4.7b yuan to save oasis city
Source: Xinhua |
June 25, 2011, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
CHINA will invest more than 4.7 billion yuan (US$723 million) over 10 years to improve the natural environment of a desert-threatened oasis city that holds one of the world's most impressive ancient Buddhist cave frescoes, local officials said yesterday.
The plan for preserving the oasis, in northwest Gansu Province, has been approved by the State Council and will be a boost for Dunhuang, an ancient Silk Road town, in its fight against desertification, said officials of the provincial water resources bureau.
Authorities will build channels to bring water in from outside, promote water-saving technologies and methods, ration the use of water and plant more trees and wetland plants.
Dunhuang, with a population of 130,000, has been protected from the encroaching dunes of the Kumtag desert by a belt of forests, wetland and lakes sustained by two major rivers and abundant underground water.
But in recent years, excessive draining of water in the area has affected the lakes, wetlands and rivers.
Government figures show that over the past six decades, the forests of Dunhuang have shrunk by 40 percent, meadows by 62 percent, and the wetlands by 68 percent.
"Many salt lakes and freshwater lakes in the oasis have mostly gone," said Gao Hua, director of the Forestry Bureau of Dunhuang.
Experts say desertification threatens 1,000-year-old Buddhist frescoes in the Mogao Grottoes, listed in 1987 by the United Nations as China's first world heritage site.
The plan for preserving the oasis, in northwest Gansu Province, has been approved by the State Council and will be a boost for Dunhuang, an ancient Silk Road town, in its fight against desertification, said officials of the provincial water resources bureau.
Authorities will build channels to bring water in from outside, promote water-saving technologies and methods, ration the use of water and plant more trees and wetland plants.
Dunhuang, with a population of 130,000, has been protected from the encroaching dunes of the Kumtag desert by a belt of forests, wetland and lakes sustained by two major rivers and abundant underground water.
But in recent years, excessive draining of water in the area has affected the lakes, wetlands and rivers.
Government figures show that over the past six decades, the forests of Dunhuang have shrunk by 40 percent, meadows by 62 percent, and the wetlands by 68 percent.
"Many salt lakes and freshwater lakes in the oasis have mostly gone," said Gao Hua, director of the Forestry Bureau of Dunhuang.
Experts say desertification threatens 1,000-year-old Buddhist frescoes in the Mogao Grottoes, listed in 1987 by the United Nations as China's first world heritage site.
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