A study based on satellite data showed that one quarter of the newly added green areas in the world between 2000 and 2017 was in China, making it the top country globally in terms of increasing the world’s green area.

Vehicles run on the Yulin-Jingbian Expressway through the Mu Us Desert in Yulin City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Aug. 1, 2018. The expressway is the first of the kind built in a desert in China.  (Xinhua/Tao Ming)

The country has been making constant efforts to promote ecological management, and people have been delighted to find through remote-sensing maps that green areas in north China’s yellow sand areas are continuously expanding from green dots into green pieces.

One of China’s four major deserts, Mu Us Desert, has been a particular success story, seeing amazing improvements in desertification control and afforestation over the past few decades.

Half of the sandy land of the Mu Us Desert is in Yulin, northwest China’s Shaanxi province. These sandy lands will soon disappear from its territory, thanks to the efforts of generations of local people who have now managed to bring 93.2 percent of the sandy land in the province under control.

The grass and forest coverage in Yulin has been increased from 0.9 percent to 34.8 percent.

Local farmer Shi Guangyin is one of the people who have spent their whole lives dedicated to desertification control in Yulin, contributing significantly to the improvement of the city’s ecological environment.

Shi grew up in a part of the city located in the southern edge of Mu Us Desert, an area that had long been blighted by sand.

In 1984, Shi became one of the first local people to answer the country’s call for individuals to help reclaim the land, and signed a contract with the local government to bring 200 hectares of sandy land under control.

After decades of painstaking efforts, Shi and his peers created a green ecological barrier in the southern edge of Mu Us Desert . The place Shi lived when he was young is now full of green plants. Now approaching the age of 70, Shi has become a well-known hero in the field of desertification control.

In fact, promising changes are being seen in more sandy areas around China.

Yang Yuming, a resident of Shangquan village, Datan town, Minqin county, which is only about 1 kilometer from desert, still remembers vividly the sandstorm that struck ten years ago.

Yang recalled that sand blew into the village and hit people in the face with such violence that they couldn’t open their eyes, while mulching film was blown into trees and seeds were swept away.

“We could fill up a wooden cart with the sand blown into our yard from a sandstorm at that time. Now we see much less sand, and you can’t even gather a dust pan of sand after a strong wind,” Yang said.

Data released by China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration (NFGA) showed that the country’s area of desertified and sandy land have been continuously decreasing since 2004.

At the end of the 1900s, China had seen its area of desertified land increase by an average of 10,400 square kilometers per year. Today, it is being reduced by an annual average of 2,424 square kilometers.

At the end of the last century, China’s area of sandy land had grown by 3,436 square kilometers a year on average, but is now decreasing by an average of 1,980 square kilometers per year.

The country’s initial success in curbing the expansion of desertification is a result of major ecological projects and campaigns aimed at controlling desertification while fighting poverty.

Over the past decade, the country has implemented major ecological projects with different goals, including one aimed at turning marginal farmland into forests and grasslands, the Three North Shelterbelt Project (or Sanbei Shelter-forest Project), which was designed to protect natural forests and control the causes of sandstorms in Beijing and Tianjin, and a project aimed at curbing rock desertification.

China has signed the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and enacted a law on prevention and control of desertification, providing legal guarantees for efforts to promote ecological protection.

At the same time, a large number of leading enterprises and role models in controlling desertification have actively joined the nationwide campaign against desertification, making great efforts to expand the country’s green areas and halt the increase of sand dunes.

In addition, the efforts to control desertification and fight poverty have formed a virtuous circle.

“Various regions have made use of resources in sandy areas such as light, heat, and wind, and developed featured crop and plant cultivation, as well as other green industries such as processing and desert tourism. These industries have increased job opportunities for farmers and herdsmen, expanding channels for increasing incomes and speeding up the efforts to get rid of poverty,” said Sun Guoji, director of the desertification control division of NFGA.