Beijing's sandy neighbor turning greener

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, December 04, 2003

Beijing's sandy neighbor turning greener

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Ecosystem recovery effort in north China's Inner Mongolia, notoriously known as the source of sandstorms affecting the national capital, is producing effects in desertification control, Yang Jing, acting chairman of the autonomous region said.

Ecological deterioration was constrained in China's north and northwest thanks to the ecological attention paid to the country's Western Development program, which was launched in 1999 and vowed to help the underdeveloped far west catch-up with the coastal areas in the east economically, Yang noted.

As a result of land reclamation effort since the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), more than 60 percent of the 1.18-million-sq-km territory of Inner Mongolia, which extends from the country's east to the northwest, became desertified.

The problem of desertification in Inner Mongolia and other provinces and autonomous regions in the north and northwest has aroused great governmental and social attention since Beijing and other eastern cities were repeatedly hit by sandstorms since the end of 1990s.

The southeastern part of Inner Mongolia is only 400 kilometers from Beijing.

As a target region of the country's Western Development program, the autonomous region began to arouse its farmers to concede farmlands for afforestation after the program was launched.

Grazing was also banned in some areas to protect grasslands.

In addition to investment in the protection of natural forests and soil conservancy, the region is also striving to build up a "Great Green Wall," a forest belt to rein in deserts from intruding Beijing and Tianjin, a port municipality in north China.

In 1997, 13.81 percent of the autonomous region's land was covered by woods or forests, but the figure has now risen to 14.82 percent.

A recent telemetric survey showed that the desertified area in Horqin, a major desert land, dropped from 5.06 million hectares in the 1950s to the current 4.2 million hectares.

The desertified area in Tongliao city dropped from 2.34 million hectares in 1994 to 2.14 million by now, while the city of Chifeng, a sand-control pace setter, experienced a 110,000-hectare drop of desertified area from 2.03 million hectares a decade ago.

Yang said the desertification control project not only saw an improvement of local ecology, but help boost the income of farmersand herders by the promotion of afforestation technology.

As tree breeds with high economic returns are introduced into desertified areas, Yang said, farmers got increased incomes and so were motivated in the desertification control project.

Also, over 1.44 million farming households received governmental subsidies to offset their loss of giving up their farmlands. Each family can get 550 kg of grain and 200 yuan of cash (24 US dollars) from the government each year, according to Yang.

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