Some parts of Maowusu still look like a normal desert . . . Courtesy Shaanxi Province.
Most of the news we get about deserts today is bad. Creeping sands, disappearing rivers and croplands, abandoned towns – it’s a gloomy subject. But in one remote area of China, local people decided to fight back against the invading sands. Today, the Maowusu is desert no longer, but is a swathe of waving plants scattered across an area the size of Belgium. By Jeremy Torr.
Shaanxi Province, China. June 2020. In 1959, China had more than 600 million people living in dire poverty. The population had revolted against the landlord class and established a socialist state only a decade before, but the radical changes in farming methods that followed the collapse of the previous system, combined with a series of droughts and floods led to the Great Famine. By 1960, the amount of grain produced – let alone meat production – was down by 30% compared to 1958. China's population was suffering everywhere and millions starved to death - but some of the worst hit areas were the cold arid lands in the north of the country.
… but other parts look more like Scotland. Courtesy Shaanxi Province
Hard up against the Mongolian border, Shaanxi Province was home to the Maowusu desert, a place that was at one time called the Devil’s Land it was so harsh. In the early 1950s the area was utterly barren, little more than sand and stones and definitely useless for growing anything. And the sand was encroaching on the little good land that was available; the city of Yulin was forced to move away from the desert three times, after experiencing catastrophic sandstorms. Locals would have to endure storms, drifting dunes and howling, gritty freezing winters. Villagers had to break thick sand crusts piled up against their doors just to get out of their houses. Exposed houses could be easily buried by fast-moving sand dunes. It was not a welcoming place. And the locals were effectively trapped – they could not flee anywhere else, as the rest of the country was suffering equally from the famine.
As a consequence, some of the locals decided they had only one choice – to fight back and maybe make a dent in the seemingly unstoppable desert instead of simply submitting and eventually starving. The only thing they could do to try and stop the sand encroaching was to plant grass and trees.
Eventually, most of the desert will be vegetated, says Dang Shuangren. Courtesy CGTN.
So, in 1959 local people started planting trees. They did it because they couldn’t do anything else. One local farmer, Shi Guangyin, sold all his livestock - 84 sheep and a donkey – and used the money to buy saplings. The animals would have died of starvation anyway, he reckoned. After years of work he had established a six kilometre wide green belt all along the desert's southern border; more than 60 km in length.
His wife remembers how at the time she could often spend more than a month waiting just to see another human. Yet she never stopped planting trees for the next 30 years. Shi and his compatriots planted trees in belts, primarily to protect their settlements – but the rewards came over and above just slowing the sand.
The trees that survived put down roots, brought water up to the surface, and encouraged smaller plants and grasses to grow too. And the more trees the locals planted, the better the chances of the next planting surviving. It was a virtuous circle.
“Today, in many areas the desert has simply disappeared,” says Dang Shuangren, of the Shaanxi Forest Bureau. “In the 80s and 90s, the government joined in and backed several restoration projects.” That brought scientific expertise and research and development skills to the sheer determination of the locals. They brought in new plants including water-retaining grasses and trees that stimulated broader revegetation as well as effectively stopping the roaming sands.
Straw matting stabilises and keeps moisture in the sand, then planting can begin. Courtesy Shaanxi Province.
Now, after six decades of seriously dedicated planting, some 90% of the desert’s previous area is covered in trees and highly usable arable land. “The desert has disappeared from the map,” says Dang. “The desertified land has gone.”
In actuality it has not gone, but has been turned into a highly productive zone covered by some 40 million trees - all planted by locals. This has turned the area into prime agricultural land that supports enough cattle, sheep and crops to not just lift the local communities out of their previous starvation and poverty – but to make the whole area significantly prosperous.
“If the local people keep up their efforts, the last remaining 30,000 hectares will be turned from sterile wasteland of semi-fixed sand dunes into usable farm or forest landscape,” says Dang. The Maowusu was one of four major deserts in the country just sixty years ago, but now you can’t find it on any map. Thanks to decades of work, more than 93% of the land has turned green.
Today’s Maowusu farmers use what the scientists call the One-plus-Four system. “Farmers and revegetators use straw checkerboards to fix the sand, and then plant plants and trees in both Spring and Autumn, supplemented with spot sowing, container seeding, and broadcast seeding in the rainy season,” explained Wang Xingdong, director of one farm.
Using these simple techniques, the survival rate of plants has jumped to around 70%, with vegetation cover extending to 40%. And the efforts of millions of people over many decades have resulted in the conversion of some 16,500 acres of arid sand and stones into productive land. Not bad for a desert.
One project leader, 80-year-old Lan Zesong, who has devoted his life to fighting desertification, says that the biggest achievements will come in the future. “Environmental change, improved livelihood for locals, and increasing the greening process will continue to make a positive impact long after the project has come to an end,” he smiles.