Global Times reports on a visit to Inner Mongolia this week by an American teacher, Ronald Sakolsky, who visited the Mu Us Desert in Inner Mongolia province of China. They note that Sakolsky first visited there in 2000, when “the land was little more than drifting sand. Today, it is green with trees—a transformation driven by decades of local effort.” The forest there is now named “Sakolsky Forest,” formally named to honor his early donation toward local ecological restoration.
Sakolsky first arrived in China in 1999 as a participant in a bilateral teacher-exchange program, where he observed “the tireless efforts of Chinese desert fighter Yin Yuzhen and her husband to curb desertification in the Mu Us Desert. He raised $5,000—equivalent in 1999 to three years of income for Yin’s entire family—to fund their local tree-planting initiative. The young saplings bought with that donation have since matured into more than 50,000 full-grown trees, transforming the once desolate, sandy wasteland into a thriving green landscape.”
Participants in the EIR and Schiller Institute conferences will recall that Prof. Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University in Shanghai, commenting on the Schiller Institute plan for an extended Oasis Plan for Gaza and the region, said that China had great experience in greening the deserts in China, and could help do the same in Palestine.
Sakolsky took a jar of sand from the region back to his home as a memento of the transformation which he had helped launch
