(CN)Stripped of soil, trees, villages are dying out

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http://www.asahi.com/english/international/K2002012300471.html

 

Stripped of soil, trees, villages are dying out

 

By KAZUO TAKAGI , Deputy Director, Asahi Asia Network

 

China must count the cost as desertification takes

hold across vast inland areas.

 

Drawing water from a well near a mountain stream,

villagers noticed it was the same dull gray as water

squeezed from a dirty mop, and there were wormlike

creatures swimming in it.

 

Yet this was the same murky liquid that many people in

the mountainous areas of Datong in the north of

China's Shanxi province take home and boil to produce

drinking water.

 

After all the members of the family have washed their

faces and cleaned the dishes, the water is given to

the family's livestock to drink.

 

Rock precipices as high as 100 meters stretch across

the area and vegetable fields line terraced slopes.

But due to the region's first drought in 100 years, a

third of the fields lie fallow.

 

The Huangtu plateau, 300 kilometers west of Beijing,

was formed by sand that was blown from the Gobi and

Taklamakan deserts and deposited in layers over

several million years.

 

The yellow, sandy soil, called loess, becomes as hard

as concrete when dry, but turns powdery again when

plowed.

 

Only 400 millimeters of rain fall each year on the

plateau, which is over 1,000 meters above sea level.

When the rain comes, it falls hard and only in limited

areas, washing away the topsoil.

 

Since 1992, the Japanese citizens group Green Earth

Network (GEN) has been cooperating with the Chinese

Communist Party's local youth committee in planting

trees on the region's bare mountains. Recently, I

accompanied GEN members on a visit to the area.

 

We traveled through the hills of Zuoyun county in the

west of Datong.

 

The potato fields lining the road had not been touched

since the plants died of thirst. Kaoliang sorghum, a

cornlike plant famous in the area for growing so tall

that it provided an ideal hiding place for thieves in

the old days, reached no higher than a meter. Sesame

plants, whose seeds are used to make oil, were no more

than a stumpy 10 centimeters high. The ground was dry

and rough on the surface and hard as a rock beneath.

 

Rainfall in Datong between January and June last year

came to only 46.6 millimeters-barely more than 30

percent of the average precipitation for the period.

 

Desertification has advanced because trees have been

cut down to make way for fields. In addition,

underground water is drying up as the ground has no

capacity to hold rain, even when it comes.

 

Koji Hashimoto, a 56-year-old photographer whose

photos of the Huangtu plateau were published as a book

by Toho Shuppan Inc., had a worrying tale to tell.

 

Wells near the hills in the coal-mining village of

Nanshuitou dried up when villagers dug wells in lower

locations for irrigation, Hashimoto said. The

villagers, therefore, began drinking water they found

in the mine.

 

They soon began to experience numbness in their hands

and feet, and dogs that had drunk the water were

unable to walk straight.

 

Local government officials began investigating the

matter when Hashimoto brought it to their attention.

The water was found to be highly polluted and the

officials declared it unfit to drink. The villagers

had no choice but to start buying water from distant

villages.

 

GEN Secretary-General Kunio Takami, 53, spends more

than 100 days a year in China, offering advice on

planting trees.

 

In the organization's newsletter, he wrote: ``We are

sure there used to be forests in this area. According

to government records, the percentage of land in

Shanxi province that was forested was 50 percent

before the Qin Dynasty, 40 percent during the Tang and

Song dynasties, 30 percent during the Liao and Yuan

dynasties, 10 percent during the Qing Dynasty and 2.4

percent when the People's Republic of China was

established.

 

``The change was brought about by excessive

cultivation to cater to the growing population, as

well as by urbanization, refining of metals and china,

deforestation and continous fighting.''

 

Takami concludes: ``There were forests before

civilization. There has been desert since

civilization. Datong is a typical example of this

phenomenon.''

 

* * *

 

(Editor's note: These stories originally appeared in

Japanese on Dec. 27.)

 

(01/23)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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