绿色长城

choi

Vince Beiser, It's So Absurd It Might Just Work: China Plants Billions of Trees in the Desert. Can a 'Green Great Wall' stop sand from devouring the country?  Mother Jones, September/October 2017.
www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... rees-in-the-desert/

Note:
(a)
(i) "Duolun County, in China's Inner Mongolia"  內蒙古自治區錫林郭勒盟 多伦县
(ii) "State Forestry Admin­istration 国家林业局 * * * Lu Qi 卢琦 [male], head of the SFA's Institute of Desertification Studies 中国林业科学研究院 荒漠化研究所, smiles tolerantly when I ask about those figures. He and Cao disagree over the efficacy of the Green Great Wall."

中国林业科学研究院 (简称中国林科院; English: Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF); 国家林业局直属)
(iii) "Wang Wenbiao 王文彪董事长 grew up in a family of sheep ranchers on the edge of Inner Mongolia’s vast Kubuqi Desert. * * * Beijing headquarters of Elion Resources Group [Co Ltd 亿利资源集团有限公司; 'founded in 1988 in a saltern': Wikipedia], the multibillion-dollar company he leads. * * * The road [that Elion built in Kubuqi desert] eventually leads to Elion's palatial, dome-topped Seven Star Lakes Desert Hotel"
(A) Ordos Desert 鄂尔多斯沙漠 comprises two large deserts: Kubuqi Desert 库布其沙漠 in the north and the Muu-us Desert 毛乌素沙漠 in the south.  En.wikipedia.org
(B) Hangjinqi Kubuqi Desert Seven Star Lake Resort  杭锦旗库布其沙漠七星湖旅游度假区 (also known as 七星湖沙漠酒店; located at 內蒙古自治区鄂尔多斯市 杭锦旗)
(iv) "Cao Shixiong 曹世雄, a professor at Minzu University of China 中央民族大学 * * * Cao, a lean, banty guy with a roguish smile * * * [Cao, of Green Great Wall] huge numbers have succumbed to the arid environment or diseases and pests to which monocultural forests are especially vulnerable. In 2000, a beetle infestation annihilated 1 billion poplars—two decades' worth. Cao estimates a walloping 86 percent of the Green Great Wall trees planted since 1978 haven’t made it. (Other studies have concluded that in some regions, 60 percent of trees die over time.)"
(A) banty (n or adj): "BANTAM"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/banty
(B) bantam (n or adj; from Bantam, former Dutch residency in Java)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bantam
(C) A residency was an administrative level in
Dutch East Indies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_Indies
(section 3.3 Administrative divisions)
(D) The residency corresponds to the present-day Banten
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banten
(is the westernmost province on the island of Java; capital city is Serang)

Serang is inland; town of Banten is a port city due north (of Serang). Both are within Banten province, and located 60-mile air distance west of Jakarta.
(E) etymology:
banten (n)
www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bantam
(v) " 'For the past 1,000 years, only shrubs and grass have grown in those areas. Why would they think planting trees would be successful?' asks Sun Qingwei 孫庆伟, a former Chinese Academy of Sciences desert researcher who now works for the National Geographic Society."

(b) "As the Tengger Desert 腾格里沙漠 [situated on the left of Ordos desert] expands, it is merging with two other deserts to form a vast sea of sand"
(c) "across Inner Mongolia, more than 600,000 farmers and herders have met this fate [of having been 'forced off their land to make way for the local tree projects']."