Once a barren wasteland, the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China is undergoing a remarkable transformation. With China’s planting 66 billion trees (no fake news) around its edges since 1978, the Taklamakan Desert, once considered a “biological void” due to its severely arid conditions, with more than 95% of the land covered in shifting sands, is now becoming a thriving carbon sink.
This groundbreaking shift, highlighted in a late 2025 study published by researchers in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the United States, demonstrates how human efforts are reversing desertification and combatting climate change with China’s Three-North Shelterbelt Program, also known as the Great Green Wall.
