What happened
China’s decades-long Three-North Protective Forest Program, also called the "Green Great Wall", continues to reduce desertification in northern China. The note highlights the use of straw checkerboards, a sand-stabilisation method in which workers place forearm-length sticks into shifting sand in an interlocking grid and plant saplings in the centre of each square.
The method is designed to slow dune movement caused by wind and to help vegetation establish with irrigation support.
Background and earlier position
The Three-North Protective Forest Program was launched in 1978 to curb desert expansion across a vast belt of northern China. Drought, overgrazing, and farming degraded landscapes and made them more vulnerable to sandstorms.
According to state media data cited in the note, desertified land in northern China peaked in 2000. The program’s afforestation efforts are said to have created a cumulative 500,000 square kilometres of forest cover.
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