The Green Wall of China

I just read this in China Daily. Pretty scary.

If you visit Beijing in spring and experience the sand storms that send residents rushing around with plastic bags over their heads, you may not be surprised to hear that the city may one day be swallowed up by the Gobi Desert. Only 150km away, the winds are blowing the sands towards the capital at a rate of 2km a year, with 30m dunes closing in. In their wake, these massive dust storms have left entire towns abandoned and environemtnal refugees numbering in the millions. They've also brought about bizzare weather effects, such as 'black winds' and 'mud rains,' even finding their way across the Pacific to drop grit on Vancouver and bring unreal sunsets to San Francisco.

The problem is overgrazing and deforestation, for every month 200 sq km of arable land in CHina becomes a desert. China's government has pledged $6.8 billion to plant a 'green wall' of millions of trees between Beijing and the sands; at 5700km long, it will be longer than the Great Wall of China. Under the scheme, the government pays farmers to plant trees and is claiming a partial victory despite ongoing problems, such as tree dying, over-irrigation, erosionm and corruption. China's State Forestry Administration states that desertification has slowed from more than 10,400 sq km annually at the end of the last century to about 3000 sq km since 2001. But while the frequency of sandstorms has apparently decreased since the 1990's, their intensity has increased: one storm in 2006 dumped an estimated 330,000 tons of dust on teh captial. In 2006, China agreed to work with neighbouring countries to combast desertification in northeast Asia.