Desert Development: How Does It Relate to Anti Desertification Measures? - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 414

Fig. 20.3 Trees can help to prevent sand encroachment but trees require regular watering which
is costly and impractical. Plant spacing should not be too close

in 1950 and its mandate was to control the desert. Similar directives were given to
the Shapotou Research station in Ningxia (Chap. 3 ) .

2.1 Taming the Desert

China's long history of effort to “tame the desert” has clouded the view about land
degradation. The root causes of an environmental problem such as desertification are
often located in a non-environmental sector, like food-crop production or industry.
It is useful to distinguish between “drivers of change” and the subsequent actions
in response. There seem to be three major drivers of change that operated in China
since the foundation of New China in 1949:

1. The perceived threat to China's national security because of low population
density in the strategically important north and western border regions. Massive
relocations schemes have uprooted millions from their homes along the densely
populated southern and eastern seaboards of the country, resettling them on
the remote northern and western frontiers. In Xinjiang in the far north west,
Heilongjiang on the northern border with Russia, and Inner Mongolia in the
north-east, hardy settlers have converted desert, grassland and harsh shrub into
croplands through massive land conversion schemes and development of artificial
oases fed by harnessed snow melt from the system of internal rivers.