Study on Sandy Desertification in China 4. Strategy and Approach for Combating Sandy Desertification

Sandy desertification is defined as a type of land degradation mostly signed by sand-shifting activity due to inharmony man-land correlation in arid, semiarid and semi-humid regions, and it is one of the main desertification types in China. Sandy desertification control in China at present is still faced with an arduous status of !locally reversed but wholly worsened. For effectively combating land sandy desertification and ulteriorly defining the strategy and approaches of its control it is needed for us to further understand some key problems on desertification causes, development or its reversion process, and the spatial distribution characters as well as the dynamics etc; it is also needed for us to take natural and man-made factors together with their interaction as the masterstroke in research. The author has put forward in the paper that the strategies of combating sandy desertification in China are to harmonize the relation between human activity and natural resource environment of desertified region, and to establish a ecology-social-economy system that can not only control land sandy desertification but also ensure sustainable development in advantageous occasion of northwestern China being developed and in premise of taking the well-to-do society as the constructing goal. The countermeasures include adjusting landuse pattern, practicing mixed farming and giving priority to forestry and animal husbandry; increasing investment and promoting project of returning cultivated farmland to forestry and grassland; effectively mastering the population growth rate so that alleviating the pressure on environment and resources of desertified region; advancing the scientific and effective practice of sandy desertification control depended on science and technology progress; and so on.