Introduction to Deserts and Desertified Regions in China - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 4

1.1.2 Climate and Rainfall

Climate may be divided into humid, sub-humid, semi-arid and arid belts. Average
rainfall is 650 mm. The distribution is not evenly distributed across regions. The
coastal areas, such as Guangdong and Fujian receive rainfall of more than 1,000 mm.
In the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze rainfall River varies from 800 to
1,600 mm and averages 100 mm in the inland areas such as Xinjiang, Inner
Mongolia and north west of Tibet. Areas lying on the southeast edge of Taklamakan
Desert receive about 20 mm/year.

1.1.3 Natural Resources

China is endowed with more than 148 kinds of minerals. The mines that rank first in
the world include wolfram, antimony, zinc, titanium, lanthanum, etc. Second rank
are coal, tin, molybdenum, mercury, phosphorus etc. It has plentiful sea resources
including 2,000 species of marine fish. Its fishery of coastal sea takes 1/4 of the
world's catch and it is the first in the world overall, from fishing outside its territorial
waters. Fauna and flora in China is plentiful including over 30,000 kinds of wild
plants, 1,100 kinds of birds and more than 400 types of animals.

2 Some Terminology and Definitions

The word “desertification” was first coined by a French Scholar, A. Aubreville in
1949. In total, over 100 concepts of desertification have been defined since that
time. At first, the general perception of desertification was that of expanding deserts,
mainly in the Sahel region, and this is still the common public understanding
of the term. Within the scientific community it is only since the 1970s that the
emphasis of the term has shifted to mean “the degradation of otherwise non-desertic
regions from within, rather than on an invasion from outside” (Verstraete 1986 ). The
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in 1994 defined
“desertification” more clearly based on its formation and accelerating processes and
distribution scope.

Desertification means land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid
areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variation and human
activities . Desert regions where the P/ETP 0.05 are excluded. Strict adherence to

this definition would avoid a lot of confusion (Dahlberg 1994 ; Reynolds et al. 2011 )
and put the problem of desertification in a much clearer perspective. The confusion
between controlling the desert (a not unreasonable aim) and desertification control
has hindered efforts in a number of countries. A consequence of misunderstanding
about desertification, fuelled by the belief that desert spreading is the primary
problem, is the planting of sand dunes. Planting, though costly, is technically and

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