After spending most of his life in a rural village in western
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 72-year-old He Zhili picked up
and moved into an apartment in downtown Erdos two years ago.
He is now one of the roughly 400,000 residents of the city's
"eco-immigrants area".
The mass relocation was part of a plan by the local government
to convert farmland to grasslands and forests. Many people came
from areas dominated by the Maowusu and Kubuqi deserts, where only
4 percent of the land is arable.
"Water is scarce and crop yields are small," He said of his
former home, 130 km away.
About half the people from He's village have moved away.
Since 2000, Erdos has encouraged people to relocate by offering
housing and jobs.
"People should help nature and allow the ecosystem to
revitalize," Chu Bo, the region's Party secretary, said.
In 2001, media reports said 70 percent of the central Xilingol
Prairie had been left barren by three years of drought and
overgrazing. Livestock had nothing to eat and their corpses
littered the harsh landscape.
The situation was getting bleak: In 1985, Xilingol League had
144 million hectares of degraded grassland, nearly half its total
area. By 1999, the figure was 192 million hectares.
The effects of decades of government policies aimed at improving
food safety and self-sufficiency are partly to blame for the severe
overgrazing of the grasslands in northern China.
They led to widespread cultivation of the grasslands, but the
lack of adequate irrigation and fertilization resulted in extremely
low crop productivity. As the soil quality decreased and crop
yields declined, many plots of land were abandoned.
After several years, the abandoned land became shrouded in a
blanket of sand.
"I could see no grass, just sand, when I came here six years
ago," Chu said. "Things must change dramatically."
The official said deciding to effectively "close down" parts of
the region's pastureland by banning farming and herding had been
difficult, but it was an essential first step toward saving the
ecosystem.
Geligao, a 47-year-old ethnic Mongolian from Xilingol League,
said he supported the government's policies.
"I will leave my descendants rich grassland," he said.
The efforts have paid off, and the region's
environment-protection bureau has been pushing for more "scientific
methods" for raising crops and livestock. Satellite images show the
region's green coverage has increased over the past five years in
Hulun Buir, Xilingol, Horqin grasslands, the Erdos Plateau and
Alaxa Desert area, among other places.
In Xilingol League, where the livestock population fell from
16.7 million in 2000 to 14.5 million last year, the average per
capita income of herders rose by 699 yuan to 4,202 yuan. The amount
of vegetation cover increased by 11 percent on the steppe during
that period.
Chu called the improvements "a revolution".
"The ecosystem in Inner Mongolia is getting better, and our
landscaping speed is now faster than the speed of
desertification."
(China Daily August 2, 2007)
