Institute focuses on stopping encroaching sand

By Zheng Jinran in Ordos, Inner Mongolia (China Daily)

Updated: 2015-07-30

A new global desertification control action plan focuses on creation of an institute that could develop best practices for ecological restoration and share those with developing countries struggling with encroaching sand.

The Kubuqi Global Desert Institute will be set up with the cooperation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and built into a leading training center within five years, according to the plan approved on Wednesday.

Worldwide, deserts are increasing by 50,000 to 70,000 square kilometers annually, the plan notes.

The initial plan is to organize one or two annual sessions at the institute in the Kubuqi Desert of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region to train 10 to 15 professionals in desertification control in developing countries.

The Kubuqi Action Plan of Global Desertification Control (2015-25) was passed at the Fifth Kubuqi International Desert Forum, which ended on Wednesday, in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, said Wang Wenbiao, the forum's secretary-general and chairman of Elion Resources Group.

The action plan is one of the initiatives supported by the UN convention. It includes targets to improve technology management around the world, especially in developing countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt, which runs through Asia to Europe.

It will promote a public-private partnership to encourage the participation of enterprises and individuals. Wang's company, for example, says it will finance the planting of 130 million trees along the belt in the next three to five years.

Desertification is a thorny problem that faces many countries. Over 110 countries are beset by desertification, which costs them up to $50 billion annually and affects the livelihoods of about a billion impoverished people.

However, there is still hope for the growing global population as more than 2 billion hectares of degraded land can be restored, said Jia Xiaoxia, head of the Desertification Control Bureau under China's State Forestry Administration, who attended at the forum.

More than 6,000 square kilometers, or one-third of the total area of the Kubuqi Desert, now is green again thanks to local efforts to replant the desert over the past 30 years, Inner Mongolia Daily reported on Wednesday.

In the action plan, desertification efforts adopted by Wang's Elion Resources Group in the Kubuqi Desert were listed as an effective example.

The company has taken comprehensive measures over the past 27 years to grow plants in the desert to improve land quality, engage local residents and sell products for profit.

"We will promote the examples to developing and developed countries as well to help them learn more effectively from the experiences," said Yukie Hori, a UN desertification spokeswoman at the forum.