In recent years, forestation area in China has increased rapidly. China has made great achievement in solving land desertification problem. The desertification land area now grows by 1,283 square kilometers every year, which is a sharp decrease from the 3,436 square kilometers every year in previous time, the National Forestry Bureau said on Wednesday.

China has made a historical breakthrough in turning desertification land into forest land. Over the past five years, China has created 28.85 million hectares of forest land, increasing by 20 percent from the previous five years and reaching a historical high point. Great changes have occurred in the western region where large areas of desertified land have been covered by trees and grass.

At the same time, many man-made forests have appeared in China. China now has 800 million mu of man-made forests, the most in the world. While forest land has shrunk in the world, China has made great contributions to raising the forest land area in the world and averting the global warming trend.

China has planted trees and grass in the key areas and in places where the ecological environment is fragile. As a result, the ecological environment in these places has become better.

In the Loess Plateau in northwest China, the traditional farming mode of creating farmland by destroying forests has been abandoned. Nowadays, local people have converted many of their farmlands into forests. They have built more shelter forests. These shelter forests have played a positive role in preventing soil erosion and land desertification. During the Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2000-2005), about 35 million mu of farmland in the Loess Plateau which had serious soil erosion and desertification problems have been changed to forest land or pasture. In addition, 100 million mu of wasteland in the Loess Plateau have been planted with trees.

In Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, where the ecological environment is fragile, people have grown trees in mountains and much of the farmland has been reclaimed to forest land or pasture. In addition, local people no longer graze their sheep on mountain slopes. In the Yangtze River and Yellow River regions, the sediments in the rivers have greatly reduced in recent years. In the past, about 533 million tons of sand were washed into the sea by the Yangtze River at its estuary every year. Now the figure has been reduced to 210 million tons. Every year in the past, about 1.6 billion tons of soil were carried away by the Yellow River on its way to the sea and now, the figure has been reduced to 1.3 billion tons.

In places around Beijing city, the area of land covered by trees has increased by 30 percent. The desertification land area now grows by 1,283 square kilometers a year, which is a sharp decrease from the 3,436 square kilometers a year in previous time.

(Chinanews.cn November 9, 2007)