The Walrus Magazine » Online Exclusive » Bonus photos for "The Chinese Dust Bowl"

Bonus photos for “The Chinese Dust Bowl”

by Benoit Aquin (photographer) and Patrick Alleyn (writer)

DESERT HIGHWAY VEGETATION -- Xilingol steppe, Inner Mongolia Province, April 2006 -- Teams of workers are planting trees and shrubs, as well as laying bundles of straws to protect the new highway crossing the Hunshandake Sandland on to Xilinhot, capital city of the Xilingol steppe. These efforts fall within the huge "Great Green Wall of China" project, a 4,000 km-long forest belt program launched in 1978 to curb desertification.

The famous Xilingol steppe, 600 km north of Beijing, faces increasing desertification. The once-green land has been overgrazed by a booming number of livestock, becoming a major source of dust storms over northern Chinese cities, including Beijing, and reaching as far as Japan, Korea and North America.

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The k43-t69 train that follows China’s great northern steppes and the legendary Silk Road could be dubbed “the desertification train.” Travelling from east to west, from Beijing to Urumqi, it cuts through 3,343 kilometres of dusty grasslands, dried-up riverbeds, threatened oases, and deserts both ancient and new. A few hours after the train leaves Beijing, a lunar black mountain range welcomes passengers into a vast arid landscape.

Deserts cover 18 percent of China today. Of those, 78 percent are natural, while 22 percent were created by humans. Almost all of them lie along the k43-t69’s route through the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, and finally Xinjiang, at the edge of Central Asia.

Read the full article here.

This piece was produced as part of an ongoing project supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

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