Desert Prevention and Transformation Project
2 min readXinjiang’s total desert area is 420,000 square kilometers, accounting for 58.9% of China’s total desert area. Among the ten large deserts of more than 10,000 square kilometers in China, three are in Xinjiang, ie. the Taklamakan Desert, China’s largest and the world’s second largest desert with an area of 337,600 square kilometers, accounting for 47.3% of China’s total desert area, the Gurbantunggut Desert, China’s second largest desert with anarea of 48,800 square kilometers and the Kumtag Desert, China’s ninth largest desert with an area of 22,800 square kilometers.
Xinjiang’s ecological environment is fragile, the area of land desertification is expanding at the speed of 85 square kilometers per year, grassland degradation and desertification is serious, the area of sandy land accounts for more than 45%, and the ecological basis supporting economic and social development is fragile. Since the state implemented the large-scale development strategy for the western region, Xinjiang has launched and implemented projects of stopping grazing to let grasslands recover, conserving water and soil and comprehensively improving small river basins and buildingcomprehensive desert prevention and transformation demonstration areas as well as other key forestry projects, promulgated Measures of the Autonomous Region for Implementing the Law on Desert Prevention and Transformation and Plan of the Autonomous Region on Desert Prevention and Transformation, and effectively solved the problem of land desertification through making great efforts to implement comprehensive control measures such as forest and grass planting.
In 1978, Xinjiang began to implement the Three-North Shelter Forest Program. By 2011,12 areas, prefectures and cities and 82 counties (cities) in the autonomous region had basically established forest zones for farmland, and 95% of the autonomous region’s farmland of more than 70 million mu had been protected by forest zones. Since the project of stopping grazing to let Xinjiang’s natural grasslands recover was launched in 2003,natural grasslands of 115 million mu have been protected and naturally recovered through fencing, grazing suspension, rotation grazing, grazing prohibition, etc.
Between 2000 and 2010, the autonomous region completed the land desertification control task for 103 million mu, the annual expansion of the area of land desertificationdropped from 384square kilometers at the end of the 201h century to less than 100 squarekilometers, and the situation of deserts’ expansion and people’s retreat was preliminarily checked. The autonomous region’s oasis area expanded from 13,000 square kilometers in early 1950s to more than 70,000 square kilometers at present, and expanses of new oases were built successively. While desert prevention and transformation was carried out toensure ecological improvement, great efforts were made to develop desert industries an increase farmers’ income. The autonomous region’s main sand industry of medicinal herb planting and deep processing in desert areas is rising, the planted area is 1.06 million mu, and the annual output value is nearly 2 billion yuan.Desert prevention and transformation improved the region’s ecological environment, consolidated the state’s western ecological security barrier, and laid a solid foundation for smooth implementation of Xinjiang’s leapfrog development strategy.
