This Day, That Year

Item from June 19, 1995, in China Daily: China plans to go green to stave off its creeping desert-style encroachment, government officials have signaled. ... China signed the First International Convention to combat Desertification in Paris in October last year ... Recently, China has seen one-third of its land - 3.3 million square kilometers - become desert.

Desertification is one of the most important environmental challenges that China has faced in the past decades, which haunts about 27 percent of its total land area and threatens nearly 400 million people's livelihood, according to the State Forestry Administration.

In the last 10 years, about 2,491 square kilometers of desert have been reclaimed every year on average, the administration said.