Bacteria Could Help Reclaim China’s Desert
New Scientist’s Hal Hodson describes research into the use of bacteria to combat...
desertification
Ministry of Truth: Greenpeace on SOE “Water Grab”
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to these instructions as “Directives from the Ministry...
At the Desert’s Edge: 90% of China’s Grasslands Deteriorated
Of the 400 million hectares of grassland that cover more than 40% of China, 90% has suffered some degree of deterioration. From China Daily. Gao Hongbin, vice minister of agriculture, made the remarks at a national work...
Chinese Mongolians Protest Again, Herders Beaten
Reuters reports the outbreak of further unrest in Inner Mongolia, with herders beaten and detained after protesting the expansion of a lead mine. The New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center said the...
Defeating the Deserts “May Take China 300 Years.”
Chinese authorities have acknowledged that, while progress has been made in recent years, securing the country against encroaching deserts may take centuries. From Jonathan Watts in The Guardian: China has gained a sliver of...
Moving Southern Water North and Seawater West
Danwei translates reports of a proposal to hydrate Xinjiang by pumping seawater 2,000 kilometres inland and 1,200 metres uphill from the Bohai Sea: The summit’s basic ideas on the subject of “Moving Seawater West; Bringing Bohai...
China to Speed Up Clearing Nomads from Grasslands
Reuters reports: China’s Inner Mongolia region plans to speed up resettlement of nomads from their traditional grasslands to fixed homes in towns, as part of a conservation programme, a top official said on Thursday. The...
Vanishing Grasslands
From Asia Society’s Green China project: Vanishing Grasslands is a mixed media project documenting desertification in northern China. Over 400 million people in China are being affected by desertification today. Over...
Slideshow: Min Qin Farmers’ Last Fight Against the Desert, by René Vandergoten
French journalist René Vandergoten has shared with CDT his photographs from a recent trip to northwestern China, which beautifully depict the struggle of local farmers against the encroaching desert: Min Qin is an oasis located...
Showcase: Shifting Sands
The New York Times Lens blog has posted a slideshow of desertification in China: [Sean] Gallagher traveled to the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northern China to document the rapid advance of its deserts. The sandstorm...
Photos: China’s Creeping Sands
ChinaDialogue has posted a slideshow of stunning images documenting the desertification of China by photographer Sean Gallagher: Desertification is the gradual transformation of arable and habitable land into desert, normally...
Guardian: China’s Water Crisis
As part of their China at the Crossroads series, the Guardian looks at China’s water crisis. One article visits eco-refugees in Gansu: Huang is one of millions of Chinese eco-refugees who have been resettled because their...
China 2008: Environmental Crisis
This next article in the CDT series on important issues facing China in 2008 focuses on the Environment. See also previous posts on Nationalism, the Developing World, and the Global Financial Crisis. China’s environmental...
Desertification Causes Yearly Loss of 54 Billion Yuan in China
According to People’s Daily Online, desertification is costing China 54 billion yuan every year. Tang Yuan, general director of the Research Department for Industry, Transportation and Trade, of the State Council...
The Chinese Dust Bowl
The Canadian magazine The Walrus has a lengthy article looking at the desertification of China: To date, Chinese farmers and herders have transformed about 400,000 square kilometres of cropland and verdant prairie into new...
Reign of Sand: Inner Mongolia
A compelling multimedia project from Circle of Blue reports on the freshwater crisis in Inner Mongolia, where desertification threatens not only its startlingly beautiful steppes, but its nomadic residents’ way of life....
China’s “Green Deserts” – Gaoming Jiang
From China Dialogue: China’s tree-planting movement continues down a worrying path. The planting of artificial, single-species forests has not abated in China; in fact, it has worsened. The country’s original distribution of trees: fir trees in the south, poplars in the north, has made way for poplars everywhere – north, south, east and west. There […]
Growing Desert Closing in on Guansu Oasis Town – Lanzhou Morning Post
Worsening ecological degradation in China’s wild west, rom Lanzhou Morning Post (兰州晨报), translated by CDT: Xihu National Nature Preserve (西湖国家级自然保护区) sits in between Dunhuang (敦煌), Gansu’s oasis town, and China’s sixth largest desert, the Kum-tagh (库姆塔格). The 660,000-hectare region is the only green belt that shields lands to the east from marching sands coming out […]
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