China's desertification and sandification areas saw shrinkage for the first time since 1949, but control work remains tough, said the State Forestry Administration (SFA) Tuesday.

A SFA-sponsored nationwide monitoring showed that the desertified areas were 2.6362 million square kilometers by the end of 2004, taking up 27.46 percent of the country's land area, said SFA Deputy Director Zhu Lieke at a press conference held in Beijing.

He said that the net decrease of desertified areas between 1999 and 2004 totaled 37,924 square kilometers, with annual reduction of 7,585 square kilometers.

The sandy land in the country reduced 6,414 square kilometers from 1999 to 1.7397 million square kilometers, or 18.12 percent of the country's territory. The sandy area reduced 1,283 square kilometers annually during the past five years.

The shrinkage showed that the expansion trend of desertification and sandification that started at the end of the 1990s in China has been "primarily brought under control," said Zhu.

China conducted two monitoring surveys on desertification and sandification in 1994 and 1999, respectively. And the latest monitoring was launched in November 2003 and completed in April 2004.

"The work of desertification and sandification control, however, remains tough," Zhu said.

He warned that human activities that might lead to expansion of desertified and sandy areas still exist, and unfavorable climate changes may also worsen the trend of desertification and sandification.

More than 500,000 square kilometers out of the country's 1.74 million square kilometers of sandy areas "can be controlled but still lying untouched," Zhu said.

Meanwhile, the official said, about 320,000 square kilometers of land is exposed to the threat of sandification given irrational utilization continues.

It will take decades for the country to improve the ecological conditions in these sandificated areas, Zhu said.

He said that desertification and sandification caused a direct economic loss of 54 billion yuan (US$6.5 billion) a year, and affected the life of about 400 million people. 

It is necessary for China to curb sandification and desertification by way of improving legislation and severely punishing violators of ecology protection, Zhu said.

(Xinhua News Agency June 14, 2005)