Decades of effort push back desert

Surrounded by three deserts, northwestern China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region has long been plagued by sandstorms, but decades of effort by generations of scientists have helped shrink the area affected by desertification.

Jiang Qi, a 53-year-old researcher from the Ningxia Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, in Yinchuan, the regional capital, has been part of that effort since the mid-1980s.

He said his predecessors had worked hard to cultivate areas of greenery. Nowadays, in addition to environmental concerns, researchers had to find ways to improve the livelihoods of local people.