Alarming rate of soil erosion puts grain security, ecosystem at risk
The Ministry of Water Resources and two central government think-tanks have sounded the alarm over the country's worsening soil erosion, saying the problem could threaten efforts at grain self-reliance and endanger the ecosystem.
The joint report - made public last week by the ministry, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering - found that 37.1 per cent of the country's land, or about 3.57 million sq km, was exposed to erosion, according to the online version of Caijing, a mainland business magazine.
The report, based on an extensive three-year study, found that China had lost more than 33,000 sq km of arable land in the past half century due to soil erosion.
In the northeast provinces of Heilongjiang , Liaoning and Jilin - three of the mainland's major grain production bases - more than 9,300 sq km of fertile land will disappear in the next 50 years because of erosion, cutting the grain yield in the region by 40 per cent.
The grim assessment comes as Beijing scrambles to maintain 1.2 million sq km of arable land, a key threshold that authorities believe will guarantee grain self-sufficiency to feed China's 1.3 billion people.
Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward and the tumultuous Cultural Revolution left a trail of destruction across the nation's landscape, as trees were felled and large swathes of vegetation were destroyed to dig up coke to fuel backyard steel-making plants.
The rapid economic development during the past 30 years has further strained the country's ecosystem, with rising silt levels in rivers exacerbating floods and grasslands turning into deserts.
The report said 9.2 billion tonnes of silt built up in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the longest river in the country, between 1950 and 1999, raising the riverbed by up to 4 metres.
Tang Yuan , a department director in the State Council's Development and Research Centre, said that desertification alone inflicted 54 billion yuan (HK$61.4 billion) in losses each year and affected nearly 400 million people.
Areas most exposed to erosion are where 76 per cent of the impoverished counties are and where 74 per cent of the country's poor people live.
Central and regional government spending to fight against soil erosion accounted for 7 per cent to 8 per cent of the overall budget from 1950 to 2005, leaving individuals to cover the rest of the required funding.
In 2004, only 1.63 billion yuan was spent on water and soil conservation, accounting for only 0.012 per cent of the gross domestic product for that year.
The report said 646 mainland counties needed urgent action for soil erosion, but only 200 had the resources to do so.
It called for a revision of the country's Water and Soil Conservation Law to strengthen leadership and co-ordination.
Cost of wealth
Rapid economic development is blamed for straining the country's ecosystems
Desertification alone has inflicted annual losses of, in HK dollars,: $61.4b
