Fighting Western China's Dust Storms with Money

MANILA, Philippines, June 29, 2004 (ENS) - The Asian Development Bank, the government of China and the Global Environment Facility are joining forces to fight the spreading deserts and dust storms of western China. The bank is about to start administering a US$13.8 million project to help combat land degradation in six provinces and autonomous regions of China's impoverished western region.

The country faces some of the world's most serious land degradation problems, with more than 40 percent of its land area increasingly affected by wind erosion, salinization, and desertification. There is a strong correlation between poverty and land degradation, the bank says.

The land degradation is also threatening biodiversity in a region rich in endemic species. It is the source of dust storms that affect not only the north and northwest of China, but also Japan and Korea.

The project, partly funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), will strengthen institutions, government agencies and develop a participatory, scientific and comprehensive approach to dealing with land degradation.

Dust storm in western Gansu, August 2001. (Photo by Dr. Xingmin Meng courtesy U.S. Navy)

This project will work in the six provinces and autonomous regions with the worst dryland degradation in the country - Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia Hui, Qinghai, Shaanxi, and Xinjiang Uygur which have a combined population of 117 million people.

The funds will be spent to address integrated ecosystem management of drylands. The project is designed to boost institutional capacity, improve the quality of the policy and regulatory environment, planning mechanisms, project design capacity, and monitoring and evaluation skills.

It is the first step in a $1.5 billion, 10 year program to 2012 under a GEF-China Partnership on land degradation in dryland ecosystems. The Partnership was designed to combat land degradation, reduce poverty, and conserve biodiversity through capacity building investments and developing a series of model investment projects.

It was created with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank and approved by the GEF Council in October 2002. GEF plans to provide about $150 million in grant assistance for the Partnership program.

"This preliminary work will ensure that the investments planned under the Partnership have the maximum impact on the poor rural communities and diverse ethnic minority groups that are most affected by land degradation," says Bruce Carrad, a principal project specialist at the Asian Development Bank's Resident Mission in China.

Dust Storm over China's Taklimakan Desert, on April 14, 2002, from the MODIS Instrument on NASA's Terra Satellite. (Photo courtesy NASA)

The new access allows the bank to identify, prepare, appraise and undertake GEF projects, receive project financing directly from the GEF Trustee, and be directly accountable for the use of funds.

It is also what the Asian Development Bank calls its first "hybrid" project - financed totally by grants but prepared and administered through loan procedures that provide for more intensive preparation, supervision and responsibility by government.

For the first project in this series, GEF is providing a grant of $7.7 million. The Asian Development Bank is providing a technical assistance grant of US$1 million to complement the project work, strengthen interagency coordination, and monitor and evaluate the project and the overall program. The government of China will finance a total package of about $6.3 million, of which $3.3 million will be in cash.