Ecological deterioration in China is spreading, becoming more serious and causing increasing damage, a senior environment official warned yesterday.

Yang Chaofei, director of the Natural Environment Conservation Department under the State Environmental Protection Administration, said the country's ecological environment is losing some of its natural ability to mitigate disasters.

He said this very serious situation is caused mainly by the environmentally destructive methods adopted in many parts of the country to develop local economies.

Giving priority to development and paying little attention to environmental protection is still a frighteningly prevalent attitude, he said, adding an inadequate ecological protection system and legal system are also partly to blame for the problem.

Despite the fact that the forest coverage rate in China has been rising in recent years, the quality of forests is degrading and forests that actually help in nurturing the ecological environment account for less than 30 per cent of total forest coverage, he pointed out.

About 90 per cent of the grassland in the country is degrading at varying rates and the annual increase in desertified land each year has gone up from 2,100 square kilometres in the mid-1980s to more than 3,400 square kilometres at the end of the 1990s.