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Hey Inner Mongolia, keep your sand!

By Joseph Christian (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-20 08:04

I stood over the sink, violently coughing. My lungs ached. It felt like they were filled with lead and every breath seemed to weigh them down more. I'm not a chain smoker, but I was unfortunate enough to travel for an hour across Beijing one Saturday morning last month as the city was hit by one of the biggest sandstorms in recent memory.

As I continued to hack up sand, I thought to myself, "The last time I experienced a sandstorm like this was when I lived in Inner Mongolia. Maybe it's to blame?"

As I looked into it, I found my suspicion was right. According to a report that was printed April 7 in China Daily, Inner Mongolia was a major source of the dirt and sand the easterly winds carried to Beijing.

In the report, it mentions that the mining and industrialization of Inner Mongolia has ruined and used up water sources, leading to increased desertification in the province. I wasn't surprised because I have experienced it firsthand.

Several years ago, while hiking in the mountains near Inner Mongolia's largest city of Baotou, I was amazed at how many of the mountains had been ripped apart by mining activity. In some areas, the air was thick with the dust of crushed rock and coal. These mountains once held many natural springs that flowed into streams that watered the small farming villages dotted along the valleys. But no more, the mining has blocked and even destroyed the water sources, leaving the valleys sandy and dry.

Baotou itself used to be referred to as the "City of the Deer". One old man told me stories of a deer-filled forest that used to exist near Baotou. But the trees were cut down long ago in the name of industrial progress, leaving in their place a dry and sandy swath of dead grass and dried-up farms.

Such stories are not just unique to Baotou. Inner Mongolia has many natural deserts and such careless human activity has given them a perfect opportunity to expand - and expand they have.

During the three years I lived in Inner Mongolia, I experienced my fair share of powerful sandstorms brought by the spring winds. One of the worst I experienced blew out windows and reduced visibility to just a few meters. My elderly friend who remembered Baotou's heyday as the "Deer City" also told me that the sandstorms never used to be that bad.

Inner Mongolia is making an effort to improve the situation. In areas where deserts are encroaching upon the province's big cities of Baotou and Hohhot, trees are being planted everywhere.

One time, while a Chinese friend and I were searching for old sections of the Great Wall, we came across a newly planted sapling forest. It was strange to see row after row of perfectly aligned trees covering the dusty hills. For a minute, I thought that maybe Inner Mongolian authorities were trying to create the most symmetrical forest in the world. My stupor quickly lifted as I realized how effective the trees would be at stopping the land from eroding into a pile of sandy dust to be blown to Beijing. There was just one problem ... how would these trees get the water necessary to survive?

It's a big problem and with a lack of proper funds, and water shortages that are already affecting Inner Mongolia, it leaves some questions about the effectiveness of planting new trees. In Inner Mongolia's Xinghe county, alone nearly 90 percent of newly planted trees died in 2009.

To make matters worse, much of the mining activity that was stopped around the time of the Beijing 2008 Olympics has started again, leaving Inner Mongolia at a loss to stop the spread of desertification.

The large sandstorm that hit Beijing in March was proof enough. Weather forecasters have predicted that more are on the way. While Inner Mongolia isn't solely to blame, it is largely its sands and dust that are getting deposited on Beijing. More particularly, being sucked into my lungs as I trudge down the sandy streets of Beijing on what should be a beautiful spring morning.

Sandstorms are natural, but they don't have to be as bad as they are. Inner Mongolia's GDP might be going up because of its steel factories and coal mines but so is its liability in China's environmental future. Unless some action is taken, I can only look forward to standing over my sink every spring hacking up sand from a place I once called home.