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🇮🇩 Indonesia /Environment & Climate

China's Greening Efforts Transform Taklimakan Desert into Carbon Sink

From Republika · () Indonesian

Translated from Indonesian, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

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  • China's extensive afforestation program in the Taklimakan Desert has transformed the arid region into a natural carbon sink.
  • Decades of planting have led to increased vegetation that now absorbs more carbon dioxide than the area releases.
  • This ecological restoration project, one of the world's largest, demonstrates the potential for human intervention to enhance carbon capture even in extreme desert environments.

The vast Taklimakan Desert in China's Xinjiang region, once known as the "sea of death," is now emerging as a significant natural carbon sink due to China's ambitious afforestation efforts. Decades of large-scale ecological restoration have not only made parts of the desert productive but have also enhanced its capacity to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Stretching over 337,000 square kilometers and historically characterized by extreme conditions with over 95 percent moving sand, the Taklimakan Desert was a formidable challenge for vegetation. However, China's Three-North Shelterbelt Program, initiated in 1978 and often called the "Great Green Wall," has been instrumental in combating desertification. This program has led to the planting of over 66 billion trees and culminated in the completion of a green belt surrounding the Taklimakan in 2024, marking one of the planet's largest ecological restoration projects.

Recent research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reveals that the vegetation now flourishing along the desert's edges is absorbing more carbon dioxide than the region emits. This indicates that the Taklimakan is actively functioning as a carbon sink. The study, which analyzed satellite data, rainfall, vegetation cover, photosynthesis, and CO2 movement over 25 years, confirmed a consistent increase in vegetation directly linked to the government's greening initiatives.

Professor Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, a lead author of the study, highlighted this as the first evidence that human intervention can boost carbon absorption even in extremely arid desert landscapes. The success also sheds light on the development of agriculture in the Taklimakan's periphery, where irrigation, land management, and greening have enabled the cultivation of crops like wheat.

We found for the first time that human-led intervention can effectively increase carbon absorption even in the most extreme dry landscapes.

— Yuk YungYuk Yung, a professor of planetary science at Caltech and a study author, commented on the findings regarding human intervention in desert environments.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Republika in Indonesian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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