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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, March 30, 2002

Sandstorm Becomes Global Issue: Experts

Sandstorms have become a global issue and preventing them calls for international cooperation, experts said in Beijing Friday, at the international seminar on environmental protection and aid-the-poor in northeast Asian countries.


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Sandstorms have become a global issue and preventing them calls for international cooperation, experts said in Beijing Friday, at the international seminar on environmental protection and aid-the-poor in northeast Asian countries.

Sun Bingyan, an expert with the State Environmental Protection Administration, said that sandstorms are caused by drought, land desertification, irrational utilization of forested land and overgrazing.

Large areas of land in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, northwest China's Gansu Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region are plagued by desertification and become sources of sandstorms in recent years, according to Sun.

Yondon-Oidov Gerelchuluun, secretary-general of the North East Asia Association of Mongolia, expressed his concern over the problem of the increasing number of sandstorms in his country, where stockbreeding is one of the pillar industries.

"Mongolia wishes to strengthen cooperation with China and otherneighboring countries in dealing with this global issue," said Gerelchuluun.

An aid program has been jointly launched by the United Nations Development Program, the Chinese government and the Asian Development Bank to curb land desertification in northeast Asian countries, said Yoshinobu Yonekawa, program coordinator of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations.

Statistics show that northeast Asian countries have had serioussandstorms over the past 50 years. Annual occurrences of sandstorms have increased from eight in the 1960s to 20 in the past decade. These sandstorms are causing increasing damage and affect a large geographical region.

Experts say that China, one of the countries most seriously affected by sandstorms, has adopted a series of measures to deal with the problem. Its Law on Sandstorm Prevention and Treatment became effective on January 1, 2002.


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