Battle against the Deserts | | Extra Long Documentary

deserts mean death infertile land a control no food deserts have many faces and they've always been a threat to mankind but never have they grown so fast destroying fertile stretches of land every day now Europe is hit too and as so often the cause is man [Music] permanent desertification now threatens great parts of Europe the deserts are advancing steadily from the south for the most part unnoticed deserts are zones where nothing or only certain kinds of vegetation will grow these areas endanger people plants and animals and they're growing in size by the day the worst affected country is Spain in the Middle Ages 90% of the country was covered in forests today two-thirds of the land is at risk of desertification and in the coming years great parts of the Iberian Peninsula could turn permanently and irreversibly into desert and the cause is Homo sapiens nature is pitiless when man neglects the environment leading scientists know why the deserts are spreading esteemed or no is templo de una at this area is a perfect example of the accumulation of human errors the chain of mistakes began with deforestation for timbers production and continued with forest fires making charcoal agricultural use fabricación de carvalho more combustible universal this combination of harmful activities has led to the landscape we see here today da lua I stay Asahi they revoke every motion to Almaty tourists and visitors barely noticed the environmental catastrophe in Spain everything seems so attractive the cost of blanca south of berlin thea is particularly popular no one seems to realize what's taking place just a few kilometers inland holidaymakers and locals just want to enjoy life without any worries they close their eyes to reality will believe that the parched earth is a natural phenomena and yet in the long run the effects will be life-threatening for Humanity one of the main reasons for the destruction of Spain is here right in the middle of the Valencia region the holiday town of Benidorm mass tourism at its most extreme this vacation machine has been running at full speed for decades with a room occupancy rate averaging 80 percent it's the busiest of all spain's tourist resorts five and a half million people visit the town every year that's up to three hundred and fifty thousand a night Benidorm has been growing since the 1960s mainly upwards today this former fishing village has the highest density of high-rise buildings in the world outside Manhattan according to experts the town consumes 22 million cubic hectometer zuv water a year that's 22 trillion liters a number with 12 zeros not even half that amount comes from its own surroundings the rest comes from the hinterland and average water use is 850 liters per person per day in Germany France or Britain it's about 150 liters the long-term effects of this excessive water consumption will be disastrous [Applause] but the tourists keep flocking to water parks like aqualen dia with its 14 swimming pools and 27 water slides in and almost all Mediterranean coasts you'll find a ribbon of the urban tourist and industrial development together they put the surrounding countryside under overwhelming pressure the effects include contamination and salination of the limited water reserves and garbage problems tourism has an important role to play economically but it has a negative effect on the environment Jose Pasquale is a victim of the water shortage in the countryside he was born here in the mountains near Lorca in the southern region of murcia fifty-two years ago at 20 he moved down into the valley there was no future in the mountains the water had run out now driving through the parched foothills Jose is witnessing the final phase of Spain's struggle with drought this region has lost more and more of its population its people and it's trees we moved away because there was less and less rain forty or fifty years ago it rained a little now it hardly rains at all the trees are gone everything has dried out hardly anyone lives here anymore further down in the valleys the rich people have dug wells up here we've lost the water and the almond trees are better than their halwa but when the people have gone there's no one to take care of the land for hundreds of years the farmers survived the dry times thanks to their system of terraces the water was collected here in short but heavy periods of rainfall and channeled into the reservoirs now the Spanish hinterland is in decay and a unique agricultural tradition is being lost yes this is a good example in Mediterranean Terrace it stabilizes the arable land and holds it together and it's also a good example of a place that has been abandoned is falling apart when it does rain here it pours without the terraces the water is no longer retained by the earth it flows downhill and drags everything with it the terraces and the earth are swept away the debris then destroys terraces further down the valley the whole system collapses Montella me and theater sistema for centuries Spain had an integrated irrigation system of canals and sluice gates they built the system to distribute water evenly and fairly to all the fields but today the canals are dry the ancient aqueducts are empty this is a result of overconsumption of water on the coast and for farmers like Hosea past Gua it's a disaster you can see very clearly where the water level reached 30 years ago 20 years ago and ten years ago ten years ago it was still at this level and it sank further and further until the year and a half ago it ran out completely since then it's been driving a hundred kilometers away near the town of Muller everything still seems fine migrant workers pick ripe peaches for export to the rest of Europe but the water to make this possible has to be brought here this region is really only suited to growing armaments a peach tree needs twice as much water as an almond tree but in the search for popularity Franco had ecologically absurd canals dug right across Spain he turned deserts into orchards with water transported from the wetter regions now what is in short supply everywhere and Franco's canals have almost run dry if they flow at all they're reduced to a trickle water has to be rationed but in these dry areas no fruit can grow without irrigation as a result the plantations are becoming more and more desiccated this is the result of the drought we're currently experiencing and nothing will change unless it rain if nothing happens I don't know how we can go on this could have been a good peach for export or to make juice but as it is it's much too small its unusable if it doesn't rain things will be bad this will become a desert that's the way it seems to be going this place needs a water just water the farmers round about to take interesting action they're cutting down half their fruit trees hoping to save the other half [Music] it's an act of desperation these trees are 20 years old his father planted them the trees are in their prime the farmer remembers how they used to bear plenty of good healthy fruit they could have lived in born peaches for another 20 years now this farmer must deliberately destroy his inheritance politicians promised that help will come from desalination plants Pedro Kirino thinks it's just talk desalinated water would be good for irrigation but I can't afford it we don't have the money for the things they're suggesting and they're certainly going to build the desalination plants whether we farmers want them or not because there's a lot of new tourist development and the water from the desalination plants will go to them even the little bit of water that still comes to us through the canals that will be diverted for drinking water for the new developments and whatever else they build there basically it's a fraud they're offering us something we can't afford the water will be bought by the people who are making a profit on the new housing ok tiene mucho interesting all that's left to the farmers is a big pile of firewood and an uncertain future a shortage of water is damaging the wider community to the fruit packing plants are empty there used to be plenty of work in this cooperative now there's just occasional employment but the inhabitants of the surrounding villages most will soon leave this area and try their luck at the building sites and holiday resorts on the coast the Heartland will continue to decay the water shortage will have a series of deadly consequences everything has a knock-on effect and it's impossible to say where it will all end Spain is on the edge of an abyss if something isn't done soon this country will become a permanent lifeless desert and yet a glance across the Atlantic would be enough to see the terrible consequences of human error this is Iceland the island in the North Atlantic the land of volcanoes and geezers it's usually thought of as green and fertile tourists are fascinated by the wild waters the Naik's and the rugged landscape but also the lush vegetation yet this is only half the truth Iceland is the oldest ecological disaster in Europe twelve hundred years ago a quarter of Iceland was covered in forests now the figure stands at one percent Iceland has Europe's largest deserts whole sections of the island are barren hardly anything will grow here but a shortage of water can't be the cause officially there are very few desert areas here but Icelandic scientists know that great swathes of the country had been ravaged and rendered infertile by human action and they want to see the word desert redefined for deserts don't only occur in dry and hot climates while their daily according to the current definition a desert is an infertile area with limited plant growth and capacity for food production but for us Icelanders deserts are a vital issue so we have enough rain but we still have deserts people associate deserts with heat and dryness but the crucial question is what happens to the water when it reaches the ground as it's stored and passed on to the plants and do plants actually grow on the ground it's not a question of the climate but of the nature of the soil but out of it he's right this island has plenty of water rivers and lakes dot the landscape and yet often nothing grows on their banks and Shores there's no shimmering heat or endless droughts yet where beech trees and shrubs once flourished now there's nothing at all a new definition of deserts would have far-reaching consequences for the whole of humanity suddenly the infertile regions of the globe would seem much bigger calculations for feeding the Earth's population would be worthless great areas of the Earth's surface now considered theoretically available for food production would disappear of the maps but why are there no plants in spite of the abundant rain why will nothing bro at all in most of Iceland the reason is hidden in the complex composition of the earth the art of a year's gift the Earth's surface consists of several layers above the middle layer which mainly stores water is the top level which contains the nutrients this layer is full of living creatures it's the layer that ensures that the stored water is passed on to the plants if this top layer is missing the water alone is useless nothing can grow so surface erosion must be prevented at all costs the top layer must not be allowed to disappear surface erosion is Iceland's main problem whole areas are split by chasms of erosion rainwater strips the surface soil off the hillsides the heavy rainfall cuts deep scars into the once thick and unbroken covering of vegetation bit by bit the humours layer is torn away the fertile earth is borne down the hillsides and carried away by the water ragged exposed edges of Earth undermine plants and bushes of the roots the constant wind makes it all worse blowing sand endlessly across the landscape erosion takes a long time but Nature has time strange monuments stand in the desert telling of the scale of the loss it started a thousand years ago there used to be a beach forest here but the Vikings cut down the trees what was left was grazing land a healthy lush green of course the trees would have come back nature has ways of recovering but then the Iceland has ancestors introduced sheep and today these are the main problem for the experts scientists like dr. Andres our notes are wondering how they're going to solve this problem the sheep are continuing to destroy the topsoil and preventing its recovery half a million animals that love young shoots and fresh blades of grass and they get everywhere when the sheep arrived nature faces a struggle not a limit Loman when a piece of land is in good condition it hasn't even growth the vegetation their grazing can't harm it in fact it can even do some good in comes kava but it has to be managed and as soon as the land is damaged for instance by over grazing in the grazing itself becomes a critical event it damages the land and encourages erosion and most importantly it stops the land recovery if new chutes and saplings are always it sooner or later nothing will grow a tombstone or for London o'clock out fences are used to keep the sheep off some of the damaged land you can see the difference right away in places the Sheep can't reach the recovering soil grows green but the fences are also unpopular Iceland's farmers have always had the right to graze their sheep on any state-owned land so what can be done the destruction of the land happens in stages first the stable covering of green is torn up by grazing sheep or horses there are a total of 600,000 grazing animals in Iceland then the wind and the water can get a grip on the rough edges the Fertile layer is slowly worn away this is erosion if new shoots emerge the Sheep destroy them right away dead earth is all that remains today yeah here is only stony on top further down it's basically all right it contains moisture but it has new nutrients and that's why nothing grows it needs to be fertilized it would be enough to feed it two or three times with nutrient and then local seeds will grow again where the earth is in a worse state than it is here you have to bring in seeds from outside with a little bit of help things could be growing here in about 10 years time I'll fight a bit Kea rocks are here after and that's why all over Iceland you can see people working to refer to lies barren earth it isn't a very complicated job on the eroded edges where the wind constantly strips away layers of earth they lay down straw it protects the surface and it's perfect plant food if the Sheep are kept away too new plants will be visible within a year even in this stony emptiness and that's when the rain becomes valuable again slowly the earth is becoming more stable the wind can no longer just blow it away the erosion slows down it's the first decisive step in Spain no one seems interested in the lessons of Iceland's past few people are bothered by the destruction of the environment and its long-term consequences they concentrate blindly on mass tourism as by far the biggest money spinner available Spain is after France the biggest holiday destination in the world with more than 53 million tourists every year and water costs the consumer less than half as much as in northern and western Europe while wasteful water parks and tourist complexes continue to mushroom on the coast in the interior the deserts continue advancing but unlike Iceland Spain doesn't have the luxury of sufficient rainfall in the past few years rainfall in southern Europe has dropped by 20% in Spain the figure is 35 percent Spain has been suffering the worst droughts in 60 years climate change caused by humans is making the situation worse but the shortage of water here is a much more direct result of human activity the experts blame the rash of coastal developments as one of the main causes of the problem the owners of these apartments and villas are mainly from other European countries the builders are profiteering Spaniards the new apartments consume fertile land and great quantities of drinking water and the preferred place to build them is in forests and nature reserves so the property developers go all out to secure land in these areas in the past few years many protected areas have been built on the legal processes involved seem to have been very shifty and though local prosecutors know exactly what's been going on it's very difficult for them to act same time internal scarce even in Monterrey terminado the local authorities and the mayors decide where you can build and where you can't they just turn England into building land so if someone really wants to build in a particular area there are ways and means of persuading the responsible officials to alter the zoning and then they can go ahead and build their golf course or whatever it is they want to build locus amoenus dead corruption is widespread in Spain but it's rarely exposed and punished environmentalist Pedro Correa is one of the few people who makes it his business to raise awareness among the general public in a funny area in Spain there have been many cases of corruption where we know that protected pieces of land have been declared building land and massively developed the public prosecutors are dealing with the number of cases right here in mafia they can prove that money was laundered here that politicians and officials were bribed to turn nature reserves into building land in the past year 800,000 new houses and departments were built in Spain more than in France Britain and Germany put together the building companies are choking up huge profits but there's a complete lack of overall planning if you have money you can build and corruption makes it possible everywhere and the houses and golf courses are built mainly for Northern Europeans Spain is especially popular as a retirement country thanks to cheap flights there are more and more people who work in their home countries three or four days a week and spend the rest of their time in Spain there spurring an economic boom there are already thirty gleaming golf courses in the desert of southern Spain and a further 40 are planned Golf Club membership is growing by 10 percent a year so on the one hand golf courses earn money on the other when the land around about is developed in an attractive way the profits can be maximized and the value of the land itself increased in times like these when urban development plays such an important role of course people are keen on developing the land around golf courses it adds to the overall value of the man tomorrow all the golf courses are simply incompatible with the environment you don't plant Cedars in the Sahara or olive trees in Norway in orga say planting Olivos the entire planning concept for the region should be based on the need to save water uses that are not appropriate to the climate like golf courses or large lawns or wasting water for industrial use or urban development should be banned there in the privacy a golf course needs 1 million litres of water a day to keep it green that's the water consumption of a town of 15,000 people few foreign visitors are interested in the environment here but the Spanish just shrugged their shoulders - so the water table is sinking Wells Springs and even rivers are drying up towns like Lorca have already given up hope that the water will return the galilean river has been turned into a park once the river was a sign of a special quality of life as Jose Pasquale remembers every Oregon the Soviet and Seiko this riverbed wasn't always as dry as it is today I used to come here with my father they were wooden bridges to cross then it wasn't a raging torrent but it flowed my father told me that when he was 20 or 25 and the houses didn't yet have running water people used to wash in the river and he came here to fish who's ready go pika and Spain has to contend with another problem the forest fires that destroy huge areas of woodland every year 60% of them are started deliberately and in 2006 alone there were more than 26,000 of them over the last decade 2 million hectares of forest and bushland have been burned often property developers and speculators are obviously behind the arson it takes years for a fire damaged till sign to recover after two fires there's no chance at all because in southern Spain unlike Iceland the soil is centimetres rather than meters thick dig and you soon hit rock many Mediterranean plant species will survive a forest fire but the short but intensive rain showers we get here strip the earth down to the rocks that can't be repaired by Nature and recovery becomes impossible ever seen a dead earth parched rivers Spain is fast becoming a desert in which little life can survive for farmers like Jose Pasquale the situation has become desperate now his fields down in the valley have dried out - 30 years ago I came here from the mountains there was water here I thought I could make a better life I planted broccoli lettuce melons but in more than a year there has been no water and we don't know what the future will bring for this situation is typical of many farmers in the region even the big reservoirs around Walker and nearly empty if something decisive isn't done soon all will be lost for humans and for nature Spain's deep south has seen an opposite development but one no less dramatic thirty years ago in al meriya they discovered they could grow fruit in greenhouses now 350 square kilometres of desert have been covered with plastic sheeting thanks to abundant groundwater 32,000 greenhouses can now grow 2.8 million tonnes of vegetables and fruit for export every year that's why Europeans can eat tomatoes cucumbers and courgettes all year round greenhouses don't take as much water as open fields without them no vegetables could be grown here only desert plants would survive the natural rainfall is nowhere near enough for thirsty fruits and vegetables a kilo of tomatoes needs about 40 liters of water which has to be raised from deep wells the water table has been sinking for years in some places it's already below sea level and salt water is starting to seep in at some point the underground reservoirs will become unusable or just plain empty everyone knows it they don't know when but it will be soon just a few years when the waters finished there'll be nothing nothing works here without water right now we still have water I have no idea what tomorrow will bring these ugly Plains have brought prosperity to a traditionally poor region for the first time the local farmers have been able to live off their land people don't like talking about saving water here so the politicians avoid the subject altogether it'll take nature to put an end to overconsumption of water here rather than man apart from the climatic conditions the processes of desertification are caused by humans humans also have the ability to reverse the process the scientific and technological knowledge is there but the problem is that neither the authorities nor society as a whole are aware of or acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis and unless they do acknowledge it urgent and effective measures to hold this process will not be taken in a few Marita's or hent this continent is parafin are a professor a new kind of greenhouse could be part of the answer it's called the water G the water vapour that rises off the plants is funneled into the tower where it's condensed the condensing water in the tower is carried by cooler fins into collecting vessels to be used again this closed system prevents water loss beyond the confines of the greenhouses it saves about 80 percent of the water using this system the annual rainfall would suffice to irrigate the greenhouses water G is still to an economic to introduce on a large scale but if the water runs out technology like this will be priceless the real potential of this system is that in areas where it rains even less than here you can combine it with other water sources you can integrate seawater into the sister or you can water the plants with recycled wastewater from the towns or didn't the vessel a closed greenhouse system like water G is currently the only hope for southern Spain but up till now they've only built this prototype Icelanders are actively fighting desertification everywhere you go you come across the men of the National Soil Conservation Service these barren strips of volcanic land are one of their greatest challenges here they till a combination of regular beach rice seeds and fertilizer into the sand day after day tractors drag the cedar across the black volcanic landscape progress is slow but visible after six years this once dead land is covered in a thin film of grass it's slowly turning back into a functional ecosystem winning back a single hectare of land costs almost half a million euros they used to use aircraft to sow seeds but now they only do this in particularly inaccessible parts of the island it's too expensive even for a wealthy country like Iceland but there's no shortage of other land reclamation programs sponsored by the government and by institutions [Music] so the national soil conservation service Awards a prize every year to farmers who take an active part in land reclamation one of the winners Chris changose Larson argued for years with the government's experts he couldn't see why he should stop his sheep grazing wherever they wanted to he was only convinced when the grassland around his own farm was no longer enough for his sheep today he's proud of every metre of reclaimed soil and now more than 25% of the farmers have joined in the land reclamation schemes together they look after 6,000 hectares of land the campaign of persuasion is working slowly but surely you're too soft I can't tell you exactly how much of my land is newly planted but it's at least 80 to 100 hectares you're called Sylvan Inka it's wonderful to see how things are growing again and everything is looking so green so many different kinds of landscape many Iceland is yearn for trees and bushes the farm at Keld were the oldest farm in Iceland used to be in a beech wood but over the last thousand years the owners cut down all the trees they used the forest to build houses and for firewood on the meadows that remain they graze their sheep they understood nothing of the erosion that must inevitably follow over time the fertile land was lost here to the ancient accounts and chronicles also talk of the volcanic ash that always returned to cover the few stubborn plants and the storms came they used to be neighbors here but finally the farmers roundabout gave up and moved away only the people have keldo a fought on they built walls out of lava rock to keep out the sand as long as the sand keeps shifting plants can't put down roots and the flowing sand suffocates the young shoots the walls saved kill do a farm from destruction if not for them this would be a bare mound of lava my ancestors did something remarkable and so I see it as my duty to complete what they started four hundred years ago it's a matter of course for farmers like SchoolI litsen to join in the land reclamation whenever he can he seeds and fertilizes his mand the seeds and fertilizer are paid for by the state it's tedious work but the results are there to see and it also helps in the battle against climate change for every green hectare can absorb 2.3 tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere every air mass grow city of the land eight years ago I started to climb new pins and birch trees on the bear no it's real forest soil if there's a sandstorm today the soil can no longer be blown away a new sand can't do any damage the soil remains intact it's stable and it already has a proper layer of humors Iceland offers hope no other country in the world is tackling the problem more thoroughly 60 years ago guinness holt the headquarters of the Soil Conservation Service was bare land now it's a fertile Oasis over the past century all the planting measures have been coordinated the service spends more than six million dollars a year on land reclamation methods have hardly changed over the years it's manual labor today young Iceland has earn money in the summer holidays by working on land reclamation while they're working they live in the headquarters of the soil of LeMay ssin Service and in the process they learn what hard work it can be to make damaged land fertile again and they also learn not to treat nature carelessly these young Icelanders plant so and fertilize and they smooth down the broken eroded edges so the wind has nowhere to take ahold the straw bales lying here stop the sand shifting and simultaneously fertilize the ground this work for the islands natural regeneration is very popular there's been no shortage of applicants jatin vena Dickinson has led the work teams for years because he believes in the task and his vision is shared by many of his countrymen corvée William halston I would like to see the vegetation from the time of the first settlements come back again here and everywhere else in Iceland the Tecla everything should be green and fertile it'll take a long time before we get there but it can be done the state has set aside large areas for experimentation by plant and soil experts a unique gigantic open-air laboratory in long years of work they test different combinations of soil fertilizer and plants they measure every square meter and record every plant they want to know have different soils and fertilizers affect the growth of particular plants because the interaction of the three factors nutrients water and the plant itself is extremely complicated for instance water drainage varies depending on the preparation of the soil over time and according to what is being grown this indicates that the quality of soil varies over time in poor soil the water seeps through too quickly or not at all a desert is always dry even if there's enough rain especially where there's no vegetation the water simply drains away but the earth here is moist and full of nutrients since we started planting it this soil has the qualities of real earth it absorbs water and gives it back to the plants now we want to know exactly how that works and how we can encourage and speed up the process no nation has devoted itself to the fight against desertification the way the Icelanders have in many places their success is plain to see they've made a virtue of their history and their scientists and now sharing their knowledge with the rest of the world they're now advising countries like Mongolia which are also suffering from desertification the Icelanders hope that the world will learn from their mistakes and will not let things get so bad in other countries they firmly believe that one day their island will once again be covered by forests now we're sure that we shall win this battle against the desert the Sheep is still a problem but we will solve it perhaps it'll take a while yet but the only really important thing is whether we win the battle against the desert and I'm quite sure we will in Spain things look bad without water replanting the desert is impossible unless something is done right now many parts of Spain will soon be dead land the time could even come when Spain is no longer able to feed itself see they don't compromise this problem of desertification links us with the Sahara with Africa but there's no awareness of the serious consequences of desertification in Europe and especially here in the mid Turanian region economically shion's in europe the obsession the short-term profit don't leave much room for environmental concerns but monitoring erosion and adopting the right measures to combat it doesn't just have environmental consequences but economic ones as well that is to say that the investment needed to save these regions would have a direct effect on the areas that have been opening up for industrial tourists and urban development into Cialis turistica these are decisions for society as a whole but it's clear that we need a broader awareness a wider consciousness of this situation sensitization and restore professors [Music] mankind shapes the earth if we don't change our way of thinking the desert may one day be the face of the earth the consequences would be hunger and poverty in the last analysis man decides for himself how he will live on this planet [Music] [Music] a provincial town in northern China in the streets life is teeming but hovering over this community there's a menace many smaller towns already lie deserted surrendered in a bitter struggle for land and livelihood because Asia's deserts are on the move the heart of the Asian continent is desert a vast arid zone and far from any ocean cut off from monsoon rains by a mighty barrier the Himalayas the dry lands of China alone are the size of Western Europe and China's deserts are not just growing they're leaping forward the more the sandstorm start to the sky it's frightening the storm even shatters car windows no way you can drive you can't steer it's very dangerous should you call for the solver the storm carries away the soil it rips off the plastic sheeting while you Posada yellow the sand will get higher and higher until the ancient city is buried when I my TV courtesy once tickets a few artists once the plant cover is destroyed and the wing can attack the naked surface and can fast landscapes begin to move even maybe tens of thousands of square kilometers a flowing creeping flying landscape how can it be stopped one hope is trees to defend their civilization against spreading deserts millions of Chinese are planting trees lots of young strong people are doing this world we make sure that thieves won't steal our timber we've always depended on trees the front line is not always so clear [Music] often the desert sneaks up invisibly the ancient forests die Inner Mongolia or das Plateau 1500 kilometers east of Beijing the main Theatre in the increasingly dramatic struggle between desert and civilization this woman is one of the many whose homes have been overrun by the war zone I live over there I come here seven or eight times a day to fetch water until recently she had her own well next to her house now the only source of water is a neighbor's well deeper than hers the water table here has been sinking more than 10 meters in the last 20 years life is very tough out here Josh ah Masha it's really too much living on the edge of the desert not only is the water level sinking the water itself is getting salty and unhealthy the water that filled the region's natural underground reservoirs used to come from distant mountain ranges but the river that brought nourishment to these ancient poplar trees has been drying up compared to the lifestyle in the East Coast boomtowns this is a life of abject poverty traditionally the people on the edge of the Gobi Desert are herdsmen even today the only source of income for many rural people is the wool of cashmere goats the herds depend on sufficient pasture and water recognizing that great numbers of people are affected by the failing water supply the government tries a technical solution we're building a canal the hey-hey canal here in sending a fricassee are the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people depend on this canal here in Aegina key in western inner mongolia it's a huge project and the stakes are high but there are doubts even among the builders Tania show you the father too much water is being taken from the upper reaches of the river too little is reaching us here so the trees are dying in the 90s there was a report about this problem and the government decided to build the canal it's all about balanced water distribution and saving the environment the causes of climate change are global but they're also made in China human action is the main cause wasting natural resources that's what I think if this project is successful if there's enough water for the canal to make any difference it'll be possible to irrigate agricultural areas here again but getting sufficient water is only one stage of the struggle against the desert the water is needed to plant and raise new trees this is why thousands of nurseries are now in operation and all across northern China the vision is that one day woodlands like these will return and the desert will be pushed back these are the last remains of inner mongolia as ancient poplar forests the last Giants still standing [Music] when they're deep roots can no longer reach the groundwater the desert quickly gains the upper hand and when the trees go humans will soon follow 4000 villages have been abandoned because of the deserts advance across northern and western China in Inner Mongolia on the edge of the Gobi Desert hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes by the worsening climate and by government policies great numbers of inner mongolia rural population have already been moved from the countryside to urban centers mr. Li a journalist grew up in the countryside the son of nomads but he now lives in the city of by Yan many people have migrated to the cities they had no choice yeah most of them I work in the catering and restaurant business which is expanding fast as a result they've improved their way of life China sure and college eager people they get a certain amount of financial support and their years as peasants count towards their pension at all you you shouldn't hate they're not tell either Shanghai em you know Toronto Li has seen buy yarn grow dramatically to be honest trivia by over there is the historic center of bayon it's about 200 years old 20 years ago about 20 to 30 thousand people lived there it used to be beautiful very green with trees little rivers and water reservoirs the new part of the city has been steadily growing since the 1980s the population has gone up threefold to 70,000 jazzing that you go by on Halloween on evaluates it on both hollering a few hundred kilometers east in Shanxi province is the bustling city of yulian liked by Yan Yu Lin is right on the edge of the Gobi Desert twice in its history Yulin has been completely swallowed by the desert and rebuilt in new locations the old locations have disappeared so far without a trace [Music] around Yulin more than 60% of once green fertile and wooded countryside has slowly turned into desert not because of drought but because of wasteful land use if this can't be reversed today's ulam could end up like its predecessors it's huddled against the oldest part of China's Great Wall which forms a dividing line between the Malwa Sioux desert and the yellow plateau and then runs west this was the line of defense against ancient Mongolia over time both the Gobi and the Taklamakan desert have overwhelmed many once thriving cities khara koto the black city in Inner Mongolia is one hauntingly beautiful but inhabited only by ghosts huge dunes are creeping up the 10-meter ramparts over running them in places reminiscent of the massive attack by the conquering Ming armies that slaughtered the Citadel's Mongol defenders in 1372 [Music] when the russian explorer Koslov rediscovered the black city the dunes had not yet breached the walls in the tower Kozlov found a great treasure and reburied part of it in the desert nearby with the shifting sands no one knows where this man the guide to the site has seen the black cities environment change and he's worried for the future of this National Monument I think the reason why the black city is being married is the human impact on the land for 800 years shifting sands were not a problem the population pressure on the land is simply too much it's the same with the black river near the black city it always had water only in recent years as water has been used excessively for irrigation and Industry the river has run dry Hyosung fear when the ming armies took this stronghold they used the desert as their ally they diverted the Black River the city's solar water supply then they simply waited letting thirst fight their battle when resistance broke down all the inhabitants were slaughtered until this day a million scattered pottery shards tell of these cruel events to guarantee a dear editor here whilst of the ceramic pieces in the terracotta we find here date from the Yuan Dynasty and they're scattered both within the city wall and outside the seven to eight hundred years old and they're getting harder to find the black city was the center of the yuan culture it's one of China's preeminent historic sites some world famous relics have been discovered here real treasures not far from here are the highest sand dunes in the world if nothing is done khara koto may soon completely disappear under the dunes of the Gobi just outside the half-buried ramparts of Kara Coto is a small green area the type of bush that's raised here once made up the natural plant cover of the desert age sexual day after day the local inhabitants plants actual bushes on the windward side of the black city resources for this project are scarce the little plants need care and they take a long time to grow to their full height of 4 meters it's a race against time and time is not on their side once we have lots of bushes and trees here will have a natural ball against the shifting sand and the black city will be protected like echoes of Mongolia's long-lost cultures these prayer flags out in the desert symbolize the one great force that has always shaped this land the wind new flags are added every new year's day because in the stiff breeze the fabric quickly disintegrates not even rocks can withstand the wind forever everything in this landscape is subject to its relentless force they enjoyed the fact or is the vintage we need the decisive factor is the wind speed the stronger the wind the more material can be blown from the surface there are threshold values for instance a wind speed of four to eight meters per second will shifts and of medium grain size above that speed enormous masses of sand can start moving enormous Sun turning and out phenomenon front fortieth year the exposed roots of dead trees show where the land surface was just two decades ago more than two meters of soil have been blown away when the sand arrives here we don't stand a chance the sound level can rise by 10 to 20 metres a year well can a 3009 over thousands of years a continually shifting landscape has created a corresponding way of life traditionally the people of Mongolia have been Wanderers you do that we're nomads in the desert we get our water from deep wells 10 to 20 metres deep but in some places even the deepest wells are running dry we keep moving on to where some grass is left we shift our tents several times a year in the past five or six years the wind has become stronger and it carries more sand all we can do is raise livestock how could we live in a city we couldn't find a job in the city as the desert is becoming more aggressive tens of thousands of ethnic Mongolians and augers are giving up herding and farming and moving to the city for these ecological migrants it's not easy to give up their traditional way of life but for those few who are holding out in the desert conditions are getting tough on a single day I have lost some 30 animals the sandstorms are killers in spring sandstorms are especially frequent and violent baa sheep cashmere goats and Bactrian camels have always greatly outnumbered people in inner mongolia ten years ago there were 250,000 camels here now only 50,000 are left and even that may be too much the causes for the destruction of the plant cover there on the one hand over grazing and on the other wind erosion in a theme aunt in Volga da for feeding and trampling the earth can increase the natural rate of wind erosion up to 40 times Amba stood a subsea fajans die it'd be a coup for sharpen the action of hooves loosens up sand and dust particles on the surface we've been able to simulate this effect in a wind tunnel and we found that when a herd passes over a surface 20 times more dust and sand will be picked up by the wind in lurid web as owner iron flows that hit real cool Lee the journalist is in his early 30s and yet he's already witnessed a radical change in the places of his childhood I saw this boy at when I was a boy the grass would be that high there were lots of tiny wild animals meanwhile the grassland has vanished and the animals too have become rare until the early 20th century much of Mongolia was a Prairie with oceans of swaying grass and Saxa bushland in the days of Genghis Khan the rye grass was so high that an army of thousands of horsemen could hide here today only tiny patches remain in a nomadic society livestock means wealth the filter through does each Valley Veta this leads to a situation where the limited pastures are overexploited the result is that the plant cover is irreparably damaged Beulah problem it's a Fiat Fiat and the surface soil is exposed to wind erosion once done day was the on but convince us the deaths list bananas or yeah when this happens on a large scale the people are forced to leave the land and that's a very worrying situation but over grazing is just one cause of desertification many video a garden looks old when the natural plant cover is broken up by the plow the situation is created where enormous amounts of dust and sand can be blown out flow once an hour's get blossomed be Evan Conan this is what happened in the 1930s in the American Midwest where vast landscapes were severely damaged creating the notorious Dust Bowl in his novel The Grapes of Wrath American author John Steinbeck dramatically described the mass migration of bankrupt farmers it was an environmental economic and social disaster triggered by bad land use in a windy climate there are striking parallels between the American Dust Bowl and what happened in Inner Mongolia after it was annexed by Mao in 1947 Mao thought Mongolia's vast green Plains could feed China's exploding population he forced millions of Chinese farmers to move here but it didn't work our corn seedlings were hit by sandstorms that killed many of them otherwise we would have had a better harvest and the cobs would be bigger we had to reseed some of our fields so half of the plants and cobs are smaller than the rest [Music] even on a day the locals would describe as a windless and calm the breeze is enough for an ancient way of separating the grain from the chaff the grain in this case is sunflower seeds a traditional Chinese crop but not ideally suited to the windy sandy environment of Mongolia today there are 20 million Chinese in Inner Mongolia only three and a half million ethnic Mongolians are left-mouse policy not only increased the population pressure on the land it also created a new problem nomads were able to react more flexibly to changes in the environment whereas sedentary farmers have to stay put when the desert shrinks or expands when the worst sandstorm came we were over there there was so much sand in the wind that we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces the wind and the sand ripped out the young plants so there was nothing left at all all the plants were dead this spring the sandstorms even pulled up big trees all across northern China enormous efforts have been made to plant rows of trees called shelter belts to protect the crops against sandstorms and the soil against wind erosion Inner Mongolia seems to be lagging behind and for farmers like this one the required investment is simply beyond reach the open area here is very large you need a lot more trees than we already have our community is poor and unfortunately we don't get any state subsidies countless truckloads of fine soil are blown away every year but the phenomenon itself isn't new and it even has a positive side a thousand kilometers to the east massive deposits of windblown dust have created one of China's most fertile landscapes but the long march of the Gobi Desert doesn't end here the in victims of any type fun fall here gullies like this are washed out by rain fall they could happen very slowly or very fast Althea Fenella and Wickham's rod thin fescue felt warden even several metres in the course of a single heavy rainstorm that need a flood these patterns of sand and dust were created by a rainstorm landscapes are constantly being changed by such mass flows the 1/hoe or yellow river in Ningxia northern China it's tributaries wash out deep canyons and wide valleys from the layers of windblown dust accumulated over millions of years in the yellow plateau the fields here are so productive that farmers have always tolerated the regular floods in the region the load of silt and sand carried by the hwang whole river system even when water levels are low has never been calculated but it must be enormous and equally enormous is the journey this desert dust has taken by air and is now taking by water from the yellow plateau along the Yellow River down to the Yellow Sea where it has created a vast Delta back in the Gobi Desert the Silk Road for centuries this was the only link between the oxidant and the Orient 2,000 years old 7,000 kilometers long between the Gobi Desert and the Taklamakan is the ancient gateway to the Far East the Duan Wong Oasis crossroads of Caravan routes [Music] 2,300 years ago the first caravan of several hundred camels must have passed the military outposts near dune one thousands of people troops and traders were once crowded within these walls the landscape must have been green today all that remains is the salt crust of a dried-out lake even now traveling the Silk Road is a journey full of risks and dangers a true adventure the only human presence 200 kilometers from the nearest town is this group of years a major Silk Road truckstop this is a difficult one you have to be extremely careful not to lose the road and get stuck in the deep sand until two years ago it was just a sand Trek it got damaged in every sandstorm and there were lots of accidents it was quite easy to lose your bearings it used to take us three to four days to cross this part of the Gobi now it's hardly a day services are basic water yes fuel no tea yes food sometimes mechanical services depending on your definition of mechanical services even the new road is tricky half the time you don't see it because of drifting sand and then drifting sand you can't steer if you lose control and there are rocks along a road you crash under our repair shop is the only one for two to three hundred kilometers around when there's a breakdown in the desert we go and fetch the vehicle and repair it here the guys human a mechanic's job out here is more like being in the Coast Guard or the Mountain Rescue Service we get a lot of sandstorms in this area ten days the family used to raise camels and goats they were nomads until they decided that the automobile business was more profitable one day they'll also be a repair shed to keep the sand from flying into transmission boxes and differentials the trucker's sometimes have to wait two or three days until we can pick them up sandstorms to school we simply can't get there in the storm sandstorms are worse when there's no rain and we haven't any rain for ten years the goby may have little rain but the Himalayas have lots of snow and ice from space it's easy to see where the water that does exist in the desert comes from meltwater flows a long way delay masada freely watered with a lifeline at the Doudna pond or asus is the shulie hair a river which gets its water from the glasses of the himalayas from hundreds of kilometers away running dirt under teat but this blessing may not last schmidt sniglet revita him so if the glaciers keep melting of the present rapid rate we can anticipate that one's water supply will gradually dry up many smaller settlements in the region have already been abandoned because they were cut off from this water supply from bizarre attend phones and again and again over thousands of years the desert has turned many once flourishing places into cemeteries of civilization this is the graveyard of dune one since the dead don't need water and dry land is free the necropolis sprawls out into the desert it's much bigger than the city of the living where people are crowded around the water [Music] at Dunhuang famous night market desert tourists from all over China pour over the stands for Silk Road souvenirs reaped carving is a traditional Chinese craft and right now this artist is finding it hard to keep up with the demand in the old days June 12 was an exemplary City the present government wants to bring back the old glory and has decided to renovate the old streets instead of simple hovels built of clay now we have modern buildings and wide streets Doon Wong used to be a farming community now it's a tourist center this ancient crossroads linked India and Tibet to Mongolia and Russia and the Pacific coasts to the Mediterranean Sea three of the world's major religions spread along the soap world for the greater part of two millennia dune 1 has been a truly multicultural City heavily laden caravans bore enormous riches of silks spices and gold as well as ideas across the entire Eurasian continent this was the last stop before the hardest part of the passage the Taklamakan Doorn in the dunes brings back the old days of the Silk Road but once the Rising Sun has trust the horizon modern China is back in the Gobi [Music] [Applause] no about English as a common dollar why the time you adore for most of these tourists from China's newly rich East Coast and from South Korea the desert is a mere fairground another item to take off on the list of chic holiday destinations another story to tell back at the office even if some of them know that this is where the sandstorms come from that keep eating Seoul and Beijing probably none are aware that the Gobi is growing and why it's growing and how fast what is obvious is the stunning growth of desert tourism bringing more revenue to dune one and to China's central government then the Silk Road ever did when it was booming while the desert paradoxically is bringing new wealth to son others are still caught in the struggle against its relentless advance peasants have bent their backs picking cotton the modern and millennium in China and they're still doing so on the fringes of doing one this was once an ideal place for many other crops like grapes and melons good one was famous for its orchards too but in recent years the range has become limited we used to grow melons in these fields but because there was more and more sand they would no longer grow that's why we started with cotton because the desert is closing in on doing on all the fields are surrounded by sexual bushes and rows of trees but the colossal dunes behind make the poplar rows look like a very thin line of defense indeed to halt a massive invasion of the desert a master plan is needed a lush green Park back in Beijing surrounds the headquarters of China's campaign against the advancing deserts this man is the campaign's mastermind professor son China's leading forestry expert has spent his entire life battling desertification from the roof of the building housing the Beijing Forest University he can overlook the greenest part of the sprawling capital - what do I do the state has taken many cancer measures against desertification first and foremost the great green wall project aimed at creating a protective belt of woodland across 14 provinces in northern China so far the biggest success of this campaign has been the revitalization of woodlands in China's northeast north and northwest that's why we call it the three North project within two decades the proportion of wooded areas in these regions has grown from five to eleven percent sabi did you get professor sun adds that the frequency of sand storms hitting Beijing has increased 15 fold since the 1950s by seed them although billions of trees have already been planted the effect of these single rows is local at best with unplanned for funboy Minh planting rows of trees or hedges is an effective way of lowering wind speeds below the critical threshold of erosion and of limiting the damage get another table but generally in order to slow down or stop wind erosion we need to increase the plant cover across the entire surface this is the only way to protect soils from being blown away 1,000 kilometers west of Beijing a few hours drive south west of the desert city of Yunnan local farmers have been working to achieve exactly that [Music] driving through this green and pleasant land there's little to suggest that this country lane actually leads through a dual landscape only a closer look reveals the typical dune shapes and the sandy soil incredibly twenty years ago all this was barren sand without a blade of grass today only when a storm rips open a fresh wound in the plant cover and it has to be patched up can you appreciate the effort an entire generation has invested in the Reed greening of this area on a windless day a special desert grass is sown across the open patch years of research and experience have resulted in a list of ideal pioneer plants and in special planting techniques today in China there's probably more expert knowledge about combating deserts than anywhere else in the world the Reed greening is done in several stages and all the stages must be completed on the same than the stage if the wind comes up it's back to square one but between stages one and two there's time for a little lunch break the foreman of the farm is old enough to remember the history of this landscape he knew it before it was a desert he saw how it became a desert and he's been instrumental in pushing the desert back again originally many years ago this was natural grassland and woodland but over grazing logging and plowing destroyed the plant cover and it became a desert The Sands buried wheat fields and mini houses when the sound comes people have to go - gasps our guinea and tweeting first they make a grid in the sand with 2 meter by 2 meter squares then they stabilize the surface with straw so the sand doesn't blow away the straw also keeps the ground moist and eventually fertilizes it next they plant the first trees they're usually willows acacia 'z Chinese spruce and a type of Cypress these are specialists that will take root in the sand they also resistant to drought and cold and what's especially important is that rabbits and goats don't like eating them alfalfa is sown as a nurturing crop to improve soil fertility other plants profit from the alfalfa's ability to convert nitrogen from the air into a natural fertilizer when our falfa blossoms the wind smells of honey it attracts millions of insects whose presence encourages the growth of new plants gradually with wild plants and wild animals returning a complex new ecosystem begins to take hold thousands of nurseries right across northern China are raising millions of trees each Chinese citizen at one or several points in his life is expected to plant trees as part of the national effort to save the environment building the great green wall against the desert as a very Chinese way of doing things really large-scale and involving everyone even several generations this huge project started in 1978 and is supported by many other countries the Keynesian Bacardi's the Chinese regardless as the greatest project in the history of mankind and they could be right millions of hectares have already been replanted it's a necessity considering the extremely climatic conditions better for hardness an Adventist although these efforts are most urgently needed in central China the desert is even creeping up on the capital only an hour's drive from the city a small village has helped secure Beijing's water supply by reforesting an entire mountain range in Santurce by does this what's so interesting about this is the fact that in China unlike in Europe the mud profession of Forester doesn't exist they carry out an enormous amount of reforestation without the professional staff you would expect the guy talk many of the villages proudly bear the title of new forest farmer and work part-time for the great green wall project they get expert instructions from the villages Town Hall since they brought back the forest their walls are again filled with good drinking water and so a Beijing as reservoirs the key to this success is explained by the local governments forestry expert someone we tried a new system here very different from the traditional system normally the government gives a village a certain amount of money or materials in the farmers plant trees on public land here the forestry experts and the farmers will discuss together what trees to plant and where to plant them for the local people are involved in these decisions and they planted trees on their own land since I came to live here I've planted all kinds of trees including chestnut since last year we're even getting paid for this word a few years ago we had a team of forest guards guarding the trees so that no one cuts our steel them today the new forest farmers are cutting the grass from under young trees so they'll grow better and are not damaged by forest fires if it weren't for the green barrier that now surrounds this place even the highest garden wall will stop the onslaught of the desert and it's shifting sands the Builder of this portion of the great green wall is a botanist specialized in desert plants he seems quite pleased with the result of his work and justly sir how much is this what say the reducer we've been monitoring the progress of the great green war with GPS and satellite data forty years ago this was a landscape of sand but look at it now we can see lots of green trees all around and it's nice and cool a mix of grasses broadleaf and conifer trees has stabilized the sand and the place is full of lovely smell we've got a hundred and sixty seven different types of trees and bushes here now and lots of flowering plants [Music] this is one of many local battles that have been won but the war against the desert is far from over again and again the desert jumps even huge barriers although past human errors are being corrected and man-made wasteland is being reclaimed at enormous cost climate change remains the big unknown there's a steady dramatic rise in the frequency of extreme storms the baton converts the creation of deserts on the way they spread depends on the behavior of the climate on the one hand and on the other on the behavior of man currently the impact of humans is leading to desertification understood sir a still growing population of 1.3 billion a fast forward economy a huge desert and an increasingly freakish global climate make it impossible to predict who will eventually hold sway over the heart of Asia the world's oldest civilization or the desert [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: hazards and catastrophes

Views: 1,017,207

Keywords: Deserts in Europe science documentary, Deserts in Europe national geographic documentary, Deserts in Europe national geographic science documentary, Deserts in Europe full documentaries, Deserts in Europe documentary, Deserts in Europe earth documentary, Deserts in Europe ultimate science documentary, Deserts in Europe catastrophe documentary, Deserts in Europe national geographic catastrophe documentary, Deserts in Europe perfect storms full documentary, Deserts in Europe

Id: Rcrq6ukeiZA

Length: 100min 39sec (6039 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 04 2020