By Li Chun-xia and Shi Jian-jun

English translation by Enhebatu Togochog

[ China Central Television ( CCTV ) International News, June 5, 2002 ] In order to further speed up the environmental development’s pace, Inner Mongolia’s largest Environmental Immigration project has recently started up. Currently, herdsmen of some ten Banners ( Qi ) and Counties ( Xian ) in Inner Mongolia’s Chifeng area are being successively relocated from their scattered dwellings of remote rural areas to relatively population concentrated and transportation unobstructed new immigration townships.

During the “Tenth Five-year Plan”, 125,000 people in Chifeng area in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region will be relocated as environmental immigrants. 14,000 herdsmen are expected to be relocated this year.

“ to be honest, I am not willing to leave my ancestral homeland where I have lived for my lifetime, however, I have to, because my livestock have nothing to live on due to the environmental devastation”, says herdsman Jinxi.

One of the reasons of herdsmen’s being relocated is that the grasslands which had plenty of water and lush grass in the past are being seriously degraded and desertificated because of increasingly growing livestock population. Eco-system needs to be protected. On the other hand, for long period, these herdsmen could not resolve their problems such as water and electricity supply, access to education and medical treatment due to the scattered residential style.

Reportedly, every relocated herdsmen household could be allocated with a two-room house provided by the local government and 2 Mu ( approximately 0.1334 hectares ) of irrigational farmland. The grasslands where they lived still belong to herdsmen, and they will be allowed to go back to grasslands to reap grass after the grasslands are recovered. Henceforth, local governments will tackle the seriously degraded and desertificated grasslands in a comprehensive way by encircling, rotational herding, grass-planting, and tree-planting.