China will bring 13 million hectares of desertified land under control in the next five years to make the area under control outnumber that of the damaged, said Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration at a national meeting on desertification control recently held in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Based on different natural and climate characteristics of desertification, China will adopt differentiated policies on desertification control.

For desert margin and desertified oases, vigorous efforts will be made to grow windbreaks and a number of protection zones will be singled out. Proper use of water will be advocated to protect vegetation in the existing natural deserts and oases.

For semi-arid desertified area, forestation and grass-planting, small-valley control and ecological migration will be carried out on the basis of existing vegetation being protected; resources in the deserts will be properly developed.

For the deserts in high-altitude frigid Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, planting in closed areas will be the main way of protecting the natural ecological system; irrational development will be prohibited to promote the recovery of the vegetation.

For the semi-humid plains along the Yellow River, Huaihe River and Haihe River and the humid deserts in south China, desertification control and development of resources will be combined through planting shelterbelts along with fast-growing, high-yielding timber woods and economic forests.

By People's Daily Online