarter of China's land mass, the government vowed on Sunday to step up a decade-old drive to halt desertification.
In a commentary issued as northern China battles its worst drought in a decade, the Communist Party flagship People's Daily said it would deploy sustainable economic development policies, science and technology, and strict laws to fight desertification.
"The trend of overall deterioration despite improvements in some areas has not been checked and desertification is accelerating and expanding," the newspaper said in statement to mark U.N. World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought.
It said that 27.3 percent of China's territory was desert, a mass that was increasing each year by 2,460 square km (950 square miles), or the size of an average county.
In addition to dry weather, "irrational human activities" such as livestock overgrazing, rampant logging and excessive cutting of branches for firewood were at the root of the crisis, it said.
"Because of this, natural disasters are increasing in frequency, the threat is getting ever bigger and the losses are mounting," the newspaper said.
Desertification cost 54 billion yuan ($6.52 billion) in annual economic losses, it said.
WARNINGS
The People's Daily reprinted warnings on the environment from President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji.
Last year Zhu toured parched northern China and ordered farmers to plant trees instead of grain after the capital Beijing was belted by at least a dozen choking sandstorms. His tour highlighted a giant sand dune just 90 minutes drive from Beijing.
Beijing, which has made environmental protection the centrepiece of its bid to win the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games, plans to build a green belt around the city of 12 million.
Drought plagues large parts of northern China, as well as neighbouring Mongolia and the Korean peninsula, threatening wheat and corn crops as well as livestock.
State media said on Saturday that rainfall in recent days has helped ease dry spells in Beijing, Tianjin and the arid northern provinces of Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shandong and Liaoning.
The Tianjin Office of Artificial Weather Inducement told Reuters on Friday that shells containing rain-inducing silver iodide, were launched into the skies across northern China last week. China has been trying cloud seeding for 20 years, it said.