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China seeks to roll back the sands

Pallavi Aiyar

The livelihoods of 400 million people are threatened by the spread of the Gobi and Taklimakan deserts.

— Photo: Pallavi Aiyar

FIGHTING BACK: Preparing the ground for planting trees, at the Baijitan Forestry Centre.

"Slowly every single one of the 10,000 people who lived in my village moved away. There was no water, no food, no grass and at last there was just the desert that swallowed up my village," says Wang Youde, his weather-beaten face sagging under the weight of the memory. But his eyes brighten the next moment as he surveys the fruit of his life's work from on top of a hillock. In the distance the sandy stretches of the Mao Wu Su desert glint in the mid-day sun but for kilometres surrounding the hill an oasis of green forms a protective belt. Mr. Wang is chief of the Baijitan Forestry Centre of Lingwu City in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. This is an area where humans and desert have been fighting a centuries-old war. Village after village has disappeared under the encroaching tentacles of sand, locking the area into a vicious circle of drought and poverty.

But projects like Mr. Wang's Baijitan reserve have also scored a victory for the other side. Over the last 20 years, Mr. Wang has led his staff in planting nearly 30 million drought resistant trees to form a 42-km-long and 10-km-wide buffer, successfully checking the process of desertification along Ling Wu city's borders.

This is but one example of the massive efforts that China is undertaking to fight desertification, an environmental phenomenon that is little understood given that it is a long-term process both in its development and impact. But it is also a process that the United Nations estimates costs China a hefty $6.5 billion a year in economic losses. According to China's Government, the livelihoods of 400 million people or 30 per cent of the population are threatened by the spread of the Gobi and Taklimakan deserts, which have eaten away at scores of cities along the historic Silk Road. One-fifth of China's total territory is, in fact, covered in deserts.

China's vertiginous economic growth has been grabbing headlines around the world for the last decade. But accompanying this growth is one of the world's fastest deteriorating environments. Climate change and industrialisation have sucked China's lakes and rivers dry. Over logging and over grazing have left hillsides bare. This weakens the land allowing for no margin when drought arrives. In arid, poverty-stricken areas like Ningxia, despite recent bans on grazing of desert affected land, the locals say they have no choice but to let their sheep and goats eat up the grass unable as they are to afford alternative feed for them.

"We know that if the animals keep eating the grass there will be nothing but desert left here and we will have to starve or move. But what can we do? If we don't let the animals graze we will have to move or starve in any case," says 60-year-old Qiao Gui Yin. Qiao is one the 100 or so people left in Shuang Jing Zi village. Over the last few years, two-thirds of the village's population has moved away leaving behind only the very old and the very young. Shuang Jing Zi is part of the Ozymandian Su Bu Jing township in the province's northwest. In fact Su Bu Jing is no longer officially classified as a township. Following two decades of depopulation, its name quietly stopped appearing on maps three years ago.

For every boomtown along the coast of China's prosperous eastern sea board there is a Su Bu Jing, languishing in the vast landlocked areas of the country's interior. As forests are cleared to feed the furniture, flooring, and printing factories of the coast, it is places like Su Bu Jing that pay the price.

Earlier this year, Beijing declared that after years of battle, anti-desertification measures were finally paying off. According to a report by the State Forestry Administration released in February, the nation's deserts have shrunk at the rate of 1,283 sq km a year since 2001, while forest cover has increased by 66 million hectares every year. The Government said that this was the first time since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949 that a reversal of the desertification process had taken place. In the 1970s, the annual expansion of land desertification in China was estimated at 1,600 sq km, a figure that had reached 3,600 sq km a year in the 1990s.

Beijing has in fact spent more than 50 billion Yuan ($6.25 billion) since 1978 on building a "Great Green Wall" of trees to protect the country's northern cities from expanding deserts. The Government's ability to mobilise huge resources in pursuit of its cause is in evidence every March when officials take up shovels and join over 3 million people on Tree Planting Day. According to the Forestry Administration, China's 1.3 billion-strong population has planted an average of 40 trees each since 1982.

To encourage people to plant trees and conserve forests various pilot schemes across the country pay farmers subsidies for every hectare of new trees they plant and an additional annual payment for maintaining existing forests. Land use in areas at risk has been banned. In Ningxia, fixation techniques for mobile sand dunes along the Baotou-Lanzhou railway have led to impressive results. A slew of laws to combat desertification and protect the environment have been promulgated. For example, in February of this year the State Council passed a Programme for Combating Desertification, the aim of which is to transform 13 million hectares of desertified land into a green belt by 2010.

As Beijing attempts to move away from a growth-at-all-costs model of economic development, a budding environmental consciousness is evident both in the reports of the local media and in the speeches of China's leaders. But despite all the efforts and schemes to rein in environmental degradation, the desert is proving no easy foe.

Only weeks after the State Forestry Department brought out its report claiming a reversal of the desertification process, China's capital Beijing was lashed by the worst sand storms in five years. On a single night in April, over 300,000 tonnes of dust and sand were deposited on the city during a storm that originated in the deserts of Ningxia province and its bordering Inner Mongolia.

"If you think you had it bad in Beijing, in Ningxia there were days you couldn't even open your eyes, the dust was so bad," says Liu Guoqing, a Foreign Office official from Ningxia. "All the municipal governments here claim victories over the desert and send in reports to the centre saying that desertification is no longer a problem, but this is nonsense. Every year the dust is getting worse," he says.

Mr. Liu's sentiments are finding resonance in Beijing's corridors of power. In the midst of the April sand storms, China's Premier Wen Jiabao urged an intensification of efforts to rein in pollution at a conference in the capital. "The succession of dust storms is a warning to us," he said. "Ecological destruction and environmental pollution are creating massive economic losses and gravely threatening people's lives and health."

This year, China has in fact suffered from its worst drought in 50 years leaving 18 million suffering from chronic water shortages.

China is industrialising on a scale that is unparalleled in history and the environmental fallout of this growth is widely expected to be disastrous if unchecked. The authorities in Beijing are increasingly aware of these dangers and environmental protection has become a strong priority at the centre. However, despite the vast resources allocated to and massive efforts being made to fight it, the desert is proving to be a formidable adversary.

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