A May 2001 report from U.S. Embassy Beijing

The once green pastures of eastern Inner Mongolia lately resemble a scene from the American “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s. Sand storms emanating from these desertified grasslands have become an increasingly common irritant in Northern Chinese cities, and their effects have recently been felt as far away as Colorado. While drought and climate change are partly to blame, the root cause is overgrazing, and the only apparent solution is to reduce the pressure on the land by moving people and their animals out. Unfortunately, China’s 21st-century “Okies” have no California to escape to -- at least not in China.

A Visit to a Disaster Area

A U.S. Embassy Environment Science & Technology (EST) officer visited Inner Mongolia’s Xilingol League (prefecture), north of Beijing, in late April to deliver U.S. Government disaster assistance to herders left vulnerable by last winter’s severe snowstorms and a preceding drought. Officially, 97 percent of Xilingol’s 200,000 square kilometers is classified as grassland. But much of the region is now covered with sand dunes. To the inexpert eye, at least a third of the terrain visible from the highway between the prefecture capital Xilinhot and the banner (county) seat of Uliastai, 200 km to the north, appeared to be desert (i.e. virtually no vegetation). In those areas that still have grass, the grass is generally sparse, interspersed with sand and no more than an inch tall. Although it is normal for this area to be dry in April (Xilingol gets most of rain in July and August), the recent vistas contrast starkly with photos taken in the same area just three years earlier (see below). According to an International Red Cross official who accompanied on the trip, the situation is even worse to the west in Ulan Qab League. There, he said, half the grassland has become desert.

Throughout China, about 100,000 square kilometers has become desertified over the last 50 years, according to official sources. Since the mid-1980s, desert area has been expanding by about 2,500 square kilometers a year. Of the seven areas within the country where deserts are expanding by 4 percent a year or more, three are in Inner Mongolia.

Dust in the Wind

Accelerating desertification in central and eastern Inner Mongolia is primarily responsible for the increasing frequency and intensity of dust storms hitting northern Chinese cities, including Beijing. According to the China Meteorological Administration, the number of “strong” sand and dust storms recorded grew from just five in the 1950s to eight in the ‘60s, 13 in the ‘70s, 14 in the ‘80s and 23 in the ‘90s. Last year there were 13, and during a one-month period ending April 10, 2001, ere were seven.
Beijing has always experienced dust storms in the spring, when the prevailing west wind carries sand particles to the city from the Gobi Desert. But meteorologists confirm that the recent rash of dust storms has come not from historic desert areas but from recently desertified regions such as Xilingol. In effect, the Gobi has expanded eastward.

On the drive from Xilinhot to Uliastai April 25, swirling eddies of dust could be seen every half kilometer or so, some traversing barren pastures like dust devils, others stationary and reaching up to the clouds. In several places, thick blankets of sand could be seen blowing across the road surface, sometimes depositing itself in deep dunes at the edge of the pavement, creating a road hazard.

What Blows Around Comes Around

Storms emanating from these newly desertified areas not only occur more frequently, they are happening earlier in the year, and, being composed of finer dessicated soil particles, they travel farther. Beijing this year suffered a major dust storm on New Year’s Day, the first ever recorded in January. Monitors in Hawaii now detect Chinese dust about 20 times a year, according to press sources. Last month, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed for the first time that a Chinese dust storm rode the jet stream across the Pacific to the U.S. mainland, causing a visible haze over Colorado and other parts of the Mountain West.
Particulate concentrations in Aspen April 14 reportedly measured 58 micrograms per cubic meter (the U.S. Enviromental Protection Agency standard for respirable particulates is 50 micrograms per cubic meter).

The impact is much more noticeable in Korea and Japan. Cleanliness-conscious Japanese often complain about “brown rain” streaking their windows and automobiles. Local sources tell us that public pressure from Koreans, fed up with choking on Chinese dust, was the major impetus for launching annual China-Korea-Japan trilateral ministerial consultations on the environment two years ago and for establishing a five-year joint research program on dust storms and regional transboundary air pollution, to which Korea is contributing the bulk of the funding.

Climate Aside, It’s the Overgrazing, Stupid!

Abnormally dry conditions in North China have undoubtedly contributed to the dust storms. Rainfall has been below normal two years in a row, and 2001 is shaping up to be another dry year. Many Chinese climate experts suspect this dry trend is not transitory. Because of deforestation and global climate change, they say, North China is becoming warmer, drier and windier. Others draw connections to the El Nino/La Nina cycle. But experts agree the root cause of the problem is unsustainable land use -- namely overgrazing.

Mongols successfully practiced nomadic pastoralism in what is now Inner Mongolia for millennia, at one point moving out to dominate most of Eurasia. Beginning in the 1950s, however, this traditional land-use pattern began to change. Han Chinese began migrating to the region in large numbers in the late ‘50s, encouraged by the Beijing Communist leadership’s exhortation to expand the area under cultivation and open up the frontier areas as part of the “Great Leap Forward.” From the 1950s to the 1980s, Inner Mongolia’s population more than tripled to 21 million, and Han Chinese came to account for the vast majority (now more than 80 percent). Land under cultivation also expanded dramatically, as did the number of livestock, especially sheep. The problem is that, with annual rainfall of only 35-45 centimeters in a normal year, areas like Xilingol cannot sustain such intense exploitation.

The assault on the region’s ecology abated during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) but began again in earnest in the late 1970s. The number of livestock grazing on Xilingol pastures jumped from 2.5 million in 1977 to 6 million in 1980 and 10 million in 1989. Population growth slowed in the 1990s (Inner Mongolia’s official head count in last year’s census was 23.8 million, up only about 10 percent from 1989). But Xilingol’s livestock population continued to grow, hitting 18 million in 2000. By the late ‘80s, most herders in Xilingol had given up the nomadic lifestyle and, at the urging of the local government, established permanent dwellings. As a result, pastures were no longer grazed seasonally in rotation as before but intensively year-round. Degradation and erosion accelerated. The mix of animals also changed. Traditional nomads kept a mix of horses, cattle and sheep/goats. Today’s herds are composed overwhelmingly of sheep and goats. Kashmir goats in particular are favored because of their valuable wool. But sheep and goats are more destructive of the grasslands, because they chew the grass down to the ground.

According to a recent People’s Daily article, the yield of forage grass from Inner Mongolian natural pastures has declined 30-70 percent since the 1950s. A scientist at a grassland research station near Xilinhot estimated that, if current trends continue, Xilingol will be unlivable in 15 years.

What To Do?

Experts and local officials were in basic agreement on what needs to be done to halt the ecological destruction of Xilingol -- reduce the number of livestock. Most were unwilling to say by how much. But a senior prefecture-level official implied that cutting herds in half would be a good start. The problem is, animal husbandry is the mainstay of the regional economy, and many of Xilingol’s people, already living on the margin, have no other means of livelihood.

In recent years, local officials have urged herders to slaughter 40 percent of their animals each year to reduce stocks. But the actual slaughter rate has been about half that. Herders are reluctant to reduce their herds, since herd size is their primary indicator of status. In fact, the local official poverty line is calculated not in terms of cash income but by the number of livestock per family member. The recent winter storm disaster killed off hundreds of thousands of animals within the Prefecture, pushing many thousands of families below that line. Even so, officials estimate the livestock population at slaughter time this year will be down only about 17 percent compared with last year. The natural response of herders impoverished by the storm disaster will be to restore the size of their herds. Their individual motives thus run counter to the collective need to reduce the total livestock population to a sustainable level.

Local officials tossed out a few possible solutions to this dilemma, all of which present problems:

• Subsidize herders to take pasture land out of use -- This, of course, would be expensive and probably require large injections of cash from Beijing.

• Import high value-added livestock, such as prime U.S. or Australian beef cattle, so that herders can make a good income with fewer animals -- Of course, prime cattle do not come cheap, and if they are fed on lousy grass, their beef will not fetch a premium price.

• Feed animals with high-quality, manmade feed instead of grass -- This would also be expensive, probably prohibitively so for a typical Xilingol herder.

• Create new sources of urban, industrial employment -- Difficult, given the region’s scarce resources and poor transportation links.

We’re from Beijing, and We’re Here to Help You

The silver lining to the Inner Mongolian dust cloud, from the standpoint of the Inner Mongolians, is that it has forced authorities in Beijing to focus more attention on the problem of desertification. In fact, a severe dust storm hit Beijing the very weekend that National People’s Congress delegates were arriving for their annual plenary in March -- perhaps the best lobbying tactic Xilinhot could have imagined. The NPC is now reviewing a draft desertification prevention and control law. The Central Goverment has also committed RMB 4.7 billion (US$ 569 million) over the next 10 years to control grassland degradation and desertification in Inner Mongolia, of which about a third is to be spent in Xilingol and the rest in neighboring Ulan Qab League and Chifeng City. A contact confirmed to us that Xilingol had received RMB 164 million under this program for 2001.

Meanwhile, the Inner Mongolia government plans to spend RMB 100 million (US$12 million) over three years to move 15,000 people out of ecologically overtaxed areas, of which 6,000 have already been moved.

Comment

Xilingol illustrates the major obstacle to Beijing’s grand plans to develop China’s poor “Western” regions (even though part of it lies due north of Beijing, Inner Mongolia is typically lumped into the “West” for purposes of the “Great Western Development” strategy). As one expert on Xilingol’s ecology succinctly put it: “This area cannot be developed.” And Xilingol is not alone. According to a recent article in a Guangzhou newspaper, a satellite survey by the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed that one-fifth of the land in Western China is already being exploited beyond its carrying capacity.

The near-term options for Xilingol’s herders do not look good. They can become wards of Beijing, dependent on subsidies or donated food and fodder. Or they can do as America’s “Okies” did in the 1930s -- move elsewhere. The question is: where? China already has a “floating” population of economic refugees numbering at least 100 million. And with 1.3 billion people, there are no areas within its borders that are both rich in resources and short of people. There is no Chinese California.

The Chinese Government has previously moved persons to make way for infrastructure or as part of poverty alleviation programs. International controversy has ensued in some cases, especially when ethnic minorities were involved, as in the proposed World Bank project in Qinghai, which involved ethnic Tibetans. In the case of Inner Mongolia, it is not known whether the Government plans to move ethnic Mongols or ethnic Han. Most likely there will be some of each. So far, the numbers under consideration to be moved are small. But they could grow if the situation worsens and other options come to be seen as less viable.

Meanwhile, an interdisciplinary Chinese research team in Xilingol is studying the impact of grassland destruction on the global climate system. Xilingol forms the southeastern edge of the great Eurasian Steppe, whose ecosystem is both a major source and sink for greenhouse gases. The research team is attempting to quantify the role of the steppe ecosystem in the global carbon cycle. Their findings will be all the more important if Xilingol turns out to be a harbinger for the rest of Central Asia’s grasslands.
 

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