Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, January 12th Question: How to achieve the national soil and water conservation rate target? ——Ministry of Water Resources answers relevant hot issues
Xinhua News Agency reporter Huang Yao
The “Opinions on Strengthening Water and Soil Conservation in the New Era” issued by the Central Committee and the State Council recently announced that the national water and soil conservation rate will reach 73% by 2025 and 75% by 2035.
What is “Soil Conservation Rate”? How are these specific goals set? How will it be achieved? At the press conference held by the State Council Information Office on the 12th, the person in charge of the Ministry of Water Resources answered the question.
On January 12, the State Council Information Office held a press conference. Zhu Chengqing, vice minister of the Ministry of Water Resources, Wu Wenqing, chief planner, Guan Xifan, head of the Rural Economics Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, and Pu Chaoyong, director of the Water and Soil Conservation Department of the Ministry of Water Resources, introduced the strengthening of soil and water conservation in the new era. Regarding the situation, and answering reporters’ questions.Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Xin
According to reports, the soil and water conservation rate refers to the proportion of the area with good water and soil conservation in the region to the national land area. Zhu Chengqing, deputy minister of the Ministry of Water Resources, said that soil and water conservation rate is indeed a relatively new concept. It has been obtained through a lot of research in recent years and has now entered the evaluation index system for the construction of a beautiful China.
The data shows that by the end of 2021, the national soil and water conservation rate will be 72%, but the specific situation varies from place to place. For example, the soil and water conservation rates in Zhejiang and Fujian are over 90%, while those in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang in the west are less than 60%.
According to special research results, my country’s existing soil erosion area is 2,674,200 square kilometers, of which 1,229,200 square kilometers are not suitable for or do not need to be treated, and are mainly distributed in deserts, Gobi hinterlands, and high-cold and high-altitude areas. Of the 1.445 million square kilometers that need to be treated, taking into account soil erosion laws, natural and geographical conditions, technology, and economic factors, in the end only more than 520,000 square kilometers are expected to be completely “killed”, and the rest can only be “degraded” in intensity.
“After analysis, my country’s soil and water conservation rate has increased by an average of 0.29 percentage points in the past ten years, but it has only increased by 0.2 percentage points in the past three years. This shows that the remaining part of our soil erosion area is a hard nut to crack. Governance is becoming more and more difficult, and it is also becoming more and more difficult to improve the water and soil conservation rate.” Wu Wenqing, chief planner of the Ministry of Water Resources, said that the goals proposed in the opinions are positive and promising, but they also need hard work and overcoming difficulties to achieve.
The Ministry of Water Resources stated that the next step will be to anchor the target, strengthen prevention, protection and supervision, vigorously implement key projects such as comprehensive management of small watersheds, and focus on the combination of “reduction, downgrading, and control of increase”.
One is to take the soil erosion of forest and grassland as the focus of “reduction”. The area of water and soil erosion in the country’s medium-coverage and low-level forest and grassland accounts for 1/3 of the national water and soil erosion area, and the erosion intensity is relatively low. These areas will be used as a breakthrough to reduce the stock of soil erosion area, increase the vegetation coverage of forest and grassland, and improve the water and soil conservation function of forest and grass ecosystem.
The second is to take slope farmland and eroded ditches as the focus of “downgrading”. According to the latest monitoring results, nearly 60% of the cultivated land with slopes of more than 6 degrees in my country is heavily eroded by water. At the same time, there are still a large number of high-intensity gully erosion in the black soil region of Northeast China and the Loess Plateau of Northwest China. In the future, sloping farmland and erosion ditches will be taken as the main fronts for “downgrading” the intensity of soil erosion, and vigorously promote the control of soil erosion on sloping farmland, the construction of check dams on the Loess Plateau, and the treatment of erosion ditches in black soil in Northeast China, so as to effectively reduce the intensity of soil erosion.
The third is to take human disturbance as the focus of “increase control”. Further innovate supervision methods, strictly control new man-made water and soil erosion, effectively control the increase, increase efforts to prevent and control water and soil erosion during the concentrated disturbance period of projects under construction, and promote relevant departments, industries and social entities to be more consciously green, low-carbon, and environmentally friendly. The road to circular development.
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责编：袁晴 ]