10 Year Efforts in Soil Erosion Achieved Great SuccessA massive 10 year drive to tackle China's soil erosion problem has helped save 380,000 square kilometres from potential devastation.The massive swathe of land at risk from the potentially devastating problem has been safeguarded thanks to effective implementation of the Soil and Water Conservation Law over the past decade, it was claimed Thursday. The improved lands are almost equivalent to the area of Southwest China's Yunnan Province. In the last 10 years, China has launched an unprecedentederosion-control programme involving a massive 21.9 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion) investment aimed at controlling land degradation, Chen Lei, vice-minister of water resources said Thursday at a national conference. Chen attributed the major success to the effective enforcement of the law. Water and soil loss has become the major environmental issue plaguing 38 per cent of China's total territory. The problem has resulted in degradation ofarable land resources, Chen said. China is one of the worst-effected countries in the world. Soil erosion causes the loss of 5 billion tons of fertile soil each year and damages an estimated 70,000 hectares of cultivated land throughout the country. To prevent the problem from worsening, the central government has, since 1991, listed erosion-control as one of the State's top priorities in a bid to turn more barren land into green areas. Reviewing the decade-long enforcement of the law, Chen said that since 1998, the area of land improved by the measures amounted to some 50,000 square kilometres per year.That figure compares to between 20,000 and 30,000 square kilometres of such land improved annual the year before. While giving top priorityto revegetation in western China -- which is one of the most ecologically fragile areas of the country -- the anti-erosion scheme is also targeting some mideast areas where water and soil erosion has exacerbated against a backdrop of rapid economic growth and urbanization. Nearly 70,000 square kilometres of eroded land have been improved along the Yangtze River, including more than 1.13 million hectares of erosion-prone slope lands, Chen said.So far, he said, 600,000 hectares of such lands have been turned into woodland or grasslands. As a result, the vegetation rate has been increased from 26 per cent a decade ago to the present 46 per cent. Silt washed into the Yellow River, known as the world's muddiest because of its massive sediments on the riverbed, have also reduced by 300 million tons each year with 105,800 square kilometres of eroded land under basic control. |
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