China’s Desertification Is Causing Trouble Across Asia

Creeping desertification in China is swallowing thousands of square kilometers of productive soil every year. It’s a challenge of gigantic and unprecedented proportions.

A villager plants trees to try and keep the sand from shifting to other areas in the Hobq Desert in Hangjin County, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, northern China, on May 5, 2006. Desertification in some western and northern regions has accelerated in recent years due to drastic water shortage, destruction of grassland resources, pollution, and other reasons, according to state media. China Photos/Getty Images

Creeping desertification in China is swallowing thousands of square kilometers of productive soil every year. It’s a challenge of gigantic and unprecedented proportions.

The rate of desertification increased throughout the second half of last century and, although this trend has since stabilized, the situation remains very serious.

Sand dunes in the Gobi desert, some 1250 miles northwest of Beijing, on April 20, 2016. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images