by JEROME SKALSKI
(translated by MARIETTE PURCELL)
A vast green wall, an ambitious project comparable to the Great Wall or the Grand Canal linking Hangzhou to Peking.
With its programme to reforest the arid zones of the North, China has embarked on its greatest environmental project. A green wall is in the process of being constructed; its aim, to plant 35,6 million hectares of trees over an area of 4 500 kilometers, stretching from east to west. Following decades of diminishing forests, a process which has accelerated throughout the twentieth century, due to the over-exploitation of Manchourie’s woodlands during Japanese occupation and the post war period, along with the demographic growth which it has had to confront. Fifty years after the launch of its programme ’the forestry front’, China has committed itself to a whirlwind of reforestation. With an increase of 2,5 million hectares of woodland between 1990 and 2010 according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, China has pushed itself to the top of the list of nations in terms of the number of forests planted, and with a total of 195,5 million hectares, it ranks 5th place, after Russia, Brazil, Canada and the US for its forested areas.
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