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The man-made oasis in China. [File photo] |
A man-made oasis in China's seventh biggest desert of Kubuqi at the southern bank of the Yellow River has been the backdrop of several international environmental events so far this year.
Amina Mohamed, deputy executive director of UNEP said at the launch of the Chinese edition of Global Environment Outlook-5 (GEO-5) on Sept. 4, at a convention center built in the oasis, that the place was chosen to showcase the success of the Kubuqi Desert control mode and encourage its worldwide replication.
For international environmentalists, it is not just building a big stretch of greenery on the desert that has made this oasis but also the initiator's creativity. He used commercial funding rather than governmental financing or charity funds, developing sustainable clean energy industries. He also got local people involved in both the businesses and the environmental protection cause.
The initiator of this anti-desertification work, Wang Wenbiao, a 54-year-old entrepreneur, is a native of the arid land, who remembers smelling dust and sand in the air and eating food mixed with sand.
Wang's private firm started in 1997 to build the first road running through the desert in northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. In order to consolidate the roadbed, Wang and his colleagues planted low water use plants and grass along the road.
Twenty years on, four other roads have been built in the same way, extending greenery to nearly one third of the 18,700-square km Kubuqi Desert.
During the incessant greening work, Wang has developed his desert-based business into a multi-billion conglomerate.
Desert planting has long been considered as high cost and low yielding work, which has made it highly dependant on governmental financing or NGO funding for ecological rehabilitation or poverty alleviation programs.
With labor costs rising fast in China, government funding for anti-desertification could hardly support the drive necessary to curb deserts and drylands, which have already accounted for 18 percent of the national territory, from further expanding.
According to the Inner Mongolia Forestry Department, the cost for hiring a worker for desert planting has risen from 30 yuan per day two decades ago to 300 yuan (47 U.S. dollars), while the government's investment in the sector has not increased to keep up with the cost hike.
Wang's initiative in tackling the conundrum amazed international environmentalists convened at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20 Summit) in June and the UNEP event in the Kubuqi desert oasis. They called it a "green myth."
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