China held its second meeting in Zhangjiakou, Hebei, to control the sources of windstorms that hit Beijing and Tianjin, on August 20 through 21. The meeting was sponsored by the State Planning Commission with the participation of the representatives from the ministries of finance, agriculture, water conservancy, territorial resources, the administrations of environmental protection and forestry and Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Beijing and Tianjin.

They inspected dust storm control projects in Zhangbei and Kangbao counties, exchanged experiences and worked out future plans. Zuo Guangyao, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, was present at the meeting and gave an important speech.

In the last few years, dust storms hit northern China frequently and hit directly Beijing and Tianjin. The Chinese government has made an important decision to control the sources of dust storms. Since the inception of the control scheme in 2000, 1.52 million hectares of land have been improved in the five provinces or autonomous region. Of the figure, 650,000 hectares of land have been forested, 340,000 hectares of hilly cropland have been returned to forests and 400,000 hectares of land to grasslands. 119,000 hectares of land in small river valleys have been improved and there are 10805 water and irrigation projects.

Over the last two years, thanks to publicity work and state preferential policies, the local economic structure has been strategically readjusted and sand storm control project construction and management mechanisms have been constantly improved. The control efforts are organically integrated into local economy. Local farmers initiative is brought into full play and eco-economy is well integrated with social effects.

The localities, based on their actual conditions, have worked out feasible and practical ways to control sand storms. In Hebei province, farmers are given to understand that ecological building itself lays a solid foundation for their own survival and getting better off. The local government practices a policy that allows those who engage in control projects in a contractual, cooperative, share-holding manner to benefit.

The meeting urged that the localities sum up their experience, quicken their engineering projects and establish or improve project rules and mass supervision so as to attain the control target on an early date.

In his speech, Zuo Guangyao said that the control project is of major importance for the improvement of the eco-environment in Beijing and Tianjin. Thanks to the national environmental education and check and concerted efforts of provinces, autonomous regions and central government ministries, SEPA has made successes in forbidding the collection of flagelliform nostoc and excavation of licorice root and Chinese ephedra and other sand fixing plants and large-scale mass grassland-destroying excavations have been curtailed.

He said that to prevent new human harassments and desertification of land is an urgent task to upgrade the eco-environmental quality of the dry and semi-dry areas. He underscored the importance of implementing State Council relevant decisions and said that dry and semi-dry areas where wild herbal plants and edible plants are grown will be forbidden to human exploitation and relevant scientific research will be carried out.

(www.cenews.com.cn September 2, 2002)