Desert fighters of Baijitan

Residents losing their village to desertification are fighting back in a poor province in Northwest China

When Wang Youde was a boy in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region in Northwest China, his village began to disappear under the sands of a nearby desert.

With other villagers, Wang began to plant trees to protect the land. But in a place that receives less than 200 milliliters of rain annually, that is a difficult task to accomplish.

Wang, now 60, is still fighting the desert. As the determined leader of the effort in the village of Baijitan, Wang has become a national hero and symbol of China's struggles against desertification. He was received by former Chinese president Hu Jintao and has met several heads of state.

Baijitan is located southeast of Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia Hui autonomous region, in Lingwu County.

Wang's stroke of genius was to procure soil from villages in neighboring counties to bring back to Baijitan. It is placed in small plastic bags less than 10 centimeters long. The bags include grass shoots or tree and shrub seedlings that can then be planted in rows. The seedlings are protected by straw placed around them.

After three years, the villagers go back and replant wherever there are gaps in the rows.

Since 1983, the process has saved 2,000 to 3,000 hectares of land per year from the sand dunes, Wang says.

The task is important. In the 1990s China's deserts were expanding by 3,500 square kilometers every year, according to Luo Bin, deputy director of the National Bureau to Combat Desertification, in a story published by www.globalpost.com.

I, along with other African journalists, visited in June to see what Wang, director of the Baijitan Nature Reserve, and his fellow villagers and workers have accomplished. The natural environment is being preserved, but also the lives of the inhabitants have been improved.

Every year, each of the 300 employees of the reserve plant 10,000 shrubs or trees, and also blocks of grass seedlings, Wang says. Some of the plantings replace earlier plants that died. The workers "live in comfortable homes for free and receive 10,000 yuan ($1,630) a year", Wang adds. That's not a lot compared with the country's average wage, but it is an improvement for poor farmers in this poor area of China.

When we visited, we saw several compartments of the Baijitan reserve. And we realized how that experience could help leaders of our countries in Africa where desertification is also an urgent problem.

For example, we saw that where trees were planted 20 years ago, there was a new ecosystem with animals including cattle and smaller herbivores, farms and modern irrigation systems. Prosperous-looking residences popped up here and there, too.

Wang spends part of his day driving his Toyota four-wheel drive, showing guests the village's achievements, and preparing for official visits from elsewhere in China and abroad. Since 2013, he has served as a deputy at the National People's Congress in Beijing, representing the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 11/28/2014 page26)