Chinese Dust Bowl

via: The Walrus Magazine

With the Olympics in Beijing coming up next month alot of media time is going to be spent on the 'new' China. Much time will also be spent on the massive air pollution problems in the city, ones that are probably going to be affecting the athletes competing in any outdoor event. But one thing you aren't going to hear about is the fact that China is going through one of the greatest ecological disasters in world history. The Chinese Dust Bowl.

Thanks to over exploitation from grazing, farming and pumping of river and aquifers the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, and Xinjiang have turned from and area of grasslands and prairies to one of the largest man made deserts in the world. 28% of China is covered by desert and 22% of those are man made. Over 400,000 square kilometers of desert. Dust storms from this area batter Beijing, move on to Japan and even hit and pollute the west coast of the US. Such are the conditions that the Chinese moved all the farmers out of the area and created a new city for them to live in, Hongsaibo, with a population of 200,000 refugees. The only thing larger than the problem is the steps China is having to take to combat it, namely a 4,500 km 'Great Green Wall' of trees and a World Bank/UN backed plan to move 50 billion cubic metres of water per year to the area. Give it a read.