By: Emily Feng | May 04 2017:
Air pollution readings reach extreme levels in crisis blamed partly on coal mining
A haze of sand has enveloped northern China, leading to extreme air pollution in Beijing as the country’s expanding deserts blow into cities hundreds of kilometres away.
Local governments point to decades of deforestation and overgrazing as the main culprits behind the region’s desertification problem. As soil turns to sand, they have fenced off grasslands from nomads and moved hundreds of thousands of “ecological migrants” to more concentrated settlements closer to water sources.
China’s policymakers have tried various ways to combat the sand blowing off an expanding Gobi.
The most visible of these efforts is a belt of trees, nicknamed the Great Green Wall, planted across China’s north that will eventually stretch for 4,500km and contain 100bn trees to shield Beijing from the neighbouring desert. That has lessened the frequency of sandstorms in the northern capital but has left the rest of China’s northern borderlands vulnerable.
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