In the past 10 years, the programme, designed to control land degradation, has restored about 860,000 square kilometres of eroded land, according to Chen Lei, vice-minister of water resources.

The central government injected 6.62 billion yuan (US$797 million) into the drive to accelerate the programme after 1998's devastating floods along the Yangtze and the Songhua rivers, as worsening water erosion upstream of the rivers was blamed as a major cause of the deluges.

More than 8 billion yuan (US$963 million) was also raised by local authorities and people in areas plagued by floods and droughts resulting from water erosion.

More than 80 percent of state funds were invested in China's barren western region to lift 40 million locals out of poverty caused by erosion-related disasters.

To date, the massive 10-year drive has helped bring 26,000 erosion-prone small river systems into basic control, build more than 13 million hectares of terraces with stable yields for farmers, develop 43 million hectares of water and soil conservation forests, and plant 9 million hectares of woodland and grasses.

Annually, tens of thousands of erosion-control projects are capable of holding back 1.5 billion tons of silts, increasing 25 billion cubic metres of water storage for farming areas with criss-cross gullies.

Also, 300 million tons of sediment that used to be washed away into flood-prone rivers were reduced, while some 1.7 million hectares of steep slope farmland have been turned into woodland or grasslands.

More than 100,000 square kilometres of erosion-prone hillsides were closed to livestock and fuel gathering for rehabilitating the regional ecosystem and accelerating afforestation.

The massive swathe of land at risk from the potentially devastating problem has been safeguarded with the effective implementation of China's 1991 Soil and Water Conservation Law during the past decade, experts said.

However, water and soil loss has become the top environmental issue plaguing 37 percent of China's total territory. The problem has resulted in degradation of arable land resources.

China is one of the worst-effected countries in the world for soil erosion, which causes the loss of 5 billion tons of fertile soil each year and damages an estimated 70,000 hectares of cultivated land throughout the country, according to statistics.

To prevent the problem from worsening, the central government has, since 1991, listed erosion-control as one of the State's top priorities in a bid to turn more barren land into green areas.

The area of land improved by the measures amounted to some 50,000 square kilometres per year since 1998, compared to between 20,000 and 30,000 square kilometres of such land improved in 1997.

(China Daily February 19, 2002)