The 63-year-old Tibetan's family has for generations moved from pasture to pasture with their animals. He still has a substantial herd of more than 300 cattle and sheep which he grazes in Maqu County of the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China's Gansu Province.

Degenerating grassland in the region over the past decades has made it increasingly hard for his six-member family to make a living like their ancestors.

Gannan Prefecture used to flow with grasses, spring flowers and vegetation and remains an important watershed of the Yellow River, the country's second longest river.

Overgrazing and too-fast economic development over the past five decades has sharply reduced the area's vegetation. Green coverage in the valley region has dropped by 50 percent over the past 50 years.

Jia has had just about enough of the tenuous way of life and is seriously thinking of the government's offer to move to a permanent settlement as many other herders have. "I admire my friend Zhuo Majia's present life," he said.

Last year, Zhuo Majia's family resettled in a new village in Luqu County, which was built by the local government especially for the herders.

Zhou's five-member family moved into a new house for which it paid less than half the actual cost of construction. The Zhuos paid 30,000 yuan (3,750 U.S. dollars) while the government paid the remainder of 62,000 yuan (7,750 dollars) for the new home. The family now has clean tap water and cable TV and Zhuo is planning to build a livestock shed for his remaining heads of cattle.

To improve living standards of people in the environmentally difficult areas is a major theme of the 11th Five-Year Guidelines for the National Economic and Social Development (2006-2010). The program's draft is expected to be approved by the Fourth Plenary Session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC).

Under the proposed program, China calls for different economic growth modes for regions based on environmental characteristics rather than on a unitary mode.

According to the draft, China will restrict or forbid exploitation and development in the areas which are listed as environmentally sensitive areas. Development in the areas that are susceptible to wind and sand erosion and wildlife nature reserves will also be restricted or banned.

Jai and Zhou's lands in Gannan Prefecture are listed as a wetland and an environmental protected area in the draft five-year plan. The local government has already taken the lead and is helping thousands of nomadic herdsmen to settle permanently. They hope this will help restore the former pasture lands and stop the desert from further encroaching.

"This is the first time for China to propose different modes of development for different regions in a five-year development program," said Chen Jianhua, secretary of the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

"This is a new concept that is extremely significant, " he said, adding that China's regional development policy used to be formulated based on administrative orders."

He explained that the former method did not take into account a region's unique environmental characteristics or development potential .

"This will help fairly allocate public resources and solve specific problems that are unique to a particular region," he said.

Over the past few decades, various localities pursued economic development with single model with little consideration of the deteriorating environment and the misuse of resources.

According to the estimation of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), China's economic losses due to its deteriorating environment account for 8 percent of the nation's GDP each year.

The country loses the equivalent of 667,000 hectares of arable land annually, said the UNEP. Desert lands now cover 30 percent of the country's land area, threatening the livelihood of nearly 400 million people. China has also suffered frequent river pollution accidents, sand storms and other environmental disasters in the past few years.

Li Shantong, a member of the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference  (CPPCC), said the former regional division policy is one reason for the broadening gap between the economically developed regions and China's western environmentally sensitive areas.

"It was hard to take advantage of what the different regions have to offer due to a lack of cooperation among them," said Li, also a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council.

China's new five-year plan requires restricting or banning industries which are harmful to the environment in the protected areas.

Meanwhile, industrialization and urbanization of these areas will be "seriously" restricted, said Li.

Zhu Zhixin, vice-minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), noted that narrowing the gap between environmentally sensitive areas and developed regions doesn't necessarily mean the former's per capita GDP should be brought up to the latter's level. One of the major tasks is to ensure all residents enjoy equal basic public services.

The new goals for regional development have reduced emphasis on GDP, said Chen Jianhua, NPC deputy from Gannan Prefecture.

He said one of his major tasks in the coming five years is to remove 6,800 households of herdsmen out of the grassland before 2010, in addition to development of public service facilities and make efforts to better protect and improve the local environment.

(Xinhua News Agency March 10, 2006)