| |
 |
Drowning in sand
|
DUST storms, dark sky and waterless desolation. For most people, these images conjure up the trackless, timeless Sahara desert in Africa. A foreign photo journalist named Steven Bryan once described his encounter with a sandstorm in the Sahara this way: "Sand whirled around me, stinging my face and eyes. The faster it blew, the more encrusted it became in my nostrils and throat. I felt sure I would die by drowning."
Shenzhen businessman Li Zhijian had the same experience of drowning in a sandstorm, but he was not in far-off Africa but in Beijing, which was struck by its fifth sandstorm of the year on March 21. The weather was fine in the morning but in the afternoon, a sandstorm shrouded the capital in darkness for hours.
"It started around three o'clock in the afternoon when I was just about to leave the hotel for an appointment in Zhongguancun in the west of the capital. I could smell the sand and dust in my hotel room. When I got down to the lobby, I heard people talking about a sandstorm. I became curious and excited. The first sandstorm I experienced in Beijing was back in 1988 and I had forgotten how terrible it can be."
The adventurous Li stepped out of the hotel and plunged into an eerie, frightening world. "Wow!" he exclaims now. "I couldn't even stand! The horizon was gone! The visibility was less than a few hundred metres!" The sand and dust turned everything yellowish gray and vague. The sand-laden winds were sweeping through the streets. "The street, which had been crowded a moment earlier, seemed to be deserted. Those few who were braving the sandstorm were covering their noses and mouths with scarves or clothes. Soon I got sand in my eyes." Li rushed back to the hotel and had to cancel his appointment.
Beijing's hot weather combined with scant rainfall to make the land unusually dry, and therefore able to produce large amounts of dust, said Li Tingfu, an expert from the Beijing Meteorological Observatory. The clouds of sand on that day were blown with winds of force 5 to 6.
Li Zhijian said he used to dream about buying an apartment in Beijing to realize his thwarted ambition of becoming a resident of the capital years ago, an ambition shared by many of the country's young people from provinces. "The dream has been blown away by the sandstorm," Li said.
Worsening disaster
The sandstorm which crushed Li's dream affected most of North China. According to the Central Meteorological Observatory, regions including Beijing and Tianjin, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, East China's Shandong Province and Central China's Henan Province all experienced sandstorms or drifting sand on that day.
Heavy sandstorms also hit central parts of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and northern parts of Hebei Province. Even Nanjing, Shanghai and Hangzhou in East China couldn't escape the drifting sand. Chen Jianjiang with the Nanjing Environmental Monitoring Station said the extremely bad air quality in the city was caused by the sandstorm in the north.
China has one of the most serious desert expansion problems in the world. More than 50,000 villages and hundreds of cities are plagued by sand, and tens of thousands of farmers and herdsmen have lost their homes because of spreading desert, said Qu Geping, chairman of the NPC Environment and Resources Protection Committee.
The country has lost some 100,000 square kilometres of land to desert conditions since the 1950s. Each year from 1985 to 1995, about 2,460 square kilometres of land turned into desert, Qu said.
Thirteen sandstorms hit a vast swathe of Chinese territory last spring, from northern regions to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, highlighting the nationwide scale of the problem. The sandstorms will become more frequent at shorter intervals and pick up strength if no immediate action is taken, Qu quoted environmental experts as saying.
Sources of sandstorms
Experts have warned that these "natural disasters" are not entirely natural.
The State Bureau of Environmental Protection and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have recently carried out the country's first scientific investigation of the sandstorm phenomena. Experts found that human destruction of the natural environment, including deforestation and the spread of deserts, are the major causes.
Qu Geping attributed desertification to careless land reclamation, over-grazing by cattle and sheep, excessive logging, intemperate digging for traditional Chinese medicinal materials and overexploitation of water resources.
Scientists with the China Meteorological Bureau believe the sandstorms which hit Beijing and most of North China are from six major sources in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the north of Hebei Province and the world's largest loess plateau located to the south of Inner Mongolia region.
However, drifting dust from the countless construction sites within Beijing and degraded and arid strips of land with loosely-packed soil surrounding Beijing also contribute to the sandstorms.
Wang Tao, a scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an expert of the desertification in North China, said that the expansion of desertification has made sandstorms, an important sign of desertification, more frequent and destructive. North China experienced five sandstorms in the 1950s, but more than 20 during the 1990s. The desertification area was expanding by 2,460 sqkm a year in the 1990s.
Chen Qingtai, vice-director of the Research Centre for Economic, Technological and Social Development under the State Council once warned:"Nobody can argue with the fact that Beijing is not far from becoming part of the desert."
As a matter of fact, the nearest desert area is only 80 kilometres away from the capital: in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province.
Prevention efforts
Research into the prevention of sandstorms and treatment of loess has been listed as one of the two top priorities for the State Bureau of Environmental Protection in the coming years. According to Yang Weixi, China's top scientist on desertification process and prevention, the Central Government has focused its efforts in this regard on the region around Beijing. "The most important thing should be starting the desertification treatment in the wild west of China to stop the sandstorms' threat to the country's capital," Yang said.
Several Chinese experts noted that the sandstorms which battered northern China earlier this year can be prevented and effectively checked, citing the example of the Huaihe River valley.
Due to special geological conditions, the Huaihe River valley in central and eastern China had many sandstorms in the 1950s and 1960s. It was so bad that one particularly vicious sandstorm buried two villages in Henan Province in the 1940s.
Thanks to relentless efforts in afforestation, the region has almost eliminated sandstorms, the experts said.
Meanwhile, fruit trees, like grape and apple, that were planted brought local farmers ample income while at the same time anchoring down the soil.
The country's top legislators are also considering taking measures to combat the rampant spread of desert conditions in the country.
Lawmakers made a preliminary deliberation on a draft law on preventing desert encroachment and treatment during the 20th session of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.
Warning system
An early warning system for sandstorms was put into operation in the country on March 1, and related information was made available via television and the Internet. The new forecast service was made possible with the help of a nationwide monitoring and forecast system.
With the use of satellites, radar, sounding balloons and other meteorological devices, the system can trace the development of sandstorms and provide details of sandstorms such as where they are expected to hit.
(Background)Desertification
ONE quarter of the earth's land is threatened by desertification, according to estimates by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The livelihoods of over one billion people in more than 100 countries are also jeopardized by desertification, as farming and grazing land becomes less productive.
Desertification does not mean that deserts are steadily advancing or taking over neighbouring land. As defined by the United Nations Convention, desertification is a process of "land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities". Patches of degraded land may develop hundreds of kilometres from the nearest desert. But these patches can expand and join together, creating desert-like conditions. Desertification contributes to other environmental crises, such as the loss of biodiversity and global warming.
Drought often triggers desertification, but human activities are usually the most significant causes. Over-cultivation exhausts the soil. Overgrazing removes vegetation that prevents soil erosion. Trees that bind the soil together are cut for lumber or firewood for heating and cooking. Poorly drained irrigation turns crop-land salty, decertifying 500,000 hectares annually, about the same amount of soil that is newly irrigated each year.
Captions
1 A Chinese woman covers her face during a dust storm in Beijing on March 21, 2001. The dust storm made the sky "yellow" as it struck the Chinese capital that afternoon. Extensive deforestation and desertification in northern China have fuelled the dust storms. Nearly one million tonnes of sand from the Gobi Desert blows into Beijing each year.
2 Farmers unload saplings during a massive afforestation project on the outskirts of Beijing, on March 22, 2001. The authorities have been alerted to the deteriorating environment in the region as more frequent sandstorms hit Beijing due to desertification in the areas surrounding the capital.
|
|
|
|
