First of two parts
It borrows its name from the massive stone structure built by the Qin Dynasty. But the purpose of the Green Great Wall in China is not to hold back the barbarians, it’s to stop the ever-encroaching deserts.
The following article was submitted by Antony Funnell/ABC Radio National:
“About a quarter of all of China’s land mass is desert, and those deserts, up until very recently, were expanding; they were growing at the rate of about 1,000 square miles per year,” journalist and author Vince Beiser said.
“It’s a desertification rate that has laid waste to vast swathes of valuable farmland and regularly choked the suburbs of Beijing in clouds of dust.
“When completed, the Green Great Wall will stretch more than 4,800 kilometres across the north of China, forming a living barrier along the edge of the giant Gobi Desert.
“A man builds a shade cloth fence around small trees.
“The 50-year project involves the planting of more than 88 billion trees and the results so far, says Beiser, have been amazing.
“You can drive through areas where they have planted just millions and millions and millions of trees,” he said
“I stood on top of a hillside in one place in inner Mongolia and as far as you could see it was desert land that had obviously been forested.”
“A large sand dune against a blue sky.
“Future Tense explores two ambitious projects aimed at halting desertification and returning soil to productivity.
“It’s sold as a great patriotic effort to tame nature. And its success, to date, has relied on the involvement of tens of thousands of farmers and landholders following a regimented master plan.
“There’s one area in the Kubuqi … they built this brand-new road through the desert, and all the way along the road for miles and miles and miles it’s lined with trees,” Beiser said.
“And then just behind those rows, is just sand, just sand as far as you can see.”
“A truly global problem.
“China is not alone in facing the threat of encroaching deserts.
“Late last century, 197 states came together to ratify the United Nations’ Convention to Combat Desertification.
“Despite that, more than 24 billion tons of fertile soil is still lost annually to desertification, while 40% of the Earth’s land surface is now considered degraded.
“The cost, said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, isn’t just environmental, it’s social, cultural, and economic.
“Dry land degradation reduces national domestic product in developing countries by up to 8% annually,” he recently warned.
“In fact, the UN estimates desertification affects the lives of about 3 billion people.
“We have a short window of 10 years to 15 years to reduce the pressure and if possible reverse the trends,” senior UN official Ibrahim Thiaw said.
“Technologically we have the means, we have the knowledge right now. Maybe we need more of a political will and more public engagement.”
“Mr. Thiaw has praise for the type of forestation work undertaken in places such as China and India, but he worries that a focus on desertification primarily as an environmental challenge misses the bigger problem.
“Just like climate change, human activities are one of the main causes of land degradation,” he said.
“We push international resources, international systems to produce food; we have our industry that is impacting; we have cities that are encroaching into productive land.”
“Shovels stand upright in the soil in the foreground and people sit together on a soil hill.
“Beiser said that’s particularly true of China, where the urbanization of the country’s interior is officially encouraged by the government as a means of reducing overcrowding in coastal cities.
“There are lots more people moving into areas right next to the desert. With people comes livestock. The land just really can’t support that many people,” he said.
“In the Gobi Desert, for instance, the number of people has quadrupled just in the last few decades.”
Continued at thevoice.us/seeking-green-in-deserts-of-china-africa-continues