The Green Wall of China

This is an old article, from 2003, but I did a search and did'nt find anything on it.

The Chinese call it "yellow dragon." Koreans, "the fifth season." Each spring, the dust from China's northern deserts is swept up by the wind and whipped eastward, blasting into Beijing. A choking blanket of particles coats houses, cars, and people, and the city's hospitals become flooded with patients suffering from respiratory ailments. The dust clogs machinery, shutters airports, and destroys crops, forcing thousands of rural Chinese off their lands.

Now, with the dunes within 150 miles of China's capital city, and the 2008 Olympics on the way, Beijing officials have initiated a massive campaign to attack the problem.

The plan is known as the Green Great Wall - a 2,800-mile network of forest belts designed to stop the sands. Chinese scientists from the Ministry of Forestry believe the trees can serve as a windbreak and halt the advancing desert. In a recent report to the United Nations, Chinese officials predicted that the effort will "terminate expansion of new desertification caused by human factors" within a decade. By 2050, they claim, much of the arid land can be restored to a productive and sustainable state.

Possibly the largest proposed ecological project in history, the new Great Wall calls for planting more than 9 million acres of forest at a cost of up to $8 billion.

China has seen 3,600km (1,390 miles) of grassland overtaken every year by the Gobi. This loss of farmland has caused an estimated $50 billion in losses each year for China's economy.

When completed around 2074, it will stretch 2,800 miles and include thousands of trees.


SOURCES:
Wired
Wikipedia

PRChina has got to be one of the oddest countries, on one hand they are one of the
world leaders in the production of harmful greenhouse gasses, and have at times
blocked key environmental reports and treaties of the U.N., yet at other times they
do things like this, among several other things that are good for the environment.

This project not only benefits PRChina but Taiwan, Japan and the Korea's as well,
and as it stands PRChina has set-up a dust monitoring network with South Korea and Japan.


So, what are your comments and Opinions and thoughts on this project?

Sounds like a good PR campaign. I will put it in there with the worlds largest dam "forcefully uprooting 10million people and destroying couple rivers" and destroying a mountain with TNT "just because we can". Well I suppose its a better way to flex muscles than to run around and invade countries.

Originally posted by Gonjo
Sounds like a good PR campaign. I will put it in there with the worlds largest dam "forcefully uprooting 10million people and destroying couple rivers" and destroying a mountain with TNT "just because we can". Well I suppose its a better way to flex muscles than to run around and invade countries.

I would'nt call this a PR campaign, this is a major problem for PRChina, something that
effects there economic security which translates to there national security.

The three gorges damn, while displacing many people and submerging important archaeological
sites, both known and unknown was not a PR campaign either, rather it was a way to
provide power for the re people, and in the long run I'd rather them do that than build
the equivalent amount of Coal burning polluting power plants.

Im not saying its a bad thing. You cant really run PR like the USA is doing in the middle east. Im saying they are doing things in the way they can show everyone they are strongest and largest in the world by doing ultimately good things in a way and scale that just makes one think theres no real reason behind it besides letting everyone know they can do everything the please.

Dont get me wrong the dam is a good way to make energy and basicly building a wall of forest to combat the desert is a good thing on the paper. But when you look at the amount of people who lost their homes on the dam project makes me wonder what might be the downside of "building" the forest.

Strange as it may seem they are planting belts of trees across inner Mongolia and north eastern Tibet. There was desert here long before the industrial revolution so you can hardly link the two issues except at a very general level.

Originally posted by sy.gunson
Strange as it may seem they are planting belts of trees across inner Mongolia and north eastern Tibet. There was desert here long before the industrial revolution so you can hardly link the two issues except at a very general level.

True the desert existed, but Human activity has accelerated the natural desertification
process itself, and considering that PRChina is losing so much cropland a year, and there
are dunes only 150 miles from Beijing, it does seem like a good idea.

Well I have to agree that China is on a fast track to becoming the world's biggest atmospheric polluter. Unlike the West where the politically and environmentally conscious consumers are making positive choices to purchase energy efficient cars etc, the lack of democratic debate in china makes for limited awareness there.

A command economy in a communist country can't respond as quickly as a democracy where the consumer basically demands the Government to change.

Originally posted by sy.gunson
Well I have to agree that China is on a fast track to becoming the world's biggest atmospheric polluter. Unlike the West where the politically and environmentally conscious consumers are making positive choices to purchase energy efficient cars etc, the lack of democratic debate in china makes for limited awareness there.

A command economy in a communist country can't respond as quickly as a democracy where the consumer basically demands the Government to change.

By "the west", I'm going to presume you're omitting the United States, seeing as we, in fact, are behaving exactly opposite of your claim. Politically, our answer to energy concerns is to encourage massive destruction of the environment in order to grow chemically and geneticly treated corn that only gives us as much efficiency as gasoline and it at least as damaging in the long run. if it's not that, then it's coal liquification. To top this off, every year, Americans keep buying these huge, fuel inefficient monster trucks to use as a commuting vehicle. These land boats that you could carry cattle in, that are used to lug one person and a spare tire around town. Repeatedly we elect politicians who bound their desks for more blood for oil, so we can maintain an economic system based entirely off cheap oil allowing people in Anchorage to get strawberries in the supermarket in January.

Back to the Chinese, though... this is a stupid idea. Long rows of trees to block the dust? These trees will INCREASE desertification in the long run by drawing more water from already arid land, and will not solve the dust problem, since the dust travels quite a bit higher than any tree can reach. And where are they going to get these trees, anyway?

What doofusness.