10. Feb 2009
Tibetan nomads, farmers may be losers in China's ecology protection plan
(Xinhua) More Tibetans are set to be displaced, losing their ancestral land, homes and way of life, as China spends 20 billion yuan (UK£4.1 bn; $US5.8 bn; EUR€4.5) during its eleventh Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010) to build a State Ecological Safe Shelter Zone on the Tibetan Plateau, reported state-run Xinhua. "Problems such as grassland degradation, land desertification, glacier meltdown, soil erosion etc. are affecting the whole ecological environment in China" because of the deterioration of the environment on the plateau, it said. Three shelter zones will be constructed from 2008 to 2030. The report said measures will include returning grazing land to pastures, controlling rodent and pest damage, standardising construction of five regional nature reserves and rural biogas construction.