Washing away soil erosion worries

Thirty-eight years ago, torrential rain swept masses of soil and sand from the bare hills above Lan Linjin's new house, destroying the building and throwing his family into destitution.

It was a common tragedy in Changting, a southeastern Chinese county known for its severe soil erosion, but it prompted the then 15-year-old Lan, whose heart-broken father died soon after, to make a vow to fill the barren hills with trees and stop the terror of flooding.

Lan is pushing towards meeting that pledge. Even after he lost both hands and his left eye in a quarry explosion, Lan has managed to plant over 100,000 tea-oil trees on the once-barren hill Hongqiling since 2010.

He is one of the tens of thousands of farmers in Fujian Province's Changting who are rescuing one of China's most erosive regions from the grip of natural disasters.

After much success in the past few decades, they are now eyeing an upcoming survey which will tell how far they have come. According to research by remote-sensing satellite technology in 1985, the amount of land suffering soil erosion in Chanting at that time amounted to 97,467 hectares, or 31.5 percent of the county.

When the survey was repeated in 2012, Changting's soil-eroded areas had dropped 70 percent to 30,000 hectares, while forest coverage had increased by 19.6 percent. The next remote-sensing survey is due in October.

ROOTING FOR CHANGE

Experts predict it may take decades to find a cure for the pollution and environmental degradation China faces. However, Changting's story suggests this can be accelerated -- with government support, and also the entrepreneurial spirit that Chinese authorities have lately been so keen to encourage.

The trees on Hongqiling contribute to water and soil retention. Lan, who is studying e-commerce, sees vast business potential in them as well. "In a few years, these trees will yield tea oil worth more than 2 million yuan (322,000 U.S. dollars) a year," he says.

This picture of security and profits is a far cry from the recent past.Changting sits in a region of red soil, susceptible to erosion due to poor water retention. The problems began about 200 years ago as a result of deforestation, and by the 1940s, Changting was one of the worst counties in China for soil erosion.

In 1940, the ruling Kuomintang government set up China's first pilot zone conserving soil fertility in Changting's Hetian Town, but researchers then were pessimistic.

"The mountains and hills all glow blood-red. Trees are a rare sight!" they wrote in a report, predicting that soil erosion was unstoppable and would reduce Hetian to ruins within decades.

That this prediction has proved wrong is largely a result of locals' hard work tending the soil since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. It has come at a heavy cost though -- the barren mountains and frequent floods have been blamed for grinding poverty in the county.

Rays of hope appeared in 2000, when the provincial government led by Xi Jinping, now the Chinese president, approved an annual fund of 10 million yuan to aid Changting's soil erosion control.

"That was a fortune for an impoverished county like Changting," says Lin Yufeng, director of the county's water and soil conservation bureau. "It elevated our cause to an unprecedented level."

In the same year, the county government severely restricted building and farming developments in the mountains to prioritize afforestation.

"The biggest challenge was to persuade villagers to abandon the habit of burning wood or grass for fuel. So we subsidized their use of coal and marsh gas," Lin says.

Now the fuel subsidies, surpassing 14 million yuan a year, are mainly spent on electricity. For every kilowatt they use, locals are refunded 0.2 yuan, about one third of the market price.

Changting residents have also adapted the traditional afforestation pattern to suit local conditions. With the land too barren to accept trees straight away, planting in Changting usually starts with grass, which takes root easily, then bushes and then trees like Masson's pines.

In Luodi Village of Hetian, where such "backward planting" experiments have been conducted since the 1980s, the red hills are now covered in Masson's pines.

"The river used to rise and turn muddy the moment the rain fell," says 65-year-old villager Liu Ronggao. "Now, thanks to the forests, it only rises after a few hours of rain and the water remains clear."

The afforestation has also alleviated water shortages. Nearly all local households dig wells and have access to good-quality groundwater.

While there has been much progress, there is still room for improvement in the afforestation drive. Experts and local officials are far from satisfied with the fact that coniferous trees, mainly Masson's pines, make up about 80 percent of the 247,000 hectares of woodland in the county.

"Masson's pines are easy to grow but inefficient in retaining water and soil," says Wu Chenghuo, director of the county's forestry bureau. "Broadleaf species are much better in this regard."

Through government-sponsored projects, broadleaf trees such as maple, soapberry, tung and cherry have been introduced into existing coniferous forests since 2011. Wu says they will eventually replace coniferous trees to create an ideal eco-system.

BUDDING BUSINESS SENSE

In addition to the government's ecological campaign, farmers' economic motivation has played an equally important role in treating soil erosion.

Huang Jinyang, a 62-year-old farmer in Sanzhou Town, was one of the first in his village to plant red bayberry, believing the plant can both reduce soil and water loss and increase income.

Inspired by his success, Sanzhou farmers have planted red bayberry on over 800 hectares of the hills since the 1990s, growing it into a lucrative industry.

Lin Muhong, 66, came back to his home village of Hongdu to grow tea-oil trees after retiring as a doctor in 2009. He invested more than 16 million yuan after selling his house and borrowing from friends and relatives.

Lin also started a pig farm that has produced manure to fertilize the hills.

"There used to be little grass; now we have to get overgrown weeds cut," he says.

The improved ecosystem also brought back young natives who used to flee their poor hometowns to work or study in cities.

Lan, Lin and Huang have all seen their children return home to help with family business or start their own. Better educated and more ambitious, the young generation have introduced new ideas in the forests, including medicinal herb cultivation, eco-tourism and e-commerce.

Lin says of the remote-sensing survey due in October that "the figures will certainly look better."

However, Changting still has 250,000 hectares of untreated land, including 5,000 hectares that are categorized as highly erosive, and the forests need constant maintenance.

"There's no end to soil erosion control," says county head Li Shanchang. "We're always half way up the mountain."