Future Forest
change of The Green Walls
The desolate desert is slowly turning into a lush forest.
Future Forest
change of The Green Walls
The desolate desert is slowly turning into a lush forest.
Future Forest
Unbreathable Land
- As shown in Map 1, the world’s deserts have merged into one giant desert as a result of global warming and overdevelopment. It stretches from the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa, through the new deserts of Southern Spain in Europe, the wastelands created by the depletion of the Middle East and the Aral Sea, and through Central Asia to the Kubuqi Desert at the Eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert in Western China. (Map 2)
- Desertification is occurring at a rate that is hundreds of times faster than people’s efforts to plant trees each year, and it’s already just a two-hour drive west of the Korean Peninsula.
- Thousands of years ago, the Kubuqi Desert was a lush forest, but indiscriminate logging and overgrazing turned it into grasslands, and war and overdevelopment turned it into a desert, and now desertification is spreading in a straight line from west to east, depending on the direction of the wind. (Map 3)
- Climate change should be recognized as a man-made environmental disaster, not a natural disaster, and we should all do our part to protect Earth’s resources by producing green energy, recycling resources, stopping the spread of deserts, and enabling “sustainable development”. Sustainable development can prevent climate change and provide hope for future generations. Future Forest has been planting trees in the Inner Mongolia Desert, the source of about 40% of the yellow dust that comes to Korea, for future generations.
Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, which have been stable for tens of thousands of years, have been increasing rapidly since the Industrial Revolution (1).
This climate change is accelerating global warming, resulting in record high temperatures.(2)
Desertification, coupled with water scarcity, has destroyed 23% of the planet’s land and is still occurring at a rate of 32 football fields per minute. (3)
The project, which has been ongoing for the past 18 years (since 2002), plays a major role in blocking sandstorms and reducing the damage caused by yellow dust in Korea by planting and greening trees on the shifting sand dunes where yellow dust directly originates. Future Forest also restores dry areas to land that can be used by humans and living creatures, practicing sustainable development between humans and nature.Today, the restored land has become a place for locals who fled the sandstorms to return and live, a place of relaxation for hundreds of thousands of citizens of neighboring cities, and an ecosystem where many plants and animals have returned to rely on the trees planted.Kubuqi Green Ecological Park works closely with international organizations and environmental groups around the world, including the UNCCD, to participate in discussions on land degradation neutrality (LDN) and desertification, land degradation, and drought, which are efforts to halt desertification, and to promote bilateral friendship between Korea and China by strengthening environmental protection exchanges with Korean and Chinese institutions.
Future Forest
Kubuqi desert tree planting situation
A road built by Future Forest, The Green Walls
Recognizing that the prevention of yellow sand desertification can be effectively achieved through cooperation between China and Korea, Future Forest launched the ‘Korea-China Friendship Green Wall’ project to stop the eastward migration of the desert by building a windbreak forest 16 kilometers long and 0.6 kilometers wide across the Kubuqi Desert from north to south. The project to create a windbreak forest on both sides of the Jie Chai Road, which runs north and south through the Kubuqi Desert, took a total of five years and cost 7 billion won, with Mirae Forest and the Chinese side covering the cost in the form of matching funds. The project also aims to create a green global environmental community by building friendships and human networks among outstanding young people from both countries, who are the next generation of leaders, through joint planting activities.
Planting a billion trees in the desert
Future Forest’s efforts to combat desertification
Recognizing the potential of Future Forest’s decade-long anti-desertification campaign and human resource development, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), together with Future Forest and the All-China Youth Federation, launched the “Plant a Billion Trees in the Desert” campaign on May 15, 2009, in the Kubuqi Desert of Inner Mongolia, China. At the launch of the campaign, a tree donated by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was planted as the first tree. The movement is open to all citizens of the world who want to plant trees and turn devastated deserts into spaces of reinvention and life..