China has kicked off an ambitious project to plant a green belt between the country's third and fourth largest deserts to keep them from converging, said a forestry official in the northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

"It's the first time in China that a green belt is being planted between two deserts. The project is expected to take five years to plant a 202-kilometer long and 5 to 15-km wide stripe of vegetation between Badain Jaran Desert and Tengger Desert," Wang Xiaodong, a forestry official in Araxan League, said yesterday.

Fifty years ago, a 400,000 hectare bush forest stood between the deserts. Since then the bush area has been reduced by half.

"The reduction of the natural barrier has allowed sand dunes from Badain Jaran Desert to edge southwards," Wang said.

Human activity between the two deserts is partly to blame for the land's degradation, he said.

"There are 3,000 people living in the area. They have cut down many of the trees for burning or making way for pasture which has harmed the land," he said.

He said as part of the project, about 1,000 local residents would be relocated out of the area to enable the rehabilitation of the fragile ecology.