Out of dust A barren land restored

Loess plateau was once the world’s most eroded place, until a Chinese project began reversing decades of damage from farming

Helen Davidson

It was one of China’s most ambitious environmental endeavours ever. The Loess plateau, an area spanning more than 640,000 sq km across three provinces and parts of four others, supports about 100 million people. By the end of the 20th century, however, this land, once fertile and productive, was considered the most eroded place on Earth, according to a documentary by the ecologist John D Liu. Generations of farmers had cleared and cultivated the land, slowly breaking down the soil and destroying the cover. Every year the dust from the plain jammed the Yellow River with silt (this is how the river gets its name), sending plumes of loess sediment across Chinese cities – including to the capital, Beijing. So in 1999 the Chinese government took drastic emergency action with…

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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 21 March 2025

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