Great Green Wall of China Completed Through the 'Sea of Death'

China has finished building a 3,046km green wall through the Taklimakan Desert. The large green belt of red willows, saxaul, and other trees will act as a giant sand-stopping barrier.

The Taklimakan Desert sits in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. It is the world’s second-largest drifting desert. Its winds and frequent sandstorms often blow around huge quantities of sand, burying roads, river channels, and farms.

The effects are so far-reaching that farmers call this desert the Sea of Death. This, plus the ongoing expansion of the Gobi Desert, led to the launch of China’s Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program in 1978.

An aerial photo shows the planting seedlings in the Taklimakan Desert in 2021. Photo: Xinhua

100 billion trees

The project is the largest ecological engineering project on the planet. Spanning six decades (it is scheduled to finish in 2050), it will plant around 100 billion trees to create barriers to blowing sand around all of China. The now-completed Taklimakan Desert project is just one of many regions slated for this treatment.

So far, an army of 600,000 workers has planted 300,000 square kilometers of trees. According to Chinese state news, they hope to increase forest coverage to four million square kilometers by 2050.

Total forest coverage has already increased from 10% in 1949 to 25% in 2023. Desertification currently affects 27% of China. The United Nations recently revealed that 77% of all land on Earth is drier than it was 39 years ago.

Desertification is accelerating worldwide due to climate change and human activity, but China is in danger of becoming one of the most affected areas.

Part of the green belt along the Taklimakan Desert highway. Photo: Xinhua

While some have praised China for minimizing desertification, others are concerned that the green belt’s non-native tree species create an unnatural monoculture. However, finding plants that work in green belts in such a harsh environment is not easy.

China will need to maintain this Great Green Wall by continually planting more trees to keep the blowing sands at bay.

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