Gong Jiadong from China Academy of Sciences: Alxa is the world’s Alxa

http://www.sina.com.cn 2005/06/29 18:49

　　17:19 on June 07 , 2004 Alxa SEE ecological association

　　The experts and scholars delivered opinions on environmental protection at the first meeting of initiation and preparation of SEE ecological association, referring to such problems as the relation between the ecological environment and economic development, etc. The following is the summary of expert's speech.

　　Gong Jiadong: The researcher from Research Institute of Cold and Drought Area Environment, China Academy of Sciences

　　Alxa is not only the Alxa of its people, but also the Alxa of China, and the world.

　　We can often see the words like this in the reports of a lot of governments: Only part of our ecological environment is reversed, but the whole goes bad. Why? It should say that the total input from country is not small, but now still some parts reverse and it is not sustainable. That is because it is reversed where there is project, but the degradation may speed up after the finish of the project. And the degradation of some regional ecological environments is visible, including Alxa. I have found the changes in less than three years there, and it is very obvious. So this question is not only of Alxa, it should be of the whole China. It may not be quite alike that the ecological environment behaves in different places. Through Alxa, with an area of 270,000 square km, we want to discover where the question of our ecological environment in China lies.

　　The ecological administration of Alxa should be with a limited goal. The sandstorm has already existed for more than 2 million years, and our aim is to make human activity not accelerate the degradation of it. What we can really control is 6-7 ten thousand square km, and the desert itself is a kind of balanced one.

　　We should shift the development strategy. There was a saying in the past that human being is the master of nature, but in fact human can not defeat the nature. We have to abandon the idea, and we should retreat the desert by withdrawing people first, and improve traditional styles of production and life of the peasants and herdsmen.

　　Treat the desert kindly, and that is not to destroy it, don't be like what has been done in the past marching into the desert, developing the desert. The association should have an expert panel, and it must be high-level. It might not be made of a certain specialty, and there should be many specialties, even containing the coordination of government. Such great expert panel meeting is hold once per year. As for some concrete projects, experts of this level needn't be involved, for example the input of the project, the implement of the project. For the concrete matters, we can invite some special experts.