I: JOLLY GREEN DRAGON
Aiming for 42 per cent forest cover by 2050, China tries to go green without sacrificing economic growth
Contrary to popular belief, the Great Wall of China is not visible from space. Neil Armstrong could not spot the 7,200-km-long man-made wonder even from a lower orbit. Unfazed, the Chinese started on an even greater wall within a decade of the lunar conquest. Scheduled for completion by 2050, China’s Three-North Shelterbelt Development Program or the ‘Great Green Wall’ may well be noticeable from the moon. After all, it aims to regenerate nearly 90,000 sq km of forest (about the size of Bihar).
While the Chinese have always had a thing for projects of extraordinary scale, what prompted the massive greening initiative were the frequent and blinding sandstorms from the north. Thanks to rampant deforestation, done to boost industry and agriculture in Mao’s China after World War II, the Gobi desert was advancing menacingly, blowing dust as far as Seoul.
Pollution is not a recent phenomenon in China. Its ‘yellow river’ turned yellow some two millennia ago, when its banks were denuded of trees and soil erosion started muddying its water. Some studies claim that desertification in northwest China dates back 2.6 million years. By the 1970s, the Gobi had become a threat in need of an urgent response. The dust—dubbed ‘the yellow dragon’—was taking over more than 1,500 sq km of grassland every year, suffocating life, threatening agriculture and sweeping through Beijing and other major cities. After Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, China tried to undo the damage by creating 4,500 km of green walls in the northwest, north and northeast—hence the name ‘Three-North’.
Now roughly midway, the world’s largest ever eco- logical restoration project has been turning heads.
According to a 2011 UN report, State of the World’s Forests, China increased its forest cover by 20,000 sq km per year in the 1990s and has achieved an average of 30,000 sq km per year since 2000. In contrast, India recorded an annual rate of just 3,000 sq km in that period. The report lauds China’s plan to reforest 50,000 sq km (an area the size of Punjab) by 2020, noting that it may hit this target five years ahead of time.
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Unlike India, which has kept its land-to-forest ratio constant on paper since Independence by camouflaging its rapid loss of ancient forests with tea or coffee estates and even the proliferation of exotic weeds, China has always focused plainly on plantation drives.
China has, of course, had setbacks. Its attempt during the 1980s and 1990s to regain lost green cover by sowing a million seedlings and scattering a billion exotic seeds from the sky backfired. The fast-growing exotic trees that could rapidly strike root and form canopies flourished as long they could tap water stored deep under the soil in semi-arid regions that were used to supporting grassland. But once the soil moisture was exhausted, they quickly died and nearly 85 per cent of the plantation effort failed. The result was a double whammy. By the time the exotics eventually died, they had already wiped out the shallow-rooting undergrowth, having deprived it of sun and water. The soil was further exposed to erosion, and the yellow dragon blew with even more fury. Aquifer levels, too, fell drastically in many areas.
Meanwhile, China’s much-touted eco-compensation programme—the Conversion of Croplands to Forests and Grasslands—converted nearly 15,000 sq km of sloping cropland to forests to prevent soil erosion that clogged the Yangtze and Yellow rivers. Under that scheme, the State compensated farmers who switched to an alternative livelihood and allowed forest plantation or natural vegetation on their land, with money and rice.
In 2009, anxiety over food security tempted China to suspend the project. Lu Xinshe, deputy minister of land and resources, told Reuters that the country was struggling to maintain its 120,000 sq km ‘red line’, considered the least area needed for food self-sufficiency, and had no plans for a large-scale project to return farmland to its natural state. But the programme, sponsored by the World Bank, survived—partially because the Chinese leadership did not want to risk its fast-depleting water table any further. Besides, China needed plantations for timber, imports of which have tripled in the past decade.
Such monocultural thrusts to boost local industries (paper and rubber are other examples) have compounded the problem created by the promotion of exotic species. While single-species plantations do store carbon and serve as wind-breakers, they do little for ecological security or biodiversity conservation. The obvious way to counter such ‘green deserts’ was to go native.
Thankfully, a number of Chinese experts flagged the issue, seeking a course correction. Some, such as ecologist Jiang Gaoming of Chinese Institute of Science, claimed that degraded ecosystems could recover if their abuse were simply stopped. In Inner Mongolia’s Hunshandake sandyland, Gaoming’s research showed that grasslands restored themselves in as little as two years.
In southwest China, Conservation International and China’s Center for Nature and Society have together restored 12,000 acres using native species in a 259,000-sq- km landscape that hosts a range of ecosystems—from coniferous and broadleaf forests, to grasslands, wetlands and bamboo groves. Even China’s government seems to have learnt its lessons. The State Forestry Administration is collaborating with Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) on several projects aimed at restoring native species. One of the projects in a giant panda habitat in Sichuan province seeks to reforest more than 10,000 acres of degraded forestland with China cedar and local varieties of fir, spruce and poplar, among others.
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There have been major landmarks along the way. The world’s first greening project registered under the Clean Development Mechanism of UNFCCC, the Pearl river basin initiative revived 3,000 hectares with mostly native species in the Guangxi region and became China’s first reforestation project to earn carbon credits. Similarly, communities in Tengchong of Yunnan Province are earning handsome sums for looking after depleted forests since their reforestation project became the world’s first to meet the Climate, Community and Biodiversity gold standard. But even after increasing its forest cover from 12 to 18 per cent in just two decades, China’s per capita forest area of 0.12 hectare still ranks very low globally.
For a country that seems to believe in miracles, China’s next big test is to revive its many threatened species in the natural forests it has regenerated. The world is watching.
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