China has been taking concrete actions regarding forests for many years, not only to contain the advance of deserts but also to function as carbon sinks. The country has large areas of various types of forests and, for hundreds of years, has been implementing tree-planting projects on a scale difficult to find anywhere else in the world. In addition to planting new forests, China also proceeds with the reforestation of existing forests.
Recent studies aim to analyze what really drove the rapid growth of China's forest carbon sink. The answer involves multiple factors that researchers are trying to better understand.
Since 1978, China has planted approximately 66 billion trees as part of the so-called Great Green Wall, a green barrier designed to contain the advance of the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the northern part of the country. The goal was to prevent sand from continuing to swallow the northern grasslands, a region where the Gobi Desert was advancing more than two kilometers per year.
