Read at : Google Alert – desertification
http://english.cri.cn/7146/2010/08/18/2041s589215.htm
Anchor: As more and more Chinese people continue to move west in the search for opportunities, one thing is growing scarce: land to live on. Now developers are venturing into the desert, pushing back the sand and setting up “green belts”.
China Desertification
2010-08-18 13:15:33
CRIENGLISH.com
Web Editor: Bao Congying
Many people do not think of China as a desert nation, but the country’s deserts cover over 2.64 million square kilometers, or about 27 percent of the country.
Ningxia and Gansu provinces are considered the dust bowls of China, as much of the land is sandy, dusty or is made of barren mountains.
Wang Youde grew up not far from the sand dunes in Northwestern China’s Ningxia Province.
By the time he was a young man, all 10,000 of his neighbors had slowly moved away from his village, driven away by the need to find green vegetation.
Wang Youde is now head of the Forestry Center of Lingwu City. He has devoted the last 21 years of his life to holding back the sand.
His crew has achieved some significant success here after years of labor. The anti-desert crews he directs are irrigating the land and setting up “green belts” to try to act as buffer zones for the desert. However, Wang says naturally they did the easier parts first.
“Especially since those desert areas which had comparatively decent conditions have already been controlled. What we need to deal with now are the much more difficult areas – the higher density desert areas.”
He says in order to continue keeping this region livable they will need even more investment and labor.
Officials say the effort has reduced the severity of regular spring dust storms and, although dust storms did blanket cities in the desert provinces, Beijing was spared major storms this year.
There is increasing awareness that buffer zones need to exist between people and the desert – and that exploiting them can have bigger consequences.
The World Meteorological Organization has said the leading cause of global warming is human activity – especially CO2 emissions – like from the overuse of oil and coal.
But on a more local level what is impacting people in this area is that communities push into the marginal land that used to serve as a buffer between them and the deserts.
Qu Jianjun, Research Professor, at the Cold and Arid regions Environmental Research Institute observes that this is where the desert fights back.
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