It took 46 years and, as the Chinese admit, many failures, but last Thursday the People’s Daily reported that the Chinese had managed to surround the entire Taklamakan Desert with trees.
The last 100 trees were planted on the southern edge of the world’s most “hostile” desert last week, completing the grand plan, sometimes called the Great Green Wall project.
China’s northern and western provinces suffer from dust and sand storms that blow in from the Taklamakan (which means “enter and never come out” in Chinese), polluting the air and putting arable land at risk of desertification.
It is the world’s second-largest shifting sand desert, and the farthest point on Earth from the ocean. The areas around the Taklamakan are among the poorest in the country.
The construction of the Great Green Wall began under Deng Xiaoping in 1978 with the “Northern Three Areas Protective Belt” project. In total, over 30 million hectares of trees were planted (hectares, not pieces).
The project faced enormous challenges – poor planning, control and selection of species sometimes led to massive tree deaths, sometimes due to insufficient irrigation, and sometimes due to insect infestations.
Despite all the risks and setbacks, the creation of the protective belt continued uninterrupted and is now reported to be complete. As a result, China’s overall forest cover has increased by almost 25%. Thanks to this, the forest area in Xinjiang, one of the driest provinces in the far west of China, has increased fivefold – from 1% in 1949 to 5% today.
At a press briefing in Beijing last Monday, Zhu Lidong, a regional forestry official, said tree planting would continue as the government seeks to strengthen the “wall” and curb desertification.
