Fifteen kilometers away from the eastern edge of Tengger Desert,
China's fourth largest, is the Wangzhuang Village of northwestern
Gansu
Province. The tradition of felling trees as firewood left the
village threatened with desertification.
But an energy substitute plan sponsored by the Ministry of
Agriculture in 2000 gives the 582 families at Wangzhuang a new hope
to save their ancestral homeland from the threat of creeping
sands.
The plan aims to replace the firewood with such "green energy"
as marsh gas, wind power and solar energy to resume a healthy
ecological system in the rural areas of the seven northwestern
provinces and autonomous regions, for example, Ningxia,
Xinjiang
and Gansu, which suffered most from desertification, said Hao
Xianrong, an official from the ministry who is in charge of the
plan.
Experts said besides unfavorable climate, human activities such
as illegal grazing and excessive logging have also led to expansion
of desertified and sandy areas.
"The launching of the new plan shows the Chinese government
becoming more rational and sensible on desertification control,"
said Dong Zhibao, deputy director of the key lab on desert and
desertification under the Chinese
Academy of Sciences.
For the villagers of Wangzhuang, however, the energy substitute
plan has brought "visible" changes to their daily life.
"Using marsh gas can save a lot of money," said Zhao Dabao, 56,
who built a methane-generating pit in 2002.
"In the past, we used firewood and coal for cooking and warming.
Before the pit was built, however, I had to spend more than 600
yuan (US$72.3) a year to buy coal as there were few trees and
little grass around our village," said Zhao.
"At the same time, our village has become greener in recent
years because we know we need more trees and grass to protect our
village and we don't have to use firewood," said the old man.
In the past, under the belief that "man can conquer nature," the
Chinese government took some measures, like planting trees in
desert, to fight against the spreading desert. But such plans have
proved to violate the order of nature, said Dong, adding that a
recent example can be found in the Minqin County, northwestern
Gansu Province.
Lying between the two deserts of Tengger and Badain Jaran, the
future of Minqin seems gloomy. The ground water level of the county
has dropped half to one meter in the past 20 years due to the
overuse of water resources to control desertification.
"All the 9,000-hectare plantation of narrow-leaved oleaster has
withered and another 23,300-hectare rose willow forest is also on
the verge of dying," said Chen Dexing, head of the county.
In addition, although the Chinese government has poured huge
amounts of investment to curb desertification over the past
decades, the funds have not brought benefits due to the lack of a
unified plan for using the money.
"In some areas, the average investment on per hectare land is
only around 40 yuan (US$4.8), which is not even enough to dig a
pit, let alone to control desertification," said Dong.
Desertification and sandification were said to be "ugly skin
diseases" of the earth and China pays a direct economic loss of 54
billion yuan (US$6.5 billion) every year for the diseases with the
lives of about 400 million people affected, said Zhu Lieke, deputy
director of the State Forestry Administration.
To change the situation, the Chinese government has poured about
US$15 billion to improve its ecological environment since 2000.
The latest nationwide monitoring shows that the desertified
areas were 2.6362 million square kilometers and the sandy land
was1.7397 million square kilometers by the end of 2004, taking up
27.46 percent and 18.12 percent of the country's land area
respectively and both seeing a shrinkage for the first time since
1949, according to the SFA.
"The work of desertification and sandification control, however,
remains tough as more than 500,000 square kilometers out of the
country's 1.74 million square kilometers of sandy areas can be
controlled but are still lying untouched," said Zhu.
Meanwhile, the official said, about 320,000 square kilometers of
land is exposed to the threat of sandification given continuing
irrational utilization.
"It will take decades for the country to improve the ecological
conditions in these sandificated areas, but the point is we can
never wait and we should do it in a proper way," said
Zhu.?
(Xinhua News Agency June 18, 2005)