The necessity to formulate and promulgate the Law of the People's Republic of China on Desertification Prevention and Transformation lies in the two aspects as follows:

(1) China is one of the world's nations that suffers the most severe land desertification hazards. Since the 1950s, China's land of an area over 100,000 square kilometers, has suffered total desertification. During the period from 1985 to 1995, China's land area of desertification had an expansion rate of 2,460 kilometers per year, meaning China lost land equal to the area of a medium-scale county every year.

(2) The intensification of desertification has caused severe damage to China, which is seen in the following ways:

(i) A decrease of land resources, decline of land quality, disruption of the living environment which results in the flooding out of thousands of farmers and herdsmen who become "ecological refugees";

(ii) frequent occurrences of sandstorms which worsen the ecological environment and cause significant losses to the national economy;

intensification of poverty in China's western region and broadening of the gap between China's eastern and western regions,

(iii) and a high threat to the safety of China's large- and medium-scale cities, traffic and transportation, reservoirs, and rivers.