China's winning battle against desertification

China is "using the sun to fight the sand" in the latest chapter of its ongoing battle against "desertification".

An "audacious" project in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, will see the construction of 100 gigawatts of solar panels – more than three times as much capacity as the US is currently building – along a stretch of land 250 miles long and three miles wide, said Semafor.

The World Economic Forum defines "desertification" as "a type of land degradation in which an already relatively dry land area becomes increasingly arid, degrading productive soil and losing its bodies of water, biodiversity and vegetation cover".

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As much as 75% of the world's soils "are already degraded", said Chinese state news agency Xinhua. China is one of the most affected nations, but "robust ecological initiatives" over the past two decades have led to a "significant decline in the frequency and intensity of spring sandstorms" associated with the phenomenon.

'Choking winds'

People in northern China are "no strangers" to "choking, dust-laden winds" and "seeing the sun reduced to a hazy orange orb hanging obscured in a sand-tinted sky" during annual spring sandstorms, said Nikkei Asia.

The sandstorms mainly originate from the Gobi Desert area of southern Mongolia and along the Sino-Mongolian border, said the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The deluge of sand transforms fertile lands into deserts, which "disrupts rainfall patterns" and "exacerbates extreme weather events", further driving climate change, said Xinhua.

Although China's National Forestry and Grassland Administration said the total number of spring sandstorms had almost halved between 1981 and 2010, from an average of 17 to 9.2, they remain a serious challenge.

Desertification is estimated to cost the economy more than 54 billion yuan (£5.74 billion) every year, and around 400 million people – almost 30% of the nation's 1.4 billion people – are "directly or indirectly affected" by the phenomenon.

Last year saw a "frequent choking haze" reminiscent of the "terrible spring of 2000", when a vast region in northern China was hit by repeated sandstorms and prolonged dust-laden winds, "the likes that had not been seen in half a century". This only intensified China's decades-long efforts to tackle the problem.

'High stakes'

China’s deserts make up more than 25% of its total land mass, amounting to almost as much territory as all of India, said Semafor. Since the 1950s Beijing has been "seeking to mitigate the severity and impact" of dust storms, and "over the longer term" to prevent "desert encroachment" on urban areas or fertile, arable land.

China's desertification has been "primarily caused by human activities, such as overgrazing, excessive logging and excavation, overexploitation, excessive land reclamation, and the misuse of water resources", said Nikkei Asia.

But it has made "remarkable strides" in tackling the issue, said Xinhua, beginning in 1978 with the launch of the "Great Green Wall of China". Expected to continue until 2050, the "biggest tree-planting project in human history" will ultimately have created "88 million acres of forests in a wall stretching about 3,000 miles and as wide as 900 miles in some places", said Earth.org.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, the country has "intensified support" for key projects that have led to 53% of the treatable desertified areas now being classified as under effective control to prevent further degradation.

This progress is important because the wider "stakes are high", said Semafor. With the world aiming to triple its renewable power capacity this decade, a leading nation being able to deploy solar power at mass scale in the desert "would have huge implications globally".

The World Atlas of Desertification has warned that 75% of the world's soils are already degraded, affecting 3.2 billion people in all. According to forecasts from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 90% of the planet's land surface is at risk of degradation by 2050.