- Joined
- Jan 3, 2009
- Messages
- 2,605
- Points
- 0
One third of China is desert
And it is spreading wider and faster.
ZHENGXIN, China — Half a century after Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” brought irrigation to the arid grasslands in this remote corner of northwest China, the government is giving up on its attempt to make a breadbasket out of what has increasingly become a stretch of scrub and sand dunes.
China has less than 7 percent of the world’s arable land with which to feed 1.3 billion people — more than 20 percent of the world’s population. By comparison, the United States has 20 percent of the world’s arable land to feed 5 percent of the population.
The relocation program is part of a larger plan to rein in China’s expanding deserts, which now cover one-third of the country and continue to grow because of overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and droughts.
The shifting sands have swallowed thousands of Chinese villages along the fabled Silk Road and sparked a sharp increase in sandstorms; dust from China clouds the skies of South Korea and has been linked to respiratory problems in California.
.
And it is spreading wider and faster.
ZHENGXIN, China — Half a century after Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” brought irrigation to the arid grasslands in this remote corner of northwest China, the government is giving up on its attempt to make a breadbasket out of what has increasingly become a stretch of scrub and sand dunes.
China has less than 7 percent of the world’s arable land with which to feed 1.3 billion people — more than 20 percent of the world’s population. By comparison, the United States has 20 percent of the world’s arable land to feed 5 percent of the population.
The relocation program is part of a larger plan to rein in China’s expanding deserts, which now cover one-third of the country and continue to grow because of overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and droughts.
The shifting sands have swallowed thousands of Chinese villages along the fabled Silk Road and sparked a sharp increase in sandstorms; dust from China clouds the skies of South Korea and has been linked to respiratory problems in California.
.
