The Great Green Wall of China completes a new milestone: containing one of the largest deserts in the world

Taming and containing deserts has become a priority in some parts of the world. An example is the Sahara desert, which devours more than 7,500 km² each year, being today 10% larger than 100 years ago. For this reason, in 2005 it was proposed to create a green belt 8,000 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide to contain the desert sand. It was a fiasco.

They also have similar projects in China, and they have just completed one of the projects they have been carrying out for 40 years and which promises to contain a desert similar in size to Germany thanks to a 3,050 kilometer Great Green Wall.

desert invasion. China has some of the largest deserts in the world. The one in Gobi is well known, but the one in Gobi is also there. Taklamakan. 85% of this 337,600 km² desert are dunes and it is something that, at certain times of the year, generates disruption in the population. Sand storms are not rare, affecting both normal life and agriculture, but the desert is also advancing, causing neighboring towns to be left without crops.

Great Green Wall. Thus, in 1978, China launched march the Refugio Tres Norte Forest Program, a series of actions to, through tree belts, contain the expansion of these deserts. Gobi’s was one of them, but the Taklamakan program also entered into the equation. It was something vital for China, but neighbors like North Korea, South Korea or Japan would not view it with bad eyes, since they also suffer the effects of storms.

The program is scheduled to be completed in 50 years and the aim was to increase the country’s forest cover from 5.05% in 1977 to almost 15%, as well as control sandstorms and erosion. Come on, stop desertification.

Planting like a beast (and with a head). As we read in SCMPit took decades to plant the first 2,700 kilometers of this belt, but in November of last year efforts began to plant the last 285 kilometers, something that ends to achieve. And it is something that has been achieved thanks to an army of 600,000 people who have worked tirelessly to make this a reality.

When talking about reforestation, a mistake we can make is to start planting without rhyme or reason. The problem is that we have to study which species we replant certain places with, since some adapt better than others. In Europe we have made that mistake and in China, at least in this part of the Taklamakan, they have chosen resistant species for the area, such as the Euphrates poplarsaxaul or saline cedar.

Results. As we can read in ReutersAlthough these efforts are improving the country’s forest area, it seems that from 27.2% desertified we have only gone to 26.8%. The progress is there, but it is clear that more work is needed and we need to wait for the Great Green Wall conclude in 2050 with a total of 4,500 kilometers long.

According to the Chinese media CGTNthere are currently districts that have reduced the days in which sand storms were a problem from 150 days to 50 days a year. Now, the idea is to carry out maintenance work on these new forest networks to guarantee their survival and, therefore, the protection of croplands and orchards.

Doubts. Despite the progress, there are experts who consider these initiatives to be useless. Jennifer L. Turner She is the director of the China Environmental Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center and noted a year ago that people “are planting a lot of trees to stop desertification, but then no one really cares about them and they die.”

Furthermore, Xian Xue, an expert in wind desertification in China, argument in National Geographic that “people are flocking to natural sand dunes and the Gobi to plant trees, which have caused a rapid decline in soil moisture and the water table,” so the remedy may be worse than the disease.

Plans for the desert. Again, we will see what happens in a few years and if China has finally won the game in the desert. On the other hand, there are plans to take advantage of the already contained desert.

The Chinese company Three Gorges Renewables Group Co. advertisement A few weeks ago an investment of about 10 billion dollars was made to build a conglomerate of energy plants that will generate 8.5 GW of solar energy, 4 GW of wind energy and six coal generators that will produce 660 MW.

Images | Janwillemvanaalst

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