The area of desertification, which is 2.62 million sq km, or about 27 percent of China�s land territory, has far exceeded the nation�s total of farmland. Today, desertification is expanding at a rate of 2,460 sq km every year. The State Forestry Administration is now working to draw up a desertification prevention and control program. The program will be carried out in three phases: The first phase will see the harnessing of the seriously harmful but easily controllable desertification sources by 2010; the second phase will have desertification brought under control by 2030; and the third phase will raise the nation�s forest cover to 26 percent and bring all desertification sources under effective control by the year 2050.
