2. What We Can Do to Restore Vegetation to the Desert

In this section we talk to Mr. Yoshio Kitaura of the G-Net NPO that made it possible for the team from Hitachi Group to work as volunteers on the Horqin Desert Greening Project in China.

Desert Greening Manual: Plant, Maintain, then Repeat

Desertification presents us with a serious environmental problem in the same way as global warming. Despite this, because desertification is not something we come up against in our daily lives, we find it difficult to appreciate how serious it is. The important thing is not just to be aware of the issue, but to actually go to the places where it is happening so we can see it with our own eyes and, by getting involved, gain a deeper understanding of the problem of desertification.
The following sections briefly explain how we go about greening the desert.

1. The first step is to enclose the land in fences!

Most of the target areas for the greening project are also used for grazing. However, over-grazing is one of the main causes of desertification, so to deal with this we fence off the target areas with barbed wire to prevent grazing livestock from gaining access. Once in place, these fences need to be regularly checked and maintained in case weathering causes the fencing wire to break or fence posts to fall over or become buried.

2. Creating sand fences helps prevent movement of the sand

Sand fences are a way of suppressing the flow of sand by embedding rice or wheat straw into the desert in a grid pattern.
This technique takes advantage of these "natural nets" and derives from know-how devised to prevent the railway lines that traverse the desert regions of inland China from being inundated by sand.

As well as stopping the movement of sand, the sand fences catch plant seeds carried by the wind, helping the bare ground to become covered with grass and preventing the sand from being blown away. In this way, the sand fences stabilize the sandy soil and make it possible to plant saplings.

3. Planting Saplings

At last we are ready to start planting the saplings. First a plough towed by a tractor or horse creates vee-shaped furrows in the ground. Next, a scoop is used to make holes at the bottom of the furrows with a 50cm diameter and 50cm depth into which the saplings are planted. As the time of year and characteristics are different for different varieties of tree, which variety to plant needs to be selected by a specialist. In this case, we planted 1,300 pine saplings which, although they are slower growing than poplar, can survive on less water.
The saplings are planted with a spacing of about 3m to allow enough room between them to prevent their branches from overlapping. As time passes and the trees grow larger, they will be thinned further to increase this separation.

4. Supply Sufficient Water!

After filling in with soil, the final step is the famous bucket relay of the Greening Project volunteers which saw everyone working together to carry water in buckets which was then poured over the saplings one by one. The participants all raised their voices together in a cry of "jayo", which is Chinese for "go for it", as they carried their buckets of water. Some of the volunteers ended up soaking wet.

5. Taking Good Care of the Planted Trees

Once planted, the saplings need to be looked after with care. For the saplings to extend their roots into the desert soil and gain a degree of size requires three to four years of care for fast-growing poplars and five to six years for pine. This work includes removing unnecessary branches, cutting back undergrowth, and applying fertilizer.

Moving Towards Greening Activities Managed by the Local People

This replanting work helps stabilize the sand and allows the green grasslands to recover slowly but surely. But the job doesn't finish here. The more the greening project leads to a better quality of life for the people living in the Horqin region, the more the process of recovering and sustaining the vegetation can continue.

A key feature of the greening project for the Horqin Desert is to establish an environment in which the local people, who are predominantly engaged in pastoral agriculture, can carry on with the work under their own initiative. To this end, getting the local people to understand the methods and benefits of the greening work is entrenching in the region practices that are initiated and self-managed by the local people themselves. It is the hope of Hitachi Group that we can do something however small towards realizing this goal.

It is my hope that, through their involvement in progressing the desert greening work, the people from Hitachi Group will come to understand this by coming into direct contact with the hands-on reality of the project and seeing it with their own eyes.

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