The Sands of Time

The Chinese government is relocating millions of "eco-refugees" as once-arable land turns into desert in the face of climate change

"Our home area faces serious water shortages," says Huang Cuikun, a Chinese farmer from the Gansu Province, in a May 17 article in the Guardian UK. "We need it for the animals and the land. We only have a bath 3 to 5 times a year."

Huang is one of millions of eco-refugees in China being relocated to greener pastures by the government as more and more of the country's land succumbs to desertification due to water shortages caused by climate change, over-irrigation and other forces of anthropogenic origin.

The northwestern part of the country is feeling it the most, with growing deserts overtaking once-fertile farmlands and even whole towns. From the southeast, the Tengger Desert encroaches, and from the northwest, the Badain Jaran Desert is moving in.

"When there is a big sandstorm," says Huang, "you can't see people even five meters away."

Desertification is not just a problem in China. According to a press release from the Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa of the United Nations University, the continent will only be capable of feeding a quarter of its population by 2025 if current desertification trends continue.

Ten percent of Madagascar has turned into desert due to slash-and-burn agriculture. In the 1930s, overgrazing by livestock turned parts of America's Great Plains into the Dust Bowl. And in Australia, it is estimated that 42% of the nation's arid and semi-arid lands has experienced desertification.

"We have taken every measure we can think of to stop the desert moving closer and submerging our crops and villages," says Huang.

But without a significant change in human behavior around the globe, it is likely that many people like Huang will one day find themselves surrounded by sand.

GET INVOLVED

• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
• Sign the petition to adopt Article 31 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights giving all people the right to clean and accessible water
• Join the Greenpeace "Energy [R]evolution"
• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change

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image: Wildfire smoke blew across Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and northeastern China on May 18, 2009. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image the same day. Blue-gray smoke forms diagonal lines running from northwest to southeast. The larger plume is on the west, and that plume appears to widen and thicken near the Bo Hai coast. Although the sources of these smoke plumes don’t appear in this image, they probably originate near the Siberia-Mongolia border. Both natural and human-caused fires in Siberia are common in the spring and summer, as an image from western Siberia illustrates. (credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.)