Pillars of a Promise

For years, spring was known as the sandstorm season in Beijing, when dust and sand whipped up from the Gobi desert in the north by high winds enveloped the city, blotting out sunlight and forcing people to stay indoors. But in recent times, the menace has receded with an afforestation project started in 1978 beginning to produce results.

A Great Green Wall has been built under the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, a project to create strips of forests in north, northwest and northeast China to curb desert expansion and control sandstorm. Today, it is the largest man-made forest on earth.