Dryland Ecosystems: Introducing an Integrated Management Approach in the People's Republic of China

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) suffers from some large-scale land degradation problems, posing a significant threat to the lives of local residents and to the future economic welfare of the nation. The dryland areas of the western PRC, which cover approximately 40% of the country’s land area, contain some of the most severely degraded land in the world. With only about 7% of the world’s farmland and 6% of the world’s annual water runoff, the PRC must feed 22% of the world’s population. In 2002, with the assistance of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Asian Development Bank, the PRC government established the PRC–GEF Partnership on Land Degradation in Dryland Ecosystems to address land degradation issues, reduce poverty, restore dryland ecosystems, and conserve biodiversity through an effective integrated ecosystem management (IEM) approach. The IEM provides an integrated planning approach within which the PRC government can develop legal, policy, institutional, and socioeconomic systems required to support the sustainable utilization of dryland ecosystem resources.