The area of desertification, which is 2.62 million sq km, or about 27 percent of China’s land territory, has far exceeded the nation’s total of farmland. Today, desertification is expanding at a rate of 2,460 sq km every year. The State Forestry Administration is now working to draw up a desertification prevention and control program. The program will be carried out in three phases: The first phase will see the harnessing of the seriously harmful but easily controllable desertification sources by 2010; the second phase will have desertification brought under control by 2030; and the third phase will raise the nation’s forest cover to 26 percent and bring all desertification sources under effective control by the year 2050.
