A giant dust bowl is forming across northern China, converting swathes of
arable land to desert and triggering sandstorms whose impact carries across the
Pacific, a leading environmentalist said on Tuesday.
Lester Brown, of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, said China was far
from arresting the problem he attributed to overgrazing and falling water tables
in the country whose landmass is already one-third desert.
"There are huge areas there that were once productive grassland that are now
desert," Brown told foreign correspondents. "It represents the largest
conversion of productive land to desert anywhere in the world."
China, which is plagued by sandstorms every spring, has embarked on a campaign
to plant billions of trees and says it is slowing the rate of desertification,
but Brown said the problem was far from under control.
"Here and there there are successful pilot ...