China should launch “early-warning” education across the country to let its people know about the fragile ecological conditions in the vast western region, a scientist has warned.

He pointed out that such education is urgently needed in light of the implementation of the “go-west” policy drawn up by China’s central government.

Liu Jiyuan, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), told China Daily that to save the fragile western regions from possible ecological abuse following the “go-west” policy, the country has launched a program called “China Ecosystem Assessment” (CEA), starting with the western land of China.

“Everybody says that our ecosystem is under threat, and many cite the water shortage and land degradation we have today. But the accurate condition of our ecosystem as a complete picture is still unclear even to many scientists,” said Liu, who is also director of the Institute of Geological Sciences and Resource Research under CAS.

He noted that the initiation of CEA is to enable people to better understand the ecological condition of the country.

Starting from the west, the program will be gradually rolled to the rest of the country.

The western region makes up two thirds of China and is highly diverse in terms of ecological and geographic conditions.

However, the western region of China is ecologically fragile. There exist many ecological problems such as water shortage, land degradation and heavy potential pressures from population growth and resources exploitation.

“With the go-west policy, human activity will inevitably have an increasing pressure on the already ecologically fragile western region,” Liu said, “Our answer to these problems is science.”

The results of the program is expected to provide strong support to the policy-making of Chinese government in the coming 20 to 50 years, according to Liu.

The first phase of the program, which spans five years, has started with assessments of the present situation. “What we need to do first is to collect comprehensive and reliable data to build a platform for analysis,” Liu said.

Many researchers and institutes have done enormous work of this kind in past decades, but from different perspectives.

This program will build an integrated database. Technological means, such as remote sensing, will be employed. The pivotal step following the data gathering will be the development of models for assessment. It will to a great extent determine the accuracy of the assessment.

Liu disclosed that researchers from CAS and other institutes have begun the work and collaboration with foreign counterparts is expected.

With the models, scientists will be able to assess the historical changes of China’s ecological conditions over the past 20-50 years and model ecological scenarios in the next half century.

The program also includes evaluation of China’s environmental policy and its implementation in the western region, on which proposals on the improvement of environment will be submitted to the central government.

From this May to next June, models and methods are to be developed. The integrated ecosystem assessment is to be conducted from then until the year 2004.

“We want the program to be conducted on a rolling basis, with data and measures renewed regularly,” Liu said.

The CEA is part of a larger program, Millennium Assessment (MA), initiated by the United Nations last month. China’s western region is listed as one of the five sub-global systems under MA.

China got involved in the MA from 1999, when the United Nations established a steering committee to explore the merits of undertaking an integrated assessment of the world’s ecosystems.

The Ministry of Science and Technology, has committed US$1.5 million to the program and Liu’s institute has been authorized to manage the program.

The biggest challenge Liu and his colleagues face in the program is how to coordinate different agencies involved to allow research resources to be shared by all.

The program involves as many institutes and governmental agencies as the elements of an ecosystem.

The communication among the participants will determine the success of the program. “Purely interpersonal, limited communication will not do,” Liu warned.

(China Daily 07/12/2001)