China's 'Great Wall of Trees' is the world's largest afforestation project

Think about pollution and climate change and China is probably the first place that will come to mind. 

Despite emitting more greenhouse gases than any other country, China is also leading the world's largest and most ambitious afforestation project, according to a University of New South Wales study published recently in Nature Climate Change.

The "Great Green Wall" initiative began in 1978, setting out to cover 2,800 miles of northern China with vegetation to slow the Gobi Desert constant advance. 32 million acres of trees have already been planted, and the project now aims to hit a billion trees by 2050.

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Thanks mostly to the "Great Green Wall," humans have planted enough vegetation since 2003 to absorb four billion tons of carbon worldwide - although other factors such as increased rainfall in Australian, African, and South American savannas are also at work.

Four billion tons are, sadly, but a very small part of the 60 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted worldwide, and deforestation remains a huge problem with 36 football fields’ worth of forest destroyed every minute.

While the Great Green Wall is keeping the desert sands at bay in the north, in the southern extremities of China's (claimed) territories the country is said to be building yet another 'Great Wall,' albeit a very different one: a "Great Wall of Sand" made up of reclaimed islands in the disputed South China Sea.

[Image via JoongAng Daily]