BEIJING -- China unveiled plans on Tuesday for a US$12-billion, 10-year effort to plant thousands of square kilometres of trees, hoping to repair decades of environmental damage and slow the spread of deserts that threaten farmland.

Chinese forestry officials said at a news conference that it will be the biggest conservation effort ever attempted.

The plans add to increasingly drastic Chinese efforts to reverse ecological damage blamed for chronic droughts, deadly flooding and loss of farmland to erosion.

Mr Lei Jiafu, deputy administrator of the State Administration of Forestry, said the tree-planting will cover 440,000 sq-km in areas throughout China. The said area is nearly the size of Spain and larger than Germany.

In some areas, farmers will be paid to turn cropland into forest, he said.

China has cut most of its forests, both to create farmland and to supply timber for an economy that is growing by more than 7 per cent a year.

The government says 16 per cent of the country has trees, though its figures often include such things as fruit orchards. Outside estimates say only a few per cent of China's land has its original forests, much of it in the far west.

Beijing has planted millions of trees since the 1980s in an attempt to stem erosion and dust storms, but says many smaller-scale efforts have failed.

Plans unveiled on Tuesday embrace six separate projects that range from reforesting hillsides to creating protected grasslands and nature reserves for pandas, Tibetan antelopes and rare orchids. -- AP