Hitachi Construction Machinery (Shanghai) Horqin Desert afforestation project

Hitachi Construction Machinery (Shanghai) started an afforestation project called the "Hitachi Construction Machinery (Shanghai) Forest Project" in the Horqin Desert in Inner Mongolia, China, in 2005, by assigning the work to an NGO for the environment called G-Net. The Horqin Desert is about three hours by car from the capital of Liaoning province, Shenyang, China, and is the nearest desert to Japan. This land lies in a semi-arid climatic zone or semi-humid climatic zone with annual precipitation of 400mm - 500mm, is not naturally an area that becomes desert, and was steppes before the 1960s. Desertification started artificially in the 1960s due to settlement of nomads, pasturage, reclamation and deforestation to meet food production targets. This desertification is one of the causes of yellow sand damage that occurs in spring every year and which generates social problems in China. Yellow sand also flies to Japan in on the prevailing westerlies, causing environmental problems.

G-Net is carring out greening projects which aim to restore vegetation in the Horqin Desert, that was not formerly desert. Endorsing this target, Hitachi Construction Machinery (Shanghai) assigned the afforestation project mentioned above to G-Net. During the four days of April 10 to April 13, 2005, a total of 70 participants planted 10,500 trees (2,500 poplar trees, 2,500 Hippohae Rhamnoides, 5,000 Siberian peashrubs and 500 mulberry bushes) on about 10ha of dunes. Lots of work is required for afforestation including digging wells for sprinkler water, using a tractor to dig furrows to plant poplar trees, planting trees, watering the plants and erecting fences.

Tree planting is only one small part of afforestation: much more work is needed to manage and maintain the trees. To help trees to grow, sand control to avoid trees from being covered with sand, and sprinkling with water are necessary. Fences have to be maintained to protect the trees from livestock. Poplar trees, which grow more than 10m tall, have to be pruned. In addition, checking the rooting of trees and raising the awareness of local people about afforestation are required. The work above was performed in 2006, but the absence of weeding in June and July, due to a lack of understanding by the local people of the necessity of weeding in the months, stunted the growth of the poplars and other trees, although the poplars were leafier than in 2005. Learning from this experience, trees will be managed and maintained based on thoroughly revised management procedure from 2007.

The local people do the work of planting, managing and maintaining the trees, which means the project is helping the local economy.

Please send us your opinions and impressions concerning this article.