Over the past three years, the Sino-UNDP project on curbing and preventing desertification has made remarkable progress in solving China's grave desertification problem by combining scientific R&D with popularization and poverty relief.
With an aid budget of US$11 million, the UNDP Anti-Desertification Convention is a United Nation's development project aimed at reclaiming 26,220 square meters of desert in China.
According to Long Jun, project director, the key point is to achieve the optimum of scientific R&D, product application and economic returns. With this principle, several trial bases were established in Zhongwei County of Ningxia and Dengkou County and Ejin Horo League of Inner Mongolia.
In the past three years, 26 technology training classes were organized with over 2,000 rural residents receiving knowledge directly from technicians. About 10 applicable technologies were popularized and 85 rural families became technology demonstration units.
Researchers also set up the China Anti-Desertification Information Network to disseminate information and offer technological backup, as well as the Ejin Horo League as a pilot for county-level desertification monitoring and the establishment of an appraisal network and information system.
Lei Jiafu, head of the Afforestation Department of the state Forestry Bureau, said the project had made multi-faced achievements and would exert a profound impact on both China's anti-desertification drive and western regional development.
(CIIC by Gao Kun 01/11/2001)
