Our friend and writer/photographer/tour leader Annika Hipple alerted us on Facebook yesterday to an interesting new China travel/environment article on Ethical Traveler, an e-news portal that “[promotes] travel as diplomacy that can make a difference on environmental and human rights issues.”
In the November 2010 issue, Katia Savchuk’s article, “China’s Great Green Wall Tests the Limits of Reforestation” explores one of China’s greatest environmental challenges. Nationwide deforestation, in conjunction with global warming, poor regulations and overgrazing, has ” contributed to the rapid spread of deserts,” thereby “threatening the livelihoods of 400 million people.”
China’s 2,800-mile-long (4,506 kilometers)”Great Green Wall, ” officially termed the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program, will provide 400-million hectares’ (988-million acres) worth of artificial forest to 13 northern Chinese provinces in 40 years, to counter such climate change and desertification.
But, will this initiative, started in 1978, be an effective long-term solution to China’s worsening environmental conditions? We wonder the same thing for how this will affect the landscape of Chinese tourism.
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Photo credit: Home Escapades
