How China turns sand green, taking its ecological playbook global

Leveraging decades of domestic restoration and a long-standing commitment to sharing its expertise abroad, Beijing is using the "China Corner" at the ongoing 17th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to showcase its environmental playbook – an effort UNCCD chief Yasmine Fouad called "one of the clearest large-scale examples of how land degradation can be reversed." Along the southeastern edge of China's Tengger Desert, grids of straw woven into the shifting sands are holding back dunes that might otherwise creep southward.

Pioneered in the 1950s, the technique helped Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, a landlocked region hemmed in by deserts on three sides in northwestern China, become the country's first provincial-level region to reverse desertification.

One of the countries most severely affected by desertification, China has vast arid heartlands spanning the northwest, north and northeast, leading Beijing to launch the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program (TSFP) in 1978 to curb the spread of deserts and restore degraded land.

Today, China has brought 53% of its treatable degraded land under management, accounting for roughly a quarter of the world's newly added green areas in recent years.

In Ningxia, barren dunes now host solar arrays and desert tourism hubs.

In neighboring Gansu Province, sand-dwelling crops like Cistanche and desert onions anchor a commercial ecosystem of more than 100 agricultural enterprises.

"China's experience demonstrates that when restoration is integrated into broader development planning, environmental action becomes an investment in people and prosperity," Fouad said.

Along the southern edge of the Sahara, China's experience with the TSFP has helped shape the African Union's Great Green Wall Initiative, launched in 2007 to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land across the Sahel-Sahara region and create 10 million green jobs by 2030.

Established in 2024, the China-Africa Green Technology Park in Mauritania has carved a two-hectare oasis out of the desert.

Dark blue solar panels power an efficient irrigation system, while belts of forage grasses, palm trees and bougainvillea shield fruit trees and vegetable seedlings from wind and sand, yielding its first harvest – peppers, cabbage, watermelons and tomatoes – in February 2025.

Beyond building the park, China has also helped train 45 local technicians in greening technologies and created 120 jobs for the local community.

In Kazakhstan, trial crops of Chinese-developed quinoa have reclaimed saline land while slashing water use by over 30%.