Huge population pressures, scarce rainfall and climate change have made China the world’s biggest victim of desertification, a problem that could take 300 years to reverse, state media said.

Overgrazing, excessive land reclamation and inappropriate water use also make it especially difficult to halt deserts from encroaching on large areas of land in the nation’s arid north and west, the China Daily reported.

“China is still a country with the largest area of desertified land in the world,” Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration, was quoted as saying.

About 27 per cent of China’s total land mass, or about 2.6 million square kilometres, are considered desertified land, while another 18 per cent of the nation’s land is eroded by sand, the report said.

Experts believe that 530,000 square kilometres of the nation’s deserts can be returned to green land, but the process will take 300 years at the current rate of reversing desertification by 1,700 square kilometres annually, it said.