Turning China's deserts into opportunities

Nation's successful efforts to make barren land green again must be supported and continued to help reclaim more areas

Kubuqi and Saihanba in North China are widely seen as successful examples of the country's fight against desertification.

Both areas were covered by forest and grassland until about 400 years ago, when the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) opened them for lumber. Following decades of deforestation and forest fires to create grazing land, the areas had become deserts by the end of the dynasty.

However, desertification has been rolled back by more than a third in the 180,000-square-kilometer Kubuqi Desert - the seventh-largest in China - and the 750-sq-km Saihanba Desert, thanks to a campaign launched in the 1960s. In fact, the two places are now national parks.

Some common factors have played important roles in helping fight desertification in Kubuqi and Saihanba. Such projects the world over take nature's laws into consideration, requiring multidisciplinary expertise and technologies. By involving botanists, arborists, geologists, environmental engineers and hydrologists in the two projects, the authorities have ensured their success.

Important decisions such as which trees and shrubs to plant, in order to make maximum use of limited water resources, are made after seeking the opinions of experts and in consultation with local people.

China has learned some lessons in its fight against desertification. For instance, after planting saplings and shrubs that absorbed underground moisture in arid areas and then died a few years later for lack of water, the authorities realized that not all trees and shrubs are suitable for such a project.

The authorities pay special attention to the Kubuqi and Saihanba national forest parks because they are the sources of sandstorms affecting North China, including Beijing. If the greenery in the two places is not maintained, the storms can get worse, with huge economic and environmental costs.

To effectively fight desertification, however, the participation of enterprises and local residents is necessary, because such environmental projects require huge amounts of energy and capital.

While working on a report a couple of years ago on the desertification-control station in the Hexi Corridor, in Northwest China's Gansu province, I interviewed a farmer in his late 70s. He told me that dozens of villagers had spent their entire lives preventing the nearby desert from engulfing their village. But despite their best efforts, after the elderly farmers die the village could be claimed by the desert since the young people of the community have migrated to cities to earn a better living.

The Elion Group, a green technology and finance company, has been part of the Kubuqi desertification-control project since 1988, and has played a crucial role in introducing capital and technologies, as well as employing local residents. Advanced agricultural technologies used in anti-desertification projects can help create business opportunities in the long run by, for example, planting herbs that can be used in medicines. In fact, such herbs have been planted under solar power panels in Kubuqi, generating revenue for local people.

Such endeavors can also help change people's opinions about environmental projects and prompt them to take advantage of the "desert economy". In Saihanba, for instance, many of those born after the anti-desertification project was implemented share a common first name - lin (meaning forest) - reflecting local residents' respect for the vegetation that protects their homes.

The government should also take measures to provide better public services for local residents and raise their environmental awareness. Since desertification-control projects yield results only in the long term, they need to be continued once started.

China has about 2.6 million sq km of deserts and another 1.7 million sq km of desertified land, which together is about a tenth of the world total. Thanks to the authorities' efforts, desert and desertified areas in China have on average been reduced by about 4,000 sq km a year in recent years. China's success in the fight against desertification, as such, is a contribution to global efforts to control the spread of deserts.

The author is a writer with China Daily. Contact the writer at liyang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 08/18/2017 page11)