A camel caravan in Ejin Banner, the Badain Jaran Desert, Inner Mongolia .	Herdsmen plant sand willow (Salix psammophila) to fix the sandy terrain.	A sand barrier in Hanggin Banner, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.

The functions of grassland within the ecological system are to conserve water, act as a wind barrier and inhibit shifting sands. The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in northern China is consequently considered a green barrier in northern China, but desertification in the region is a serious problem.

Inner Mongolia has the largest grassland -- a total area of 880,000 square kilometers -- in China. It accounts for 21.7 percent of total national grassland. National desert encroachment is advancing at the rate of 2,460 square kilometers annually, according to statistics, but the annual rate in Inner Mongolia is a worrying 803 square kilometers per annum. A number of ecological construction and environment harnessing projects have been initiated by the central government since 2000. They include building forests and harnessing sand resource areas; the Inner Mongolia grassland features dominantly in these projects. The local government and residents alike are totally committed to halting desertification and building a green environment.

“I Want to Live in a Green Environment”

When Yin Yuzhen married her husband at the tender age of 19 in Inner Mongolia, 23 years ago, her wedding chamber consisted of a cellar dug out from the hard point of a sand beam. When the wind blew, sand blanketed the earth and eclipsed the sky. It semed to Yin that her subterrannean dwelling was in serious danger of being swallowed by sand at any minute. When the wind stopped, the entire family began clearing sands from their door. This was a daily task.

Since marrying, Yin has resolved to change her living environment. Her house is in Mu Us Desert, one of the worst desertification areas in China, whose average annual precipitation is just 200 mm.

Yin recalls her living conditions upon arriving at her marital home: “It was remote, and there were no plants, animals, passersby or any other living thing for hundreds of miles other than us. I decided to bring some green into our living environment.” Green, however, is expensive in the desert. Yin Yuzhen’s family assets comprised one lamb and one three-legged goat. Yin sold the goat for 600 saplings in 1986, and planted them around her house. She watered them every day and, a year later, more than 100 had survived. This triumph encouraged Yin in her resolve to build a green living environment.

Lacking the cash to buy more saplings, Yin borrowed RMB 300 from her parents and bought several piglets to generate some income. When her husband went out laboring, he asked to be paid in saplings. Daytime temperatures reach 40? on high summer days, which meant that Yuzhen and her husband had to get up very early in the morning to water the saplings. After a few days, green and tender shoots appeared on their stems. But one dreadful morning the couple awoke to find that all their saplings had been buried overnight under moving sand dunes .

This disaster prompted Yin to do some research into sand fixing technology. After careful observations and a little practice, she drew up a detailed sapling-watering schedule that avoided both drought and waterlogging. Yin noted that saplings should not be planted too densely, because as they absorb every last drop of water from the soil, they soon die, and desertification continues.

As years went by, the environment around Yin’s house gradually turned green. By 2000, she had planted some 2,666 hectares of trees in the surrounding area. Unfortunately a big sandstorm occurred that year which killed half of the saplings she had so painstakingly cultivated. But Yin didn’t give up her efforts to beautify her living environment. Her house is now surrounded by 4,000 hectares of green trees. They have positively influenced the climate, and sandstorms are less frequent. “When I first came to live here, I would awake with a gritty mouth and eyes every morning. Now, only a thin layer of fine yellow dust can be seen on the outside windowsill. Things have changed dramatically,” Yin remarks. These new trees have brought more rain to the area, which helps to escalate the sapling survival rate and crop harvest. Improvements in living conditions have also followed. Houses have been rebuilt, and Yin’s family now earns more than RMB 100,000 annually, from crop cultivation alone.

Building an Ecologically Friendly Community

Ordos is another city in Inner Mongolia that is threatened by desertification. It covers an area of 87,000 square kilometers, almost half of which is desert. Ordos residents have taken a series of measures to harness the ecological environment of the city since the 1990s.

In 2003, a Swedish ecological town mode was introduced to Ordos. Each house in the newly built residential community is installed with a new style two-pit toilet. The excrement pit is fitted with a moveable stainless steel plate. When flushed, not water, but sawdust issues. The stainless steel plate automatically tips its contents into a storage basin at the bottom of the building, where it refines into manure that is used to fertilize farmland. Urine is channeled from its pit and diluted before being used to irrigate the fields.

The project manager of this dry-type toilet states that it cuts down water consumption by one-third. This is of great significance to an arid city such as Ordos, whose annual rainfall is less than 400 mm. Using human sewage as fertilizer avoids the environmental damage incurred by excessive use of fertilizers and also reduces the amount of water needed for agriculture.

The residential community has also installed garbage and waste water treatment equipment. Organic wastes are transferred to the fertilizer plant and processed together with the manure, and domestic sewage is biologically processed. If it meets the required irrigation water standard, watered-down urine is used to water trees and plants in the residential and surrounding areas.

Grass from Australia

Inner Mongolia has the largest area of grassland in China, but the decrease in precipitation and higher temperatures in recent years have dried up its rivers and the grassland has been choked with sand. Satellite monitors show the extent to which the two linking grasslands in Horqin Youyi Front Banner and Xing’an League suffer from serious desert encroachment. “Desertification of grassland in Inner Mongolia has worsened in recent years,” says Wang Zilin, director of the Sino-Australia Inner Mongolia Pasture Harnessing Project, “it has affected the climate of the region as well as the living standard of the people. Moreover, it constitutes a threat to the ecological safety of northern China.”

To arrest the situation, the project executives bought grass seeds from Australia and other arid regions. After some tests, they finally chose 10 strains of drought-resistant, fast growing seeds. These grasses provide forage for grazing sheep and cattle and also inhibit the movement of sand dunes. The next problem to be tackled was that of restricting livestock numbers on the grassland, as overgrazing is another major cause of desertification. The project target is to restrict livestock on the grassland and improve their unit yield. A new strain of goat has recently been bred that doubles cashmere production output, thus increasing the local farmers’ income while controlling livestock numbers.

The introduction of new grass seeds and sand controlling technology has palpably improved the living standards of farmers and herdsmen. The remaining challenge is that of heightening the grassland ecology awareness.

“In the course of implementing our project we realized that the efforts of our project office can only do such much, and that a change in life style of grassland residents is the only way to bring about a fundamental, beneficial change in the ecology,” says Wang. “We have worked together with the local education bureau, women’s federation and environment protection organizations to help local farmers and herdsmen solve their practical living and production difficulties, at the same time spreading knowledge about grassland ecology protection.”

The project has already shown some results: green coverage has increased from 20 to 70 percent in Xing’an League. It might not be long before wildlife runs on the grassland once more.