China is rebuilding the Great Wall but, this time, it is made of Trees and it will stop the Desert advancing. Let’s discover the Great Green Wall, the biggest man-made forest in the whole World! China has been dealing with desertification for almost 50 years now and the battle is still rough. We are talking about the Gobi Desert which extends until Mongolia and it is one of the driest deserts on Earth. The phenomenon of desertification had overtaken thousands of km2 grassland in China and blown tons of dust toward the South. In order to stop this negative effect, China government approved in 1978 the Three North Shelter Forest Program, the biggest attempt of reforestation ever tried. The term Three North refers to the 3 Regions in North China and it highlights the commitment of these areas to the problem. The goal is to cover 15% of the land till 2050.
Even though the program got some many issues such as storm, epidemic, lacks water sources, the result recorded lately was 13,5% of committed land- which roughly the size of Greece. It now seems that desertification is probably starting to stop, and forests are growing faster than the desert.
Also, in Africa people tried to do something like the Chinese achievement to stop the Sahara Desert. In 2007, under the guidance of the African Union, people started to build the Great Green Wall of Africa. In this case, we talk about a longer wall: 8.000 km of length, 11 signed Nations and more than 20 Countries that support it.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 