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Belt Development Project, the Coastal Protection Shelter Belt Project, The National
Action Program to Combat Desertification, the Plain Farmland Protective Networks
project and the Green Belt Establishment Project along the Middle and Upper stream
of the Yellow River (Ci and Yang 2010 ).
The strategic objectives to combat desertification are divided into three phases.
Firstly (1996-2000) was to slow down the speed of desertification; improve the
ecosystem in some regions; increase peoples' standards of living; rehabilitate
3.177 Mha of lands affected by wind erosion etc.; secondly (2001-2010) is
to improve ecological conditions in some regions with set targets and thirdly
(2011-2050), is to bring under control nearly all the desertified lands. The last
phase coincides with the time schedule of China National Economic and Social
Developmental Plan.
5.1
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
(UNCCD)
Recognizing the linkages between poverty and environmental degradation, the
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was established
in the wake of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The UNCCD is the first
international treaty to:
Address the issues of poverty and environmental degradation in rural areas,
particularly in Africa,
Recognize that grassroots resource users are central to identifying and imple-
menting solutions,
Adopt a bottom-up approach, involving the active participation of women as well
as men in the local communities, in all phases of the development process
Call for an innovative mechanism - the Global Mechanism - to mobilize
substantial resources, through partnership at all levels and to
Emphasize the need for an integrated approach to combating desertification. In
the spirit of the UNCCD, “combating desertification” includes activities that are
part of the integrated development of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid
areas for sustainable development which are aimed at prevention and/or reduction
of land degradation; rehabilitation of partly degraded land and reclamation of
desertified land (UNCCD 2007 ).
5.2
National Action Program (NAP)
To implement the UNCCD, Chinese Government has set up the China National
Committee for Implementing the United Nations Convention to Combat Deserti-
fication. This is composed of 16 ministries and commissions. This Committee is
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