Not for Our Own Homes Only
Fighting Desertification Means to Choose
Loneliness
Looking Forward to Attention and Support
Sand-fighters Need to Accumulate
Experience
Explore New Sand-fighting Mechanism
Not for Our Own Homes Only
Fifty-year-old Song Defu, a farmer of Gulang County in northwest
China's Gansu
Province, witnessed the beautiful scene of the sandy land lying
in front of him. In those old days, cattle and goats grazed on the
grassland. The plants were so flourishing that only when a wind
breezed could you see the herds. Song and his fellow villagers
enjoyed their life of animal-herding and made money out of it. They
eventually became well-to-do. But as the grassland degenerated at a
breakneck speed, the grassland faded away, and so did their
prosperity.
"If we don't engage ourselves in sand-control projects, not only
the animals cannot get enough forage, even I myself will have
difficulty in finding something to eat," said Song Defu.
Bingcaowan, Song's home village, is situated on the eastern border
of Gulang County, on the southern edge of the Tengger Desert.
Hongshatan, the former pasture, has retrograded into one of the 16
sandstorm thresholds along the 132 km sand line of north Gulang
County. Livestock have nowhere to graze. Farmers here would be
happy if they could harvest only 50 percent of the grain supposed
to grow in the same size of fields in other places.
While other villagers were planning resettlement in other places,
Song came to a different idea: he decided to rebuild a green home
for the future generations by planting grass and trees on the sandy
land.
Many sand-fighters are actually those who destroyed the ecology
inadvertently. In the past, no one ever told them about the
relationship between ecological protection and sustained
development. But the fact of desert encroaching their fields has
made it clear that without a green land, they will lose their
homes.
In
early 2000, Song sold his 18 oxen and 140-odd goats to sign a
contract of forestation on a wasteland of 666 hectares. Since then,
Song has no any income except a tiny turnout of wheat from his
infertile fields. Despite the economic loss, Song felt relieved. In
the past two years, Song planted trees on about half of the
contracted wasteland. Lush and green Elaeagnusangustifolia [known
as shazao in Chinese] now grows out of the previously barren land;
flourishing bushes of huabang [a kind of mesquite plant in the
desert] stand against the farmland shelter forest; Chinese
rosewoods sway in the breeze. The wasteland has been
revitalized.
"In remote villages, we used to take building a bridge or repairing
a road as a big deal of beneficence. Now we all say planting grass
and trees is more beneficiary," Song said. The hardship of
sand-fighting has made the man care more about green. "I have heard
about Japanese coming to China to harness sandstorm. After I read
the story in a newspaper, I knew they did this in fear of possible
sandstorm originated in China to affect Japan. When I successfully
cover the sandy wasteland with green, I'm sure, no matter how
strong the wind is, no sand will be blown up from here," he
said.
Certainly Song Defu never dispels out of his mind the idea to make
a profit from his sand-fighting project. "When the sandy wasteland
is ready, I plan to build a forest belt of one kilometer long and
10 meters wide, and in the middle area, I'll plant forage grass to
develop stock breeding," Song said. By that time, Song will become
a farmer engaged in stock breeding, fruit growing and tree
planting. "We must protect trees from being cut down and the
grassland over-grazed." Song does know it's a key to realizing his
long-term plan.
Fighting Desertification Means to Choose
Loneliness
Whatever an optimistic expectation for the future, it cannot offset
Song's current problems. During the days when Song was famous in
the area for his affluence, friends and relatives often resorted to
him for their financial difficulties. After he chose to harness the
sandy wasteland, he not only invested all his money into the
project but also had to, occasionally, borrow money from friends
and relatives, which was not well understood by some of those. The
sharp change of his own financial situation was hard for him to
accept.
To
many farmer sand-fighters, a piece of wasteland means a bottomless
hole devouring their money. And the lack of understanding and
support makes them feel as being trapped in a helpless abyss. Song
Defu is not the only one who has such experience. Li Peirui, a
businessman of Minqin County of Gansu, who has also chosen to
become a sand-fighter, often finds himself in a dilemma.
Li
owns a hotel and a construction team in Minqin County. In the
spring of 1995, Li inked a contract to harness 400 hectares of
sandy lands bordering the Tengger Desert. He worked out a plan and
built forest strips with great confidence, hoping to make profit
from the comprehensive development in this area. However, six years
have passed and the sandy land has not changed much. Instead of
making profit, he is in a heavy debt of 2.5 million yuan (around
US$300,000).
"A
single strong wind can bury all the trees we've just planted and
the fields we leveled. We have to restart again and again. This
kind of seesaw battle usually happens over 10 times every year. We
suffer a loss of 300,000 yuan (US$36,290.6) a year for seedlings,
not mentioning the labor cost." Li said. However, compared with
fierce battle with sandstorms, according to Li, the lack of
understanding by and support from outsiders was even harder for him
to go with.
Objectively, a future return in profit is a big motivation for the
sand-fighters who have invested in ecological environment projects.
Song Defu's goal is to turn the sandy wasteland into a
comprehensive farmland of live stocking, forest and fruit trees. Li
Peirui also wishes to engage in agriculture-related businesses
after he successfully harnesses the sandy lands. Government
departments hold that contractors, who have to bear the risk of an
environmental project, should be benefited from their investments,
but at the same time, these investors should be responsible for the
fund needed. So far, these investors have not yet received any
financial support from the government. Since an ecological project
is costly in investment, long-termed in circulation cycle and slow
in turnout and often subjects to natural factors, banks and
financial institutes are reluctant to grant them loans. It is hard
for common farmers to understand why people like Song Defu and Li
Peirui persist in pursuing such a costly and risky cause.
Li
said with a bitter smile: "I really have no one to complain to and
I have no idea either if I can continue what I've been doing. An
individual can never be strong enough to withstand sandstorms. May
be I am on a road destined to losses, but I can't give up after I
put so much money and painstaking efforts in it." Six years of
sand-fighting experience filled Li's heart with bewilderments: "The
entire society will be the victim if we allow the sandstorm to run
riot. But why does everyone else just stand by idly?"
Looking Forward to Attention and
Support
"You can struggle with the heaven and the earth, but never struggle
with sandstorms." Many individual sand-fighters conclude
painfully.
The 400 hectares of land contracted by Li Peirui is only a small
palm in the vast sea of desert. He hopes an increasing number of
people will join him in this sand-fighting battle. Only when more
and more people join hands to boost large-scale sand-fighting
projects can sandstorms be weakened and the environment as a whole
improved. But Li has found no companion. "How could they dare to
follow my suit after they see my plight?" Li said with a forced
smile while shaking his head.
While sandstorms become more and more powerful, many sand-fighters
are stepping back. This phenomenon has attracted attentions from
many local government departments. Dunhuang city in northeast Gansu
Province has included the land contracted by individual
sand-fighters into the Volunteer Tree-Planting Project. Dunhuang
municipal officials and Party officials took the lead in planting
trees in those sand-fighters' lands. Gulang County also issued a
document entitled "Gulang County Property Reform Scheme on
Managerial Authority of Forest and Woodland." The county adopts
methods such as auctioning woodland servitude, section-divided
contracting, joint investment and household contracting to
encourage farmers to get involved in environmental projects.
Farmers are the mainstay of sand-fighting investment and they
should receive preferential financial support. Of the 100 hectares
of forested land Song Defu worked on last year, 78 percent of the
trees survived. The county forestry bureau offered him free
seedlings and an allowance of 112 yuan (US$13.5) for labor cost for
each successfully forested hectare of land. Though the 10,000 yuan
(US$1,209.69) he received from the government was much less than
his actual expenditure of 70,000 to 80,000 yuan (US$8,500-9,700),
it was very helpful and supportive to Song.
Individual sand-fighting investment will help build a solid base of
environmental protection and turn out an ecological benefit to the
society as a whole, said Yao Guangxing, director of Gulang County's
forestry bureau. Therefore, he believes, it is reasonable and
urgent to protect these people's initiatives and give them full
support.
Individual sand-fighters welcome supportive policies from local
governments. At the same time, they hope the adopted supportive
policies will be tailored to meet their specific demands.
First, the problem of funding, the bottleneck of sand-fighting
investment, should be solved. Zhao Huaiming, a sand-fighting
investor in Dunhuang City, said that the government should give
individual sand-fighters the same support in seedling and labor
cost allowances as to government-owned forestry centers since they,
too, are protecting the ecology and the interest of the entire
society. Banks allocate a certain amount of ecology construction
loans every year, but these loans only fall into government- and
collectively-owned forestry centers, leaving individual
sand-fighters deserted. Many individual sand-fighters hold that
government departments should break the boundary between "public"
and "private" in ecology projects.
Secondly, government departments should offer technical guidance to
individual sand-fighters. Li Peirui said that the 10,000 Caragana
korshimskiis and 10,000 elms he planted in 1995 all died of alkali
soil. He believed the big loss could have been avoided if he had
been guided by a technician. Li Peirui once tried to recruit some
college graduates majored in forestry but failed to attract anyone
because his was a private enterprise. Li said that professional
technicians in forestry departments were so busy with state-owned
woodland and public forests that a self-employed sand- fighter's
need could never be put on their agendas. "Without technical
guidance," Li said, "I could only get half of the result though I
made double efforts."
Thirdly, the government should adopt more measures to encourage
more individuals to join the sand-control campaign. "When people
are united, they can remove Mount Tai," as the saying goes.
Sand-fighting demands massive participants and large scales of
investment. Many individual sand-fighters hold that the biggest
problem of volunteering trees-planting is the weak afterwards
maintenance, which leaves no trees at all despite the yearly
planting. Individual sand-fighting investors have solved the
problem of maintenance. Obviously, if there are more individual
sand-fighters, the cost of ecology protection will be reduced and
the efficiency will be remarkably raised.
Sand-fighters Need to Accumulate
Experience
Shi Shuzhu is a well-known "sand-fighting hero" in Minqin County
situated in the intersection of Tengger Desert and Badanqiaolin
Desert. Though he started his sand-fighting career as a Party
secretary who was leading the whole village on the course, he has
confronted with most problems troubling other individual
sand-fighters. His experience may give today's sand-fighters some
inspirations.
Inspiration I: Sand fighting requires perseverance. Forty
years ago, Shi Shuzhu's village, Songhe, was extremely
poverty-stricken. Its fertile farmlands were encroached by the
desert and many villagers were forced to consider resettlement.
"When you climbed to a high point and looked around, you saw
nothing but sand; when winds blew, the houses disappeared in dust;
the sands piled up as high as the wall, making it easy for a donkey
to walk on the roof." In the 1950s, 30-odd of the villages' more
than 200 families left their hometown. In 1955, 19-year-old Shi
Shuzhu and six young fellow-villagers went to the bank of the Dasha
River lying to the east of the village and started their cause of
sand-control.
But the trees they planted were either uprooted by gales or berried
dead by quicksand. For 8 years, Shi Shuzhu replanted trees again
and again. Shi said that there was no exact word to express his
distress and depression during those years. His young partners drew
back. When Shi called on other villagers to join him, he was always
responded with words such as "Our ancestors from generation to
generation failed to plant a single tree in this sandy place. If
you Shi Shuzhu want to flaunt your ability, just go ahead. But we
don't want to suffer from such fruitless hardships." Shi said that
the proverb "it takes 10 years to plant a tree" explains the
hardship of tree-growing, but to plant a tree in a sandy place was
much harder. Most of the villagers could not afford the cost of
failure. Shi Shuzhu, however, stuck to his job uncompromisingly.
Shi said the repeated failures were not so dreadful to him because
he believed they helped him gain useful experience. The more
experiences you accumulate, the smoother your road ahead will
become. By now, Shi has spent four decades on this road. He said:
"You may choose not to fight sand; otherwise you must be determined
to go through to the end. Perseverance is the sole trump to squelch
the sand demon."
Inspiration II: Sand-fighting requires you to endure
indescribable hardships. The biggest problem of individual
sand-fighting is the lack of fund. Shi Shuzhu said that Songhe
Village was so poor that the villagers could not even get enough to
eat, leaving alone buying seedlings for afforestation and straws to
cover the sands. "Without money, we got to figure out some stupid
but less costly ways," Shi said. Today, Songhe is in a blessing
shade of trees, with a forest network covering the whole area. The
key point of Songhe's success lies in its villagers' hardworking
and persistence, with which they were able to fulfill a task
otherwise could hardly be done even with enough money, according to
Shi Shuzhu.
"Cover sands with soils, plant trees in drought thresholds" is a
good example of Shi's "stupid" sand-fighting methods. Trees cannot
be planted in quicksand unless you cover it with straws to stop its
flow. But Songhe Village was too poor to afford even straws. Shi
proposed to cover sands with soils. Then, at the foot of sand
dunes, men were busy pushing wheelbarrows and carts with wooden
wheels to carry clays; on the dunes, the elderly and women were
moving clays bit by bit with various baskets. Under quick sands on
the edge of the desert were all solid sandstones and hard clay
layers on which spades and pick-axes could dig no hole. To plant
trees in this area, Shi led villagers to hammer in drill robs to
make holes. Blisters in the laborers' hands soon blew up, with
blood streaming out and coloring the drill robs. With painstaking
efforts, Songhe villagers dug thousands of holes along the desert
edge and planted the hope of green in every spring. Shi said that
though more materials and efficient methods are available now, the
fund-lacking sand-fighters still need to further explore ways of
"more sweat, more hardship and less costly." The demon of sand
cannot be beaten without resolute efforts.
Inspiration Ⅲ: Diligent consideration and continuous study
are necessary for a sand-fighter. Shi Shuzhu said that
sand-fighting needs science and new technology. Therefore,
individual sand fighters must continue their studies to learn more
scientific and practical ideas in this area. Though the primitive
method of "carrying soils to cover sands" worked for Shi, he never
stopped searching for a more advanced way. During the "culture
revolution" (1966-76), some technicians specialized in sand-control
were sent to Songhe Village to receive the so-called ideological
re-education. This offered a great opportunity for Shi Shuzhu to
learn from them. Under the excuse of "holding criticizing
meetings", Shi brought these technicians to his sand dunes to give
lectures on sand-control techniques. Though life was hard for the
villagers of Songhe, Shi tried every means to provide food to these
technicians. Thanks to their guidance, the villagers learned how to
plant a tree by covering sands with bound straws. In this period
Songhe villagers expanded their afforestation area with an average
of 300 mu per year.
"Actually, people in sandy regions have developed many successful
experiences that can be used by individual sand-fighters." Shi
said. Professional technical guidance is certainly nice, but
sand-fighters should also learn from others' experiences. He said
that he would be glad to share his experiences with other
sand-fighters if they are willing to learn.
Inspiration Ⅳ: Sand-fighting must be combined with
ecological and financial benefits. Now Songhe Village is developing
itself in a model of "fighting sand in the outskirts, building
forestry network in the village proper and developing cash forests
according to local conditions." Straw-made sand-blocks have been
planted widely on sand dunes around Songhe Village while
anti-drought shrubberies such as Haloxylon ammodandron are planted
to stabilize moving sand dunes. Trees such as Elaeagnus
angustifolias and tarmarisks are grown to form a windbreak network
along the desert's edge. Cash trees such as apple and Elaeagnus
angustifolias are planted around farmlands, ditches and houses to
build a frontline against sandstorms. Shi nicknamed this model "a
mother hugging her baby" which experts from the Forestry Ministry
named it "Songhe Model".
Shi said that it is impossible to have the sand-fighting program
carried on if you only put money into it and make no profit out of
it. In that case, nobody would like to plant more trees and those
planted may not survive in next generations' hands. Therefore he
suggests sand-fighters work out a good layout at the beginning so
as to plant cash trees in appropriate places and eventually expand
the forest towards the desert edge. In this way, it would be
possible to generate an income to be recycled into ecological
construction, and sand-fighting can go into a beneficial
circulation to greatly reduce the investor's financial burden. In
the four decades of struggling with sand, Shi shed sweat, blood and
tears. Finally when Songhe Village obtained lots of farmland and
trees and its 1700-odd villagers could make an annual turnout of
over 3 million yuan, Shi enjoyed the pleasure of a winner. Shi
received many praises and honors in recent years, but he said
sincerely that many other sand-fighters also deserve praise for
their spirit and courage while taking into account the sufferings
and hardships they have gone through. He calls on the whole society
to keep caring and supporting these people because every bit of
support and encouragement will mean a piece of green added to the
land.
Explore New Sand-fighting Mechanism
The appearance of individual sand-fighters breaks the old model of
relying on the state only for sand-control programs. It goes in
line with the state's western Region Development policies and
measures. Many western Region people hold that a new sand-fighting
mechanism should be established and new methods be explored so as
to urge the government, farmers, private entrepreneurs, enterprises
and science research institutes to join hands to make a
breakthrough in promoting individual sand-fighting programs. Wang
Jie, deputy director of the Gansu Provincial Sand-control Research
Institute, said that the key of uniting these five categories of
sand-fighters lies in reshuffling sand-fighting methods. Fighting
sands without well-defined goals and economical planning is the
principle reason making sand-fighting so hard, according to Wang
Jie. Without economical benefits, the government would find it
harder and harder to work out a program in this area and all kinds
of social forces will not join in this kind of ecological
improvement projects. Therefore, the three concepts of ecological,
economical and social benefits must be integrated into sand-control
programs so as to attract more people to join their efforts.
First, governments at various levels should be the mainstream of
sand- control planning and guidance. Forestry departments hold that
the government should certainly play a leading role as ecological
and social benefits are the primary goal of sand-control. Of
course, social investment should be encouraged in some relatively
better conditioned districts. Due to a lack of well-defined general
planning by government departments, it is hard to develop
sand-fighting into an industry because the sand-control contractors
are scattered and each of them struggles ahead alone with his or
her own personal visions.
Secondly, the official and individual sand-fighters should
complement and support each other. Wang Shengde, director of the
forestry bureau of Jiuquan Prefecture, said that only the
government and civil forces support and complement each other can
we undertake this arduous ecological harness task since any single
force cannot bear it solely. But in real life, disseverance is
still rampant. Zhao Huaiming, a self-employed sand-fighting
investor, couldn't help wailing when he said that people have been
called on to "fight with the heaven and to fight with the earth",
but there has never been the mention of fighting with the sand.
Zhao has invested over 4 million yuan but got no income since he
contracted the biggest sandstorm threshold northeast of Dunhuang
city in 1995. He sighed with emotion and said that it is too
difficult for an individual sand-fighter without any government
support.
Thirdly, farmers' participation must be combined with poverty
relief and prosperity pursuit. In the past, farmers were required
not only to work for sand-fighting programs as volunteers but also
to contribute materials such as straws and firewood. Their
initiative gradually diminished. Therefore, a system should be
worked out to give financial rewards to farmers who have taken an
active part in sand-fighting programs. At least, they should not be
the ones to suffer losses caused by sand-fighting activities. The
practice of use work remuneration for loans has been adopted in
many poverty-relief projects in poor areas. A similar practice
should also be employed in ecological construction so as to promote
farmers' initiatives and reward them with financial benefits.
Fourthly, research institutes should go to sand-fighting frontlines
to explore feasible methods. Wang Jie said that many desert experts
conduct their research only in a theoretical level, offering few
feasible suggestions. Research institutes must change their
sand-control research directions to study and review ecological
construction plans and take sand-control as part of the
comprehensive development. Only in such way, can they provide
useful and feasible suggestions to the government and all
sand-fighters.
Fifthly, the mechanism of multi-investment should be explored. A
system for scientific ecological construction investment has not
been established. Liang Ai, a self-employed sand-fighting investor,
has made some initial progress in a sandstorm threshold harness
project near Yueya Spring in Dunhuang city. But what he has
achieved is far from his goal because of desperately short of fund.
Liang Ai has asked for financial support from government and
relative departments. He does not understand why the local
government and the forestry and water conservancy departments
prefer to use their money to support the poor directly rather
investing the money into individual enterprises and buy stocks to
join ecological construction projects.
(china.org.cn, translated by Alex, August 6, 2002)