North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region has released four standards to evaluate the ecological effectiveness of desertification control efforts, improving scientific governance in arid and semi-arid areas.

The newly issued documents include technical guidelines and procedures covering ecological impact assessment for desertification control in dry regions, sandland protection and restoration, degraded grassland recovery, and comprehensive desert management projects.

Led by the Inner Mongolia Environmental Monitoring Center, the standards were jointly developed with the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, the Inner Mongolia Meteorological Research Institute, Inner Mongolia University, and the Inner Mongolia Ecological Security Barrier Research Institute.

They establish a full-chain, quantifiable, and practical evaluation framework to address the long-standing lack of unified criteria and data support for assessing ecological outcomes, while filling a technical gap in quantitative evaluation for desertification control in arid regions.

The standards are also expected to support the country's Three-North Forest Shelterbelt Program by enabling more science-based decision-making and precise supervision of restoration projects.