Massive desertification threatening India, China, Pakistan: UN
Copyright 2000 Agence France Presse
November 8, 2000
BANGKOK, Nov 8 - Widespread desertification is threatening large swaths of land in India, China and Pakistan and could have catastrophic consequences on human and animal populations, the United Nations said here Wednesday.
"The desert is encroaching on massive areas in western China, affecting areas containing 400 million people," Hama Arba Diallo, Executive Secretary to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification said.
"The desert has moved to within 100 miles of Beijing, and in the long-term this desertification will have serious effects on food scarcity and people's health and will force more people to migrate," he said.
Chinese officials earlier this year said their country was losing 2,460 square kilometres (984 square miles) of land per year to desertification.
Diallo, who was attending a conference in Bangkok on combating desertification, told AFP that Pakistan and India also are beginning to suffer the same fate as China.
"We are seeing climate changes and similar encroachments of the desert in Rajasthan and parts of Pakistan," he said.
And dust from Asian deserts is blowing into the Korean peninsula and even Japan, decreasing air quality, Diallo said.
Much of the desertification is caused by overgrazing, the hacking down of forests for timber and fuel, climate change, slash-and-burn agriculture and erosion.
UN officials were hopeful that Asian countries would be able to halt desertification but warned that they would need assistance and funding.
"China and India have made strides on this issue, but these are not countries that have all the resources of their own to address all the problems they are facing," Diallo said.
Asian states must develop alternative energy sources and cut down on logging and overcultivation in order to roll back the deserts, he said. The Asian Development Bank and other multinational organisations must provide loans to help China, India and Pakistan address the desert problem, he said.
Chinese officials earlier this year said the government had launched an emergency campaign to prevent the capital Beijing from being engulfed by the encroaching deserts of inner Mongolia.
Officials reportedly had been unnerved by the record 12 major dust storms that had hammered northern China this year, adding that the desert was moving towards Beijing at 1.8 kilometres (1.2 miles) per year.
Deserts currently make up 27 percent of China's land, mostly in the northern areas.