China Faces Desertification

In Asia, Drought & Fires, News Headlines

Huge population pressures, scarce rainfall and climate change have made China the world’s biggest victim of desertification, a problem that could take 300 years to reverse, state media said Wednesday.

Overgrazing, excessive land reclamation and inappropriate water use also make it especially difficult to halt deserts from encroaching on large areas of land in the nation’s arid north and west, the China Daily reported.

“China is still a country with the largest area of desertified land in the world,” Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration, was quoted as saying.

About 27 percent of China’s total land mass, or about 2.6 million square kilometres (1.04 million square miles), are considered desertified land, while another 18 percent of the nation’s land is eroded by sand, the report said.

Experts believe that 530,000 square kilometres of the nation’s deserts can be returned to green land, but the process will take 300 years at the current rate of reversing desertification by 1,700 square kilometres annually, it said.

Some of the worst land erosion in the world occurs in the basin of the Yellow River, China’s second largest river, with 62 percent of the area affected by water and soil erosion, the paper said in a separate report.

You may also read!

Millions In China Face Arsenic Poisoning

Nearly 20 million people in China live in areas at high risk of arsenic contamination in their water supplies,

Read More...

Biblical Wormwood Arrives In India

Tubewells in seven wards of Chittagong City Corporation are pumping water with arsenic contamination 10 times higher than the

Read More...

34 Meter Tsunami Could Hit Japan

TOKYO (AP)—Much of Japan's Pacific coast could be inundated by a tsunami more than 34 meters (112 feet) high

Read More...

Leave a reply:

Your email address will not be published.

Mobile Sliding Menu