China completes 3,000-km green belt around its vast desert, state media say

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has completed a 46-year campaign to surround its vast desert with trees, part of the country’s efforts to halt desertification and prevent sandstorms that plague parts of the country in spring, state media reported on Friday.

A 3,000-kilometer (2,000-mile) “green belt” around Taklamakan was completed on Thursday in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, after workers planted the last 100 meters of trees on the edge of the desert, the Communist-run People’s Daily said. .

Attempts to cover the desert with trees began in 1978 with the launch of China’s “Three-North Shelterbelt” project, known as the Great Green Wall. More than 30 million hectares (116,000 square miles) of trees have been planted.

Planting trees in the arid northwest helped bring China’s forest cover to over 25% by the end of last year, up from 10% in 1949. Forest coverage in Xinjiang alone has risen from 1% to 5% in the past 40 years, the People’s Daily said.

The shelterbelt project involved decades of experimenting with different types of trees and plants to determine which ones were the hardest.

Critics say survival rates have been low, and that it has become ineffective in reducing sandstorms, which regularly reach the capital, Beijing.

China will continue to plant plants and trees on the edge of Taklamakan to ensure that the desert is protected, Zhu Lidong, Xinjiang’s forestry chief, told a briefing in Beijing on Monday.

He said that the poplar forests on the northern edge of the desert will be restored through the diversion of flood water, and officials are also planning new forests to protect plantations and orchards on the western edge.

Despite China’s reforestation efforts, 26.8% of its total land is still classified as “desert”, according to data from the forestry ministry, down slightly from 27.2% a decade ago.

(Reporting by Beijing News; Writing by David Stanway; Editing by Ros Russell)