Chinese walker

The United Nations has declared 2006 as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification, in recognition of the grave perils of desertification, a global phenomenon affecting a third of the earth`s surface and more than one billion people in over 100 countries. As susceptible dryland areas lose their productive capacity, says the UN, desertification has potentially devastating social and economic consequences, including poverty, famine and political instability.

Acknowledging those connections, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification was established after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The convention defined desertification as “land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities”, and is the first international treaty to address the issues of poverty and environmental degradation in rural areas. It also is the first pact, says the UN, to “recognise that grassroots resource-users are central to identifying and implementing solutions”; to involve local women as well as men in the development process; to stress the need for an integrated approach, and to call for a global mechanism to mobilise resources through partnerships. (At the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, the convention was singled out as a key instrument for poverty eradication in dryland rural areas.)

In 1995, the World Bank asked John D. Liu to record the early stages of its Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project for a film called Investing in People. That film was about initiatives that were changing the bank`s focus from large infrastructural projects to ones in which poor people living in remote parts of the world would directly benefit.

Over the following decade, Liu led the Environment Education Media Project on numerous other visits to the Loess Plateau, which is considered the cradle of Chinese civilisation. Approximately the size of France, the plateau is 640,000 kilometers square, situated in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River, and stretching over parts of seven provinces. Its name comes from the powdery, mineral-rich, windborne loess soil that characterises the area – and which gave the Yellow River its name.

Settled agriculture is thought to have emerged 9,500 to 10,000 years ago on the Loess Plateau. Throughout the plateau`s long and complex history, human activity produced a great civilisation, while also ecologically destroying the region. It came to be known as the most eroded place on earth. Silt raised the riverbed, making it more prone to flooding – flooding that often preceded drought and famine. The Yellow River, which has flooded more than 1,500 times in recorded history, became known as “China`s Sorrow”. But each time it flooded, the people rebuilt.

The ecological devastation of the region took place over generations with the cutting of forests and removal of vegetation cover, leading to soil erosion, disruption of the water cycle and the disappearance of wild plants and animals. A cycle of poverty and environmental destruction ensued, a cycle that fed on itself.

In the 1990s, the Chinese government decided to restore what took 10,000 years to destroy. Thanks to a complex programme of watershed management – formulated by the World Bank in cooperation with the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources and the local people — an astounding transformation has occurred within just 10 years. Ecological improvements have shown tremendous promise, and local people`s income and quality of life have improved.

Planting on steep slopes has been banned, as has tree-cutting and grazing of goats and sheep. Farmers are responsible for maintaining tree-planting areas and terraced fields, to reduce erosion. Sand dunes have been stabilised, and grasses and bushes are taking hold again. Small dams are helping to restore productive croplands in eroded gullies, and perennial crops (such as orchard fruits) are reducing the disruption of soil cover and helping to diversify local economies.

The successful start to the ambitious rehabilitation of the Loess Plateau has significant implications for other places on earth which suffer from large-scale environmental degradation as a result of human impact, and can serve as model for those regions.

The plateau`s tale, Liu believes, provides the kind of critical knowledge the world needs now if it is to envision a sustainable future for a human race living in harmony and sharing the planet`s resources. With support from several development agencies, he has collected more than 100 hours of videotape of the region, its people and the ongoing rehabilitation effort. A fraction of those tapes will make up his latest film project, China`s Sorrow, Earth`s Hope.

The Author: Maryann Bird is a London-based journalist

Still image taken from John D. Liu’s film China`s Sorrow, Earth`s Hope

Isabel Hilton: What attracted you to the Loess Plateau project?

John D. Liu: We started a decade ago [with the World Bank] to document it and gradually, by returning each year, we have seen such astonishing changes. Gradually it became clear that this was a representation of the fundamental information that determines whether ecosystems survive or collapse. Human civilisations develop, and in development they degrade their environments to the point that they can no longer compensate and they collapse. When the ecosystem collapses, it takes the civilisation with it. This is the perfect example.

This is the cradle of Chinese civilisation — the largest ethnic group on the planet — and it`s fundamentally ecologically destroyed. What is astonishing is that anybody bothered to try to rehabilitate it. It`s counterintuitive to stand on a mountain and not see any vegetation for 360 degrees around and imagine that there is anything you can do about it. Our normal preconceived idea is that it`s too bad, that civilisation destroyed itself. It`s over. There`s nothing we can do.

When we started to film this rehabilitation of the Loess Plateau, that was definitely how we felt. We thought it was definitely a bridge too far. Environmental understanding is all well and good, but this is so degraded. How can you do anything? There was a tremendous sense that this could not be done. Thankfully, the project organisers were not distracted by that. Now we have a functional model of how such ecosystems can be rehabilitated.

IH: What is the biggest obstacle ahead?

The twelfth conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC COP 12) is being held in Kenya`s capital, Nairobi, from 6-17 November 2006. Delegates from more than 180 nations are gathering to discuss climate change – one of the biggest challenges facing the human race. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Africa will be the continent most impacted by global warming – and human activity is largely responsible. But what role will Africa play in the talks?

Almost all African countries have signed and ratified the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. But the continent is still poised to suffer worst from the impacts of climate change. Campaigners are holding world governments responsible for not taking adequate measures to reduce their levels of greenhouse-gas emissions. A failure to act on emissions is already adversely affecting many countries in Africa, resulting in water scarcity, drought, persistent floods and other terrible consequences.

This year, Kenya experienced a period of extreme drought. Thousands of people lost their property and some lost their lives. The country has barely recovered from the terrible floods of 1997, but meteorologists say that El Ni%26ntilde;o floods may hit in the New Year. The snowcaps of Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro are melting at a rate unprecedented in history, leading to local water shortages. Malaria has also increased in highland areas, where it was not prevalent before.

The Turkana region of northwest Kenya – some of the most dry and inhospitable territory on earth – has felt the brunt of climate change`s effects on Kenya. The Turkana people are pastoralists whose way of life is adapted to the harsh environment. They are constantly on the move in search of waterholes and available pasture on which to graze their animals during the dusty nine months between one rainy season and the next. The rainy season, known as the akipiro, may arrive any time between the months of March and June. But this year, the akipiro has not been sufficient to allow for the full regeneration of pasture and the replenishment of waterholes. Gzahegn Kebede, Oxfam`s chief programmes manager in Kenya, says most communities in northern Kenya do not have the capacity to cope with abnormal weather conditions. “Drought has been more damaging to households in northern parts of Kenya than any form of protracted conflict,” says Kebede. When it rains, serious flooding can be disastrous for people living on drought-parched land.

photo by Mike

A recent forum of Kenyan civil society groups argued that African countries are suffering the consequences of “luxury emissions” from industrialised countries, while they are still far from achieving industrialisation themselves. Grace Akumu, from Climate Network Africa, says: “At the [UNFCC] conference we do not want diversionary measures. When Africans are dying because of luxury emissions emanating from industrialised countries, we want serious business.” She adds: “It is a question of life and death.”

There is much to be done to make a more equitable agreement on climate change. Discussing the implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to advance sustainable development and equality for poor countries, Akumu feels Africa has been let down. “Africa had only five [CDM] projects by September this year, while the remaining 500 projects are in Europe and the other developing countries in Latin America and Asia,” she says. Akumu argues that African governments should take the lead in opposing similarly inequitable development programmes.

One of the key UN Millennium Development Goals is to halve the world`s population of people living in hunger by 2015. But there are fears that this could be made impossible by climate change. Global warming`s main culprits should provide resources to help the societies that will suffer the most to adapt. But the responsibility should not just lie in the hands of rich nations. As Jesse Mugambi of the World Council of Churches argues: “Our climate is in crisis; it is our survival but also our responsibility. Despite the role that should be played by industrialised countries, it is our responsibility to deal with the problem of global warming that is with us.” Mugambi says that any agreement following 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol`s term is up, should involve special funds to help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change. He says that helping with adaptation is not a question of charity but one of equity. Since developed countries have been able to achieve growth at the expense of others, it is only fair to compensate the poorest who are suffering as a result.

Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid told me that British campaigners are putting pressure on the UK government to compensate poor countries for the damage done by greenhouse gas emissions in industrialised countries. “Tony Blair needs to put his money and policies where his mouth is,” says Pendleton. He adds that industrialised nations should support the development of clean, low-carbon technologies in poor countries.

Despite efforts made to engage Africa in climate politics, there is little in terms of implementation of climate-change measures on the continent. African countries should now take the lead in according climate change its rightful importance in the public sphere.

Rachel Odengo is a reporter for the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation

The first sandstorm of autumn 2006 blew up in Alashan`s Left Banner, an administrative division of Inner Mongolia, on August 27. Alashan (or Alxa), in the far west of this autonomous Mongol region of China, has been the focus of considerable attention in recent years for just that reason: it is one of the sources of Asia`s sandstorms.

Official data show that Alashan`s desert area expanded from 92.71% of its total land in 1996 to 93.14% in 2004, an increase of 0.43 percentage points — and every tenth of a point represents another 200 square kilometres of infertile land. Alashan`s three deserts — the Badain Jaran, the Tengger and the Ulan Buh – are gradually merging, already meeting in three places in Left Banner and four in the Right Banner locality.

“Increasing numbers of both people and livestock, and over-development of agriculture, are at the root of Alashan`s environmental degradation,” says Tsang Buch, chief of the Alashan League Forestry and Desert-Control Bureau.

Historical data put Alashan`s population during the early years of the People`s Republic (founded in 1949) at a little less than 35,000. Now, it is 212,000 – a six-fold leap (in contrast to a 2.4-fold population increase nationally over the same period).

Due in large part to pre-1949 conscription by warlords in Ningxia and the famines of the 1950s and `60s, an influx of outsiders — of different ethnicity — moved into Alashan. They had an unprecedented impact on Alashan`s grassland culture, and the population growth led to an increase in the number of livestock.

Currently, the ideal livestock population for the league`s grasslands would be the equivalent of 700,000 sheep, but figures from July 2006 show that the actual figure is equivalent to two million sheep. And yet the herdspeople believe even that figure is an underestimate. In the 1990s, the village of Helan in Left Banner raised 30,000 sheep, but government statistics showed only a third of that number.

To relieve pressure on the grasslands and allow the environment to recover, Alashan launched a succession of large-scale relocations of its inhabitants to the newly founded towns of Xitan and Manshuitan in Left Banner in 1989. The keeping of livestock was banned in the areas from which the people were moved.

In January 1995, the league`s then-party secretary, Fu Laiwang, put forward a “relocation strategy” consisting of moving herders from their pastures to oases and towns to work in the private sector. Official reports show that, to the end of 2005, the league had relocated 19,082 people, and plans for 2006-10 will see a further 21,754 moved. That means that by 2010, 40,836 people — 20% of the 2005 population of 212,000 and 80% of the herding population – will have been relocated.

But solving the environmental issues has given rise to new social problems. The relocations have left large numbers of former herders in poverty.

In 1999, the Left Banner government decided to reforest pastures in the Helan Mountain Nature Reserve and relocate the local population. Some 6,000 locals were moved, 230,000 head of livestock disposed of and 230 acres of land converted.

Each relocated person received an RMB 500 resettlement allowance, with compensation of RMB 1,000 for each sheep pen demolished, RMB 140 per square metre for brick houses and RMB 100 per square meter for mud houses. (The RMB is now valued at roughly 7.8 to the US dollar.) Those in the first two rounds of relocation received RMB 4.95 per mu (one-fifteenth of a hectare) of land per year, for five years. In the third round, in 2001, that RMB 4.95 was replaced with 5.5 kilograms of past-its-best grain. After relocation, the herders – now farmers – made most of their income from planting crops, but (including compensation) only earned one third of their original incomes.

When I visited Sumurtuu Gacha, former herder Tumurbaatar was tending to the chickens in his yard. He said that, on leaving the grasslands in 2005, his family had sold 400 head of sheep and has relied since then on government subsidies to survive. His family of seven will receive over RMB 100,000 in compensation annually, for a five-year period.

Tumurbaatar worries about the future. “What happens in five years? We`re not allowed to herd, and we`ve no land to farm. The government hasn`t arranged any work for us. All we can do is raise a few chickens and ducks. The village is full of people like us.”

Yang Mudan, deputy professor of economics at Alashan`s communist party school, stressed the problem of herders returning, or even becoming vagrants. A 2004 Environmental Quality Evaluation in Alashan found 34,000 herders living below the poverty line, with 4,700 in absolute poverty. Many areas were no longer able to support either man or livestock, and 20,000 herders had moved away, become environmental refugees.

The deputy governor of Alashan, Gong Jiadong, admits that “ensuring work for the herders is essential for successful relocation. Simply handing out compensation doesn`t work.”

Alashan`s administrative office decided to focus on encouraging private businesses to absorb those who are relocated. In early 2006, the “relocation strategy” was adjusted, with the focus shifting from oases to towns and cities. At the same time, Alashan`s drive towards urbanisation and industrialisation become more apparent.

“Economic growth in Alashan is quite fast, 30% a year on average,” according to the head of Alashan`s Environmental Testing Station, Taao Gerrela. “Most of that growth comes from industry.” A further 21,754 people are to be moved for environmental reasons between 2006 and 2010, but Yang Mudan believes it is still not certain that Alashan`s economy can absorb them.

Meanwhile, rapid industrialisation is causing more pollution and damaging the environment. Severe pollution has lead to Alashan`s industrial centers – the towns of Lantai and Wusitai in Left Banner – being placed under strict supervision by the State Environmental Protection Administration and the Ministry of Land and Resources. The 600-kilometre journey from Bayan to Ejina Banner runs almost entirely through desolate gravel and sand desert.

How should the successes and failures of environmental policy in Alashan be explained?

Grasslands expert Liu Shurun is firmly opposed to enclosures and relocations, believing that it is not beneficial to the grass, to the people or the livestock – it is simply moving from one extreme to another. “Livestock, in appropriate numbers, are good for the grasslands – you can`t have grasslands without them,” he says.

Sheep eat 700 types of grass, and livestock eating and walking on the grass both stimulates growth and controls it. It is not harmful, and without animal activity, the grass grows out of control. Also, after enclosure, grasslands are no longer fertilised by livestock excrement and over time only one or two species of grass will survive, homogenising that population.

Liu points out that inappropriate environmental policies are a result of a farming nation`s failure to appreciate herding culture — an unthinking application of Han Chinese experience. The enforced practice in Alashan can only be ascribed to government ignorance and an unchecked spread of the popular view of development. Liu goes as far as to say that herding has been the natural choice in Alashan for thousands of years, and that grassland society should be restructured around a nomadic system.

“For years now,” said the Alashan SEE Ecology Association`s deputy secretary, Deng Yi, “the government has been doing its utmost to protect the environment, but you can see that when separating people and the environment in order to allow the environment to recover is very effective. When livestock is kept out by fences, the pressure on nature is lessened. In fact, that fence is dead and people are alive, camels are big and sheep are small – that is to say, you can`t change people, and if the herders` behaviour doesn`t change, any measures will only be for show.”

Song Jun, deputy head of the ecology association, believes that the scarcity of government successes in environmental protection is due to the top-down nature of implementation. The government designs the rules of the game and implements the projects – but it is not an interested party, a stakeholder.

Song believes that environmental protection should be commercialised, with interested parties identified, the government putting preferential policies in place, and environmental protection then implemented by the market. The herders should also participate, becoming beneficiaries of the ecology industry.

Zhou Jigang, formerly of Economy magazine and Hong Kong`s Phoenix Weekly, focuses on in-depth reporting about macroeconomics and current affairs. His investigations into radioactive pollution in Baotou and China`s underground industries both caused considerable controversy in China.

China`s many varieties of grassland cover an area of 1 billion acres. They account for 41% of the country`s total area, and are 3.3 times the size of its cropland. Yet these vast grasslands cannot feed the animals they are home to, which together account for one-third of China`s livestock. Many years of overgrazing have led to the deterioration of 90% of China`s grasslands, giving rise to environmental problems such as sandstorms.

Ecologists sometimes refer to the “10% rule”: that 10% of the energy of a primary producer should be passed on to a secondary producer. This means that under good environmental conditions, the world`s green vegetation totals about 200 billion tonnes (pure carbon), of which around 10% will be eaten by herbivorous animals. The dry weight of vegetation on China`s grasslands is 300 million tonnes, leaving about 30 million tonnes for grazing if the ecosystem were undamaged. But the methods currently used to calculate grassland capacity are flawed, and overgrazing is widespread. Actual numbers of livestock are far above even %26lsquo;theoretical` thresholds, and the grasslands have inevitably deteriorated. How can this pressure be relieved and the grasslands allowed to recover?

The answer lies not with the grasslands, but in China’s cropfields. Aside from producing 500 million tonnes of food, China`s 167 million acres of farmland also produce over 700 million tonnes of straw. Corn, wheat and rice make up 38%, 22% and 19% of the total straw, respectively. Other crops produce smaller proportions, such as legumes (4.8%), tubers (2.8%) and rapeseed (8.3%). Of this straw, 94.9% can be used as fodder. In fact, all of China`s straw could provide 22 times as much fodder as the grasslands can reasonably provide. And using technology to double the value of the fodder could feed all of China’s livestock.

Unlike on the grasslands, if straw is eaten by sheep and cattle it can be returned to the land in the form of manure or residue from biogas production. Not only will the land be unharmed, but it will also be fertilised. Livestock production should be moved south, from the arid grasslands of traditional herding areas in Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the food-producing provinces of Shandong, Henan, Hebei, Sichuan and Hunan.

China has 4.7 billion chickens, and an annual demand of 3.7 chickens per person per year. But farmers squeeze chickens into wire cages and overuse additives to fatten them up as quickly as possible. This makes them ready for slaughter in 45 days, as opposed to the 300 days of a free-range chicken. These unnatural meat-production methods are contributing to obesity in our cities. They are aiding the spread of avian flu that endangers food safety and public health, and are inviting criticism of China`s record on animal-welfare issues. The wide open spaces poultry need are not to be found in farmyards, much less in wire cages; the space is out on the grasslands. Chickens present no danger to the grassland, and can help control pests. In the future, the huge quantities of chicken and eggs that China needs should come from the grasslands.

China has seen rapid economic growth since the start of the reform era in 1979. Annual GDP growth averaged 9.6% between 1979 and 2004. In 2004, GDP growth reached 10.1%, an achievement that attracted global attention. Over this period the population has grown sharply; huge quantities of resources have been consumed; environmental pollution has worsened; ecosystems have been wrecked; and vast areas of land have been lost. This has given rise to all manner of environmental problems. The economy has grown, but the environment has suffered. Over the past 27 years, China has adhered to an economic model characterised by high levels of pollution, emissions and power consumption, combined with low levels of efficiency. It has repeated the “pollute first, clean up later” model that Western nations adhered to during their early stages of capital accumulation.

The Tang-dynasty poet Du Fu once wrote: “Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure,” yet we can only reflect that while our country endures, our hills and rivers have been devastated. Environmental degradation harms public health, affects social stability and holds back China`s sustainable economic growth. It is a major problem, one which threatens not only the development but also the survival of the Chinese people.

Decreases in cultivated land

Remote-sensing surveys show that China`s cultivated land area plummeted between 1988 and 2000, from 1,307,400 square kilometres in 1991 to 1,282,400 square kilometres in 2000 – from 1.8 mu (0.0012 square kilometres) per head to 1.5 mu (0.0010 square kilometres) per head. Construction accounted for 56.6% of the decrease, 21% of land was forested, 16% was flooded and 4% became grassland.

During the 1990s, the number of cities in China`s east increased from 315 to 521. Each year, an average of 767.42 square kilometres is built on, with this figure growing at an average of 5.76% every year. The land around Beijing has borne the brunt of this, with the city expanding by about 20 square kilometres per year. Besides urban construction, the effects of industry and mining account are also significant. Statistics from the provinces of Jilin, Jiangsu, Fujian, Henan, Hubei and Hunan show that land given over to mining development increased 1.96 times between 1986 and 2000, and the land area that was damaged increased by 4.71 times.

Over this period some cultivated land was added: 24.2% of it by reclaiming woodland, 66% from grasslands and 1.9% from bodies of water. But this was all obtained at the expense of natural ecosystems. Over the last 40 years, land reclamation has lead to the loss of 11,900 square kilometres of coastal shallows, with industry taking more than 10000 square kilometres of coastal wetlands. Half of China`s coastal shallows are now completely destroyed. And despite this, the trend of overall loss of cultivated land has not been reversed.

Where the loss of cultivated land is due to a change in usage, the soil itself at least remains, though sealed below concrete and asphalt. However, soil that is swept away by wind and water is lost forever. In 1999, 3.56 million square kilometres of land were affected by erosion due to wind, water and freeze-thaw cycles. Of this land, 82.53% lies in China`s west. The country has 1.74 million square kilometres of desert spread across 30 provinces, over 90% of which is in the west. An astonishing 1.6 billion tonnes of soil is swept into the Yellow River every year, approximately 400 million tonnes of which is deposited on the riverbed downstream, causing it to rise between eight and 10 centimetres annually. During the past 40 years, the riverbed in the lower reaches of the Yellow River has risen by two metres, and on average it stands three to five metres higher than the land that it flows through. In places it is as much as 10 metres higher. The Yangtze River basin also loses 2.4 billion tonnes of soil per year.

With the loss of soil, valuable nutrients are lost. In the Yellow River basin alone, about 40 million tonnes of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are lost annually – more than the total consumption of China`s fertiliser industry in 2003 (39.9 million tonnes). A conservative estimate, factoring in soil lost to water erosion in the Yangtze River basin and wind erosion in arid and semi-arid regions, puts annual loss at five times that figure. The lost nutrition is replaced artificially, atmospherically and with ore, resulting in serious environmental pollution. China`s government should take urgent and effective measures to prevent the further loss of soil.

Photo by vailpost

The threat to China`s forests

According to State Forestry Administration figures, forestry coverage in China rose from 12.98% in 1986 to 16.55% in 1999, a growth of 33%. But we need to be clear about what went into those figures. Many areas adjusted the canopy density rate used to define a “forest” downwards from 0.3 to 0.2. Bushes and shrubs were also added to the figures. It is possible that the amount of forest did not actually increase – only the figures did. In China no old-growth forest remains, and forests over a century old are extremely rare. Even if the above figures are accurate, China`s huge population means that the per capita average is extremely low – only 21.3% of the global average. In terms of volume, China has only 12.5% of the global per capita average of 72 cubic metres.

It should be noted that although central government`s investment in forestry has been gradually increasing, forest management policy`s disregard for the environment has led to a potential threat from weak and unsustainable single-species forests. Between the 1950s and 1990s, the forested area affected by disease and pests increased six-fold. This increase was greatest in the 1990s, 196% of the increase during the 1980s. If China`s vast subtropical mountainous areas were sealed off and human interference reduced, their broadleaf evergreen forests would recover. But tragically, paper manufacturers have felled natural forests in order to plant the invasive eucalyptus tree. Intervention by the authorities has been too weak to prevent this destruction, and some local forestry authorities have even profited from collusion with interest groups.

China`s water crisis

China consumed a total of 556.7 billion cubic metres of water in 2001, 13.2 billion cubic metres more than in 1998. Most of this increase came not from replenishable surface water, but from groundwater obtained by drilling – water that should be left for future generations. Water usage rates for major river basins such as the Huai River, Liao River and Yellow River have reached 60%; the rate in the Hai River is 90% and for the Hei River the rate is 110%. The internationally-recognised warning level is between 30% and 40%.

An inefficient use of water resources and a lack of water conservation awareness mean that even this massive overuse does not meet our so-called “needs.” A total of 60% of China`s 669 cities face water scarcity, and of these, 110 face serious water shortages. Around 60 areas suffer from lowered groundwater levels, with a zone measuring 30,000 to 50,000 square kilometres in the North China Plain being the world`s largest. Over-extraction of groundwater not only happens in China`s arid north, but also in the water-rich south. Subsidence affects 46 cities in 16 provinces, including Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanxi. In south China`s Suzhou, 180 square kilometres of land has subsided over 60 centimetres since 1949. In Wuxi, 59.5 square kilometres has subsided by the same amount, and 43 square kilometres in Changzhou.

The relatively water-rich Sanjiang Plain, in northeast China, has also seen a large-scale extraction of water and soil degradation, has led to the loss of wetlands. In the past decade, the northern part of the plain lost 105 square kilometres of wetland. The Songnen Plain and Liao River delta have lost 1,820 square kilometres and 230 square kilometres hectares respectively.

But China’s water crisis is not a purely underground phenomena, it also manifests itself in the loss of glaciers on high plateaus. Glaciers are China`s “solid reservoirs” and an important source of water for arid regions. Global warming caused glaciers north of the Sichuan-Tibet highway in Nyingtri (Lingzhi) to shrink by 100 metres between 1986 and 1998. This retreat will directly impact the progress of the western branch of China`s South to North Water Transfer project.

The destruction of China’s ecosystems

There are ten main types of land ecosystem in the world, and China has nine: tropical rainforest, evergreen broadleaf forests, deciduous broadleaf forests, conifer forest, mangrove forest, grasslands, alpine meadows, desert and tundra. The only ecosystem it lacks is the African savannah, though regions such as the Hunsandake, Keerqin, Mu-us and Hunlun Buir have the same structure and function. China is therefore the only country in the world which may feature all of the world’s ecosystems.

But unfortunately, every one of these ecosystems is suffering. Aside from China`s well-documented loss of forests and expanding deserts, alpine meadows, temperate grasslands and mangrove forests are also being seriously degraded. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is one of the worlds largest, highest and most unique ecosystems. But long-standing over-grazing and misuse has caused serious degradation of its alpine meadows, mainly demonstrated by the drop in hay production from 300 kilograms per mu (667 square metres) in the 1960s, to 100 kilograms today. This destruction is also attested to in the region`s increasing mole-rat infestation: from eight to 10 mole rats per hectare in the past, to more than 30 today.

Ninety percent of China’s usable grasslands display varying degrees of damage, and this area is expanding by 20,000 square kilometres per year. Of this lost grassland, 55% is being used for cultivation, and 30% has simply become unusable. The majority of grasslands in the west of China are over-used; in Xinjiang the rate of overuse is 121%, in Ningxia is 72% and in Inner Mongolia is 66%.

Mangrove forests are globally recognised as one of the world`s most productive and diverse ecosystems. China’s mangrove forests are mostly located to the south of the Fujian coast and at one time covered 2,500 square kilometres. In the 1950s, they covered 500 square kilometres. Now they only cover 150 square kilometres. Since 1949, exploitation, felling and inefficient usage of coastal mangrove forests has brought unprecedented destruction, especially in the past 20 years.

The UN’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) lists 740 endangered species. Of these, 189 are in China, around a quarter of the total. Between 4,000 and 5,000 of China`s plant species are endangered or approaching endangerment, from 15 to 20% of the country`s total number of plant species. Environmental changes and the fragmentation of habitats are causing this loss of biodiversity. For instance, in the natural forests of Nenjiang county in northeast China`s Heilongjiang province, endangered species were distributed across 240 different locations, with an average size of 0.8 square kilometres. By 2000 this had fragmented to 343 different locations with an average size of 0.68 square kilometres.

NEXT: How can China strengthen environmental protection?

Jiang Gaoming is a chief researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences` Institute of Botany and a doctoral candidate tutor, vice secretary-general of UNESCO`s China-MAB Committee and director of the China Environmental Culture Promotion Association. He is recognized for his introduction of the concepts of “urban vegetation” and “using natural forces to restore China`s ecosystems.”

Jixi Gao is chief specialist and head of the Institute of Ecology at the ChinaAcademy of Environmental Sciences. He has long been involved in the evaluation of functional ecologies, environmental assessments of regional development strategies and research into environmental pollution testing.

In Beijing, the weather forecast says that more sandstorms are on the way. The capital was hit by four sandstorms in March, and even Shanghai was recently smothered by dust clouds from the north. Television reports now describe these events as “sandy weather”, rather than “sandstorms”. But whatever you call them, they are becoming ever more frequent visitors to Beijing in springtime.

While everyone is cursing the weather, I find myself worrying: how many tonnes of soil are being lost? And how long will it be before there is nowhere in China for plants to take root? Academics argue to what extent these sandstorms are “imports” from Mongolia and the former Soviet Republics, or whether they are the “domestic” products of the arid deserts and damaged grasslands of China’s west. But either way, there is no denying the degree of environmental degradation in western China over the last three decades. Regardless of whether the capital`s weather comes from beyond its borders, China needs to put measures in place to restore the grasslands and reduce the risk of sandstorms.

Sixty billion yuan has been invested in projects to control the sandstorms that are hitting northeastern China. Tree-planting projects have also been running for 30 years across north China. But why haven’t they worked? And more importantly – what will?

To answer this question, let`s first consider the difference between trees and grass. Ecologists look at vegetation in terms of its quantity and the area it covers. In China`s deserts and grasslands, grass is by far the most common form of vegetation, followed by scrub and then trees. On the Xilinguole grasslands, for example, trees account for only 0.87% of the total vegetation. The current strategy – to plant trees to help with problems caused by a lack of grass – contradicts principles of ecological management. In fact, our repeated calls for change have now resulted in more attention being placed on scrub. Scientists agree that millions of years ago these areas were once covered with trees, but this is the distant past – no amount of spending will bring ancient forests back. In fact, grass is much more effective than trees at stopping sandstorms, and it does not need to be planted. Simply protect it, and it will grow. Trees use up groundwater, while grass uses only rainwater. Grass is denser and fixes the soil in place; it also keeps the ground moist by retaining precipitation, meaning there is no dust to blow away – something trees cannot do.

Secondly, we need to consider where we are focusing our sandstorm-control efforts. Currently, our work ends up being concentrated in areas that are easy to reach and monitor: regions that are accessible by road. Lots of money has been spent, with some good results. But nobody asks questions about the very remote, ecologically-degraded areas that are less accessible, but have more responsibility for sandstorms. I once asked a local forestry official why they were not using aerial sowing techniques to rehabilitate these areas. His answer was simple: “Who would notice?” Current schemes are designed to be seen by the officials who approve their funding. Do not get too excited by those recovered grasslands and forests you see alongside the highways; they only cover 10% of the total affected area. The other 90% causes the continuing sandstorms.

Thirdly, we need to look at the relationship between man and nature. Arid and semi-arid areas can only support one or two people per square kilometre. In China, population density in these areas is over 10 people per square kilometre. The original inhabitants were nomadic, and would move in search of grass and water, giving the grasslands a chance to recover. But now they have settled, increasing the pressure on the environment – and inevitably damaging it. Measures are needed to move this scattered population into towns and cities; funds for ecological management should be used to this end.

Fourthly, we must reconsider the relationship between ecological management and poverty relief. Sandstorms are caused by the consumption of grass by livestock, by the clearing of grasslands for crops and by deforestation. At present, sandstorm-control programmes have little regard for the lives of local people. The money that is being spent brings them scant benefit, and only helps the people that receive the funding directly. My rough calculations show that spending on major sandstorm control projects amounts to around 326 yuan (US$42) per mu (666.67 square metres). In the south of Inner Mongolia that works out to almost 500,000 yuan (around US$64,705) per household. If as little as one-tenth of that figure was actually spent on getting the locals to give up their livestock and plant trees, there would be no danger of sandstorms. And the locals would still end up better off – at present, none of this funding reaches them, and most struggle to earn 10,000 yuan (US$1,294) per year. In one part of Inner Mongolia, a fortune has been spent on restoring the grasslands, but no one can come up with the 10,000 yuan needed to retain it.

Finally, we need to ask questions about the relationship between China`s east and west. At present, much of China’s livestock is in the west, in ecologically-vulnerable areas such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. Ideally, these animals would eat straw, which is a by-product of agriculture. But all of the straw is in the east, in provinces such as Shandong, Henan and Hebei, which have a far greater production capacity for animal fodder than the grasslands – 50 to 100 times greater, in fact. This holds back the development of livestock farming. Straw in the east is simply burnt off, while degraded ecosystems in the west struggle to support livestock. The largest source of income for the west is funding for reforestation and environmental protection projects, with highly marked-up animal products coming second. These products cost five to 10 times as much to produce than they would in agricultural areas with better conditions. China`s west should not develop its animal farming further, or sooner or later the grasslands will be grazed bare, leaving the rest of the country to pick up the bill for its recovery.

Can China stop the sandstorms? If we do not take heed, maybe not. Of course, it may not be too long before all the soil is blown away. That would put an end to the capital`s sandstorms, but it might also put an end to Beijing.

Jiang Gaoming is a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences` Institute of Botany. He is also vice secretary-general of the UNESCO China-MAB (Man and the Biosphere) Committee and a member of the UNESCO MAB Urban Group.

Homepage photo by Ben

1%26deg; warmer

Nebraska isn`t at the top of most tourists` to-do lists. However, this dreary expanse of impossibly flat plains sits in the middle of one of the most productive agricultural systems on Earth. Beef and corn dominate the economy, and the Sand Hills region — where low, grassy hillocks rise up from the flatlands — has some of the best cattle ranching in the whole United States. But scratch beneath the grass and you will find, as the name suggests, not soil but sand. These innocuous-looking hills were once desert, part of an immense system of sand dunes that spread across the Great Plains from Texas in the south to the Canadian prairies in the north. Six-thousand years ago, when temperatures were about 1%26deg; C warmer than today in the US, these deserts may have looked much as the Sahara does today. As global warming bites, the western US could once again be plagued by perennial drought — devastating agriculture and driving out human inhabitants on a scale far larger than the 1930s “Dust Bowl” exodus.

On the other side of the Atlantic, today`s hottest desert could be seeing a wetter future in the one-degree world. At the same time as sand dunes were blowing across the western US, the central Sahara was a veritable Garden of Eden as rock paintings of elephants, giraffes and buffalo, also dating from 6,000 years ago, attest. On the borders of what is today Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon, the prehistoric Lake Mega-Chad spread over an area only slightly smaller than the Caspian Sea does now. Could a resurgent north African monsoon drive rainfall back into the Sahara in a one-degree world? Models suggest it could.

Also in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro will be losing the last of its snow and ice as temperatures rise, leaving the entire continent ice-free for the first time in at least 11,000 years.

The Alps, too, will be melting, releasing deadly giant landslides in Europe as thawing permafrost removes the “glue” that holds the peaks together. In the Arctic, temperatures will rise far higher than the one-degree global average, continuing the rapid decline in sea ice that scientists have already observed. This spells bad news for polar bears, walruses and ringed seals — species that are effectively pushed off the top of the planet as warming shrinks cold areas closer and closer to the pole.

Indeed, it is the ecological effects of warming that may be most apparent at one degree. Critically, this temperature rise may wipe out the majority of the world`s tropical coral reefs, devastating marine biodiversity. Most of Australia`s Great Barrier Reef will be dead.

2%26deg; warmer

The health of an economy cannot be separated from that of its natural support systems. More than half the world`s people depend directly on croplands, rangelands, forests and fisheries for their livelihoods. Many more depend on forest products, leather goods, cotton and wool textiles, and food processing for their jobs.

A strategy for eradicating poverty will not succeed if an economy`s environmental support systems are collapsing. No matter how carefully crafted and well-implemented, a poverty-eradication programme will not succeed if croplands are eroding and harvests are shrinking, if water tables are falling and wells are going dry, if rangelands are turning to desert and livestock are dying, if fisheries are collapsing, if forests are shrinking, and if rising temperatures are scorching crops.

Restoring the earth will take an enormous international effort — one even larger and more demanding than the often-cited Marshall Plan that helped rebuild war-torn Europe. And such an initiative must be undertaken at wartime speed, lest environmental deterioration translates into economic decline, just as it did for earlier civilisations that violated nature`s thresholds and ignored its deadlines.

We can roughly estimate how much it will cost to reforest the earth, protect its topsoil, restore rangelands and fisheries, stabilise water tables and protect biological diversity. Where data and information are lacking, we can fill in with assumptions. The goal is not to have a set of precise numbers, but a set of reasonable estimates for an Earth-restoration budget.

In calculating the cost of reforestation, the focus is on developing countries, since the forested area is already expanding in the northern hemisphere`s industrial countries. We calculate that meeting the growing fuel-wood demand in these countries will require an estimated 55 million additional hectares of forested area.

Anchoring soils and restoring hydrological stability would require roughly another 100 million hectares located in thousands of watersheds in developing countries. Beyond this, an additional 30 million hectares may be needed to produce timber, paper and other forest products. Only a small share of this tree planting is likely to come from plantations. Much will be on the outskirts of villages, along field boundaries, roads, on small plots of marginal land, and on denuded hillsides.

The big success story in addressing deforestation is South Korea, which, over the last 40 years, has reforested its once denuded mountains and hills, using local labour. Other countries — such as China — have tried extensive reforestation, but mostly under more arid conditions and with much less success.

Turkey has an ambitious grassroots reforestation programme, as does Kenya, where women`s groups, led by Nobel peace prize winner, Wangari Maathai, have planted up to 30 million trees.

If seedlings cost US$40 (%26pound;19) per thousand, as the World Bank estimates, and if the typical planting rate is roughly 2,000 trees per hectare, then seedlings cost $80 per hectare. Labour costs for planting trees are high, but since much would consist of locally mobilised volunteers, we can estimate roughly $400 per hectare, including seedlings and labour. With 150 million hectares to be planted over the next decade, this will come to roughly 15 million hectares per year at $400 each, for a total annual expenditure of $6 billion.

Conserving the earth`s topsoil by reducing erosion to the rate of new soil formation or below, involves two principal steps. One is to retire the highly erodible land that cannot sustain cultivation — the estimated 10% of the world`s cropland that accounts for perhaps half of all erosion. For the United States, that has meant retiring 14 million hectares (nearly 35 million acres), at a cost of close to $50 per acre or $125 per hectare, for an annual cost approaching $2 billion.

The second initiative consists of adopting conservation practices on the remaining land that is subject to excessive erosion — that is, erosion that exceeds the natural rate of new soil formation. The initiative includes incentives to encourage farmers to adopt conservation practices, such as contour farming, strip cropping and, increasingly, minimum-till or no-till farming.

In expanding these estimates to cover the world, it is assumed that roughly 10% of cropland is highly erodible and should be planted to grass or trees before the topsoil is lost and it becomes barren land. In both the US and China, the two leading food-producing countries — which account for one-third of the world`s grain harvest — the official goal is to retire one-tenth of all cropland.

In Europe, it probably would be somewhat less than 10%, but in Africa and the Andean countries it could be substantially higher. For the world as a whole, converting 10% of cropland that is highly erodible to grass or trees seems a reasonable goal. Since this costs roughly $2 billion in the US — which represents one-eighth of the world`s cropland area — the total for the world would be roughly $16 billion a year.

Assuming that the need for erosion-control practices for the rest of the world is similar to that in the US, we again multiply the US expenditure by eight to get a total of $8 billion for the world as a whole. The two components together — $16 billion for retiring highly erodible land and $8 billion for adopting conservation practices — give an annual total for the world of $24 billion.

For cost data on rangeland protection and restoration, we turn to the United Nations plan of action to combat desertification. This plan, which focuses on the world`s dryland regions — containing nearly 90% of all rangeland — estimates that it would cost roughly $183 billion over a 20-year restoration period, or $9 billion per year. The key restoration measures include improved rangeland management, financial incentives to eliminate overstocking, and revegetation with appropriate rest periods, when grazing would be banned.

This is a costly undertaking, but every dollar invested in rangeland restoration yields a return of $2.50 in income from the increased productivity of the ecosystem. From a societal point of view, countries with large pastoral populations, where the rangeland deterioration is concentrated, are invariably among the poorest.

The alternative to action — ignoring the deterioration — brings not only a loss of land productivity, but, ultimately, a loss of livelihood and millions of refugees, some migrating to nearby cities and others moving to other countries.

The restoration of oceanic fisheries centres primarily on the establishment of a worldwide network of marine reserves, which would cover roughly 30% of the ocean`s surface. For this exercise, we use detailed calculations by the conservation biology group at Cambridge University. Their estimated range of expenditures centres on $13 billion per year.

For wildlife protection, the bill is higher. The World Parks Congress estimates that the annual shortfall in funding needed to manage and to protect existing areas designated as parks, comes to roughly $25 billion a year. Additional areas needed — including those encompassing the biologically diverse hotspots not yet included — would cost perhaps another $6 billion a year, giving a total of $31 billion.

There is one activity — stabilising water tables — where we do not have an estimate, only a guess. The key here is raising water productivity, and for this we have the experience gained, beginning 50 years ago when the world started to systematically raise land productivity.

The elements needed in a comparable water model are research to develop more water-efficient irrigation practices and technologies, the dissemination of these research findings to farmers, and economic incentives that encourage farmers to adopt and use these improved irrigation practices and technologies.

In some countries, the capital needed to fund a programme to raise water productivity can come from cancelling the subsidies that now often encourage the wasteful use of irrigation water. Sometimes, these are power subsidies, as they are in India; other times, they are subsidies that provide water at prices well below costs, as happens in the US. In terms of additional resources needed worldwide, including the economic incentives for farmers to use more water-efficient practices and technologies, we assume it will take additional expenditures of $10 billion.

So we estimate that restoring the earth will require additional expenditure of $93 billion per year. Many will ask if the world can afford this. But the only appropriate question is: can the world afford not to?

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