3,000-km green belt: China completes 46-year campaign to encircle its largest desert with trees

BEIJING — China has finished a 46-year campaign to encircle its largest desert with trees, part of national efforts to end desertification and curb the sandstorms that plague parts of the country during the spring, state media reported on Friday (Nov 29).

A "green belt" of about 3,000 km around the Taklamakan was completed on Thursday in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, after workers planted the final 100 metres of trees on the desert's southern edge, the Communist Party-run People's Daily said.

Efforts to enclose the desert with trees began in 1978 with the launch of China's "Three-North Shelterbelt" project, colloquially known as the Great Green Wall.

More than 30 million hectares (116,000 square miles) of trees have been planted.

Tree planting in the arid northwest has helped bring China's total forest coverage above 25 per cent by the end of last year, up from around 10 per cent in 1949.

Forest coverage in Xinjiang alone has risen from one per cent to five per cent in the last 40 years, the People's Daily said.

The shelterbelt project has involved decades of experimentation with different tree and plant species to determine which is the hardiest.

Critics say that survival rates have often been low, and it has been ineffective in reducing sandstorms, which routinely reach the capital Beijing.

China will continue planting vegetation and trees along the edge of the Taklamakan to ensure desertification is kept in check, Zhu Lidong, a Xinjiang forestry official, told a press briefing in Beijing on Monday.

Driven by fear of climate change, Chinese molecular biologist Li Jieping and his team are racing to develop a 'super-potato' — one that is resistant to hotter temperatures.

He said poplar forests on the northern edge