China’s effort to build large solar power “bases” in and around the desert is a major part of its current renewable plan.
What is less known is that the initiative – which has expanded rapidly in the country’s arid north and northwest – is also a part of China’s campaign to combat desertification, an issue increasingly exacerbated by climate change.
For more than four decades, Beijing has been trying to prevent sand from degrading its land and forming dust storms with an afforestation programme called the “Three-North Shelterbelt” (三北防护林).
Over the past two years, the programme – described as China’s “war on sand” by the media – has been boosted by the development of large-scale solar bases in far-flung regions, such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.
Installing solar panels in the desert can not only generate power, but also help prevent sand dunes from moving, according to Dr He Jijiang, executive deputy director of the Research Center for Energy Transition and Social Development at Tsinghua University, Beijing.
Energy companies’ investments also provide financial support to many regions’ sand-control campaigns – an apparent obstacle in the past – Dr He tells Carbon Brief at a side event in the China pavilion at the ongoing 16th session of the conference of parties (COP16) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Taming of the sand
China is one of the worst-hit countries by desertification, which essentially means land degradation in dry lands. When land degrades, it becomes less healthy and productive.
Nearly 18% of China’s landmass – roughly seven times the size of the UK – is affected by the issue, according to statistics reported by Guan Zhi’ou, director of China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration and the head of the Chinese delegation to COP16, in November.
China’s effort to combat desertification has a strong link with its – and the world’s – climate actions.
Soil is the second largest natural carbon sink on Earth after oceans and stores a large amount of carbon. When land degrades, not only does it lose the ability to store as much carbon, it can also release carbon into the atmosphere, driving further climate change.
On the other hand, climate change accelerates land degradation and China is on the front line. The country has seen the largest total area shift from non-dryland into drylands over the past three decades, according to a major scientific report published by the UNCCD at COP16. This means more parts of China are now prone to land degradation.
Since the introduction of the Three-North Shelterbelt programme in 1978, China has adopted a series of measures to fight desertification, from planting sand-blocking vegetation to laying straw on the ground in the shape of checkerboards to prevent its vast deserts from expanding. These solutions have enabled the country to protect about 360,000km2 of desertified land and to rehabilitate 79,000km2 of it, Guan said.
The ancient Chinese people built the Great Wall and Beijing now intends to build a “Green Great Wall”. According to the plan, the Three-North programme will see a total of 350,000km2 of trees planted in northern regions over the space of 73 years – until 2050 – to block out dust storms, stabilise the soil and improve land fertility.
Research by the Chinese Academy of Sciences showed that emissions averaging 213m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent were absorbed by forest, land and the environment every year between 1980 and 2015, due to the Three-North Shelterbelt programme, according to a release published by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
Solar solution
China’s plan for renewable energy from 2021 to 2025 calls for the “large-scale development” of its sand-plus-solar anti-desertification method, a concept Beijing started promoting around two years ago.
The concept centres around managing arid areas via building and maintaining solar farms. It stems from years of experience accumulated by Chinese solar developers, which have built solar farms in the desert for more than a decade – with varying degrees of success.
“Building solar farms needs a lot of space. China has vast deserts, so [companies] wanted to take advantage of it,” Dr He explains.
But to operate solar farms in such harsh conditions, these companies must first take various protective measures – and these measures helped combat desertification, too.
For example, companies need to put up fences around their solar farms to stop animals from entering, install anti-dust nets to prevent sand from gathering on equipment and make straw checkerboards around their bases to prevent nearby sand dunes from shifting, Dr He says.
Solar panels also bring benefits to the ground underneath. For example, they can reduce water evaporation by blocking out direct sunshine, according to Dr Chen Siyu, a professor at the college of atmospheric sciences at Lanzhou University in Lanzhou, a city situated on the edge of the Gobi desert in China.
Solar panels can “significantly increase” the soil moisture of dry regions and, therefore, help plants to grow, Dr Chen tells Carbon Brief. A 2021 study conducted in northwest China projected that the soil moisture would increase by up to 113.6% when it is sheltered.
“Solar panels can also form a natural barrier, helping to shed wind speed and prevent dust storms from occurring and spreading,” she says.
Ramping up transition
The construction of solar farms also injects financial support to many regions’ sand-control campaigns, providing incentives for them to carry on, Dr He notes.
“In the past, planting trees only brought ecological benefits, not economic returns,” he says. “Now, if a company wants to build a solar power station, it needs to cover all related costs, from hiring equipment to growing plants.”
Ramping up the solar-plus-sand method can scale up China’s renewable deployment, as well as improving soil conditions by bringing greenery, vegetable plots and livestock to the desert and barren land. Because of this, dryland has become “a type of resource”, Dr He says.
The Chinese government has been pushing the concept as a way to upscale the development of desert-based solar.
But there are concerns over whether the country’s grid is ready to transport such a large amount of solar power from remote areas to big cities on the eastern coast thousands of kilometres away.
Dr He recognises the challenge. “We don’t have enough long-distance transmission lines, but we are building many,” he says.
A shorter version of this article appeared in Carbon Brief’s China Briefing newsletter on 12 December 2024.
The post Explainer: How China’s renewables rollout boosts its ‘war on sand’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Explainer: How China’s renewables rollout boosts its ‘war on sand’
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
-
Lula’s election win in Brazil raises hopes for zero deforestation drive
Lula’s re-election makes it more likely Brazil can meet a key goal to end forest loss in the Amazon and builds confidence in a new fund to protect the world’s rainforests, experts say
Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
-
Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31
Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak -
