Environmental conditions of Xinjiang's Hotan area are set to radically change in the next 10 years with a State Council approved investment of up to 1.325 billion yuan (US$160 million), approximately US$160 million, to make it happen. Due to be officially launched this spring, the project aims to comprehensively improve Hotan's ecology by the year 2013.

Situated at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains to the south and close to the Taklimakan Desert, lying in the Tarim Basin, to the north, Hotan is a typical arid, inland area. Due to a combination of changing geographic conditions and indiscriminate reclamation, including poorly managed deforestation and excessive grazing, the area's environmental ecology has steadily suffered. Forest vegetation has been seriously damaged with the desert area increasing rapidly in size. The effect on the local community has been to obstruct the sustainable development of its society and economy.

The project will cover the counties of Pishan, Moyu, Hotan, Lop, Yutian, Minfeng and Hotan City, the 47th Regiment of the 14th Farm Division of Xinjiang Production and Construction Crops, as well as the Pishan Farm and the Pimo Development Zone.

The premise of the ecological salvage project is to optimize the relocation of water resources for the area as well as giving top priority to dust control and reforestation. The building of a windbreak through enlarged reforestation and the putting in place of a sand fixing system, by planting arbor and shrubbery grass, will result in networks of green belt areas. These will have the effect of speeding up control of desertification and salinization of the area.

The project should be completed by 2013 when an entirely new ecology will have appeared across the damaged environment. By then, forestry vegetation will have increased its rate of coverage by 0.32 percent and the ecological protective system will have further improved, while desertification of the area will have been basically curbed with oasis ecology notably improved.

(China.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, February 14, 2003)