"All the birds returned’: How a Chinese project led the way in water and soil conservation

《百鳥歸巢，中國引領(lǐng)世界防風(fēng)治沙》

The Loess plateau was the most eroded place on Earth until China took action and reversed decades of damage from grazing and farming

導(dǎo)語：黃土高原是地球上水土流失最嚴(yán)重的地區(qū)，直到中國通過系統(tǒng)治理，讓這片因過度放牧與農(nóng)耕遭受數(shù)十年破壞的土地重獲新生。

It was one of China’s most ambitious environmental endeavours ever.

這堪稱中國迄今為止最雄心勃勃的生態(tài)修復(fù)壯舉之一。

The Loess plateau, an area spanning more than 245,000 sq miles (640,000 sq km) across three provinces and parts of four others, supports about 100 million people.

跨越三省四區(qū)、面積超過24.5萬平方英里（64萬平方公里）的黃土高原，養(yǎng)育著約1億人口。

By the end of the 20th century, however, this land, once fertile and productive, was considered the most eroded place on Earth, according to a documentary by the ecologist John D Liu.

然而生態(tài)學(xué)家John D Liu在紀(jì)錄片中揭示，至20世紀(jì)末，這片曾孕育文明的沃土淪為了全球水土流失最嚴(yán)重的地方。

Generations of farmers had cleared and cultivated the land, slowly breaking down the soil and destroying the cover.

世代農(nóng)人在此開墾并耕種，土壤結(jié)構(gòu)逐漸瓦解，植被覆蓋持續(xù)退化。

Every year, the dust from the plain jammed the Yellow River with silt (this is how the river gets its name), sending plumes of loess, a fine wind-blown sediment, across Chinese cities – including to the capital, Beijing.

每年，高原泥沙裹挾著細(xì)碎黃土（這正是黃河得名由來）涌入河道，揚塵跨越千里直抵首都北京等中國各地的城市。

And so in 1999 the Chinese government took drastic emergency action with the launch of Grain to Green, a pilot project backed by World Bank funding, to regreen the plateau and reverse the damage done by overgrazing and overcultivation of the once forested hillsides that would become what the bank described in 2004 as “the largest and most successful water and soil conservancy project in the world” .

因此，1999年中國政府采取了緊急行動，啟動了“退耕還林”計劃，這是一個由世界銀行資助的試點項目，旨在逆轉(zhuǎn)黃土高原因過度放牧與毀林開墾導(dǎo)致的生態(tài)災(zāi)難。世界銀行2004年將其譽(yù)為"全球規(guī)模最大、成效最顯著的水土保持工程"。


The primary focus was to restore agricultural production and incomes in the plateau, but the dust storms descending on already polluted cities, “making people cough even more”, also became a driver, says Peter Bridgewater, an honorary professor at the Australian National University’s Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies.

澳大利亞國立大學(xué)遺產(chǎn)與博物館研究中心榮譽(yù)教授Peter Bridgewater指出，盡管工程首要目標(biāo)是恢復(fù)高原農(nóng)業(yè)生產(chǎn)與居民收入，但"加劇城市居民咳嗽癥狀"的沙塵暴問題同樣是重要推動因素。

World Bank participants spent more than three years designing the project, working with experts as well as communities, officials and farmers on how to overturn the longstanding but unsustainable grazing and herding of livestock.

世界銀行的參與者歷時三年多進(jìn)行項目設(shè)計，聯(lián)合專家、社區(qū)、政府與農(nóng)戶共同制定轉(zhuǎn)型方案。

Tree-cutting, planting on hillsides and uncurbed sheep and goat grazing were banned.

禁伐令、禁墾禁牧休牧相繼實施。

The sustainable practices demonstrated in some small villages were scaled up.

部分村莊探索出的可持續(xù)模式也得以推廣。

The project was extraordinarily ambitious, and was powered through by China’s authoritarian system.

這項宏偉工程的推進(jìn)，彰顯著中國集中高效治理體系的優(yōu)勢。

“If you want major change, the Chinese system is well adapted to making major change,” says Bridgewater wryly.

Bridgewater意味深長地說："若想實現(xiàn)根本性變革，中國體制具有獨特優(yōu)勢。"

There were grain and cash subsidies for people converting farmland to grassland, economic forest or protected ecological forest.There were tax subsidies and benefits to offset farming losses, long-term land use contracts and conversion to more sustainable farming including orchards and nuts, and widespread tree-planting employment programmes.

政策組合拳包括：退耕還林（草）現(xiàn)金與糧食補(bǔ)貼，為彌補(bǔ)農(nóng)業(yè)損失提供稅收補(bǔ)貼和福利，以彌補(bǔ)農(nóng)業(yè)損失、長期土地使用合同、經(jīng)濟(jì)林果轉(zhuǎn)型扶持及大規(guī)模植樹就業(yè)計劃。

By 2016, China had converted more than 11,500 sq miles of rain-fed cropland to forest or grassland – a 25% increase in vegetative cover in a decade, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.

根據(jù)《自然氣候變化》雜志上發(fā)布的一項研究，到2016年，中國已將超過11500平方英里的雨養(yǎng)耕地轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)樯只虿莸兀觊g植被覆蓋率提升25%。
原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://top-shui.cn 轉(zhuǎn)載請注明出處


Other studies showed large reductions in erosion and positive changes in plant productivity.

多項研究表明水土流失大幅減少，植被生產(chǎn)力顯著提升。

“When the environment improved, all the birds returned. The forest has developed its ecological system naturally,” the forestry worker Yan Rufeng told the state-run news channel CGTN.

"生態(tài)改善后，百鳥重歸故里，森林自成系統(tǒng)。"林業(yè)工作者嚴(yán)如峰向CGTN如此描述。


It wasn’t straightforward, however. There was some community resistance, particularly to demands to plant trees on farming land.“What about the next generation? They can’t eat trees,” said one man interviewed for Liu’s documentary.

然而，轉(zhuǎn)型之路并非坦途。部分社區(qū)對"糧田種樹"存有抵觸，紀(jì)錄片中一位農(nóng)民直言："（我們的）后代怎么辦？總不能啃樹皮充饑吧。"

In the early years there also appeared to be a correlation between the project and a sudden drop in grain yield.Over the years, officials would debate whether the programme was harming China’s food security, although studies found there to be several factors at play, and that yields later improved.

項目初期還出現(xiàn)糧食產(chǎn)量波動，雖后續(xù)研究證實多重因素作用且產(chǎn)量逐步回升，但糧食安全爭議始終伴隨工程推進(jìn)。

In hindsight, the early methods employed to regreen the dusty hills were also problematic.“There was a lot of mass tree planting – not necessarily natives – and in plantation format, in other words, monocultural stands,” says Bridgewater.Mass-species planting eventually began to replace the monoculture plantations, helping to increase wildlife, but there were also issues with water management, with the burgeoning tree cover and agriculture taking more and more water out of the Yellow River system.

回望治理歷程，早期的山丘綠化方式也存在問題。Bridgewater表示："大規(guī)模種植單一樹種人工林的做法值得商榷。"雖后續(xù)轉(zhuǎn)向混交林培育促進(jìn)了生物多樣性的提升，但又出現(xiàn)了水資源管理問題，日益擴(kuò)大的樹木覆蓋和農(nóng)業(yè)消耗了越來越多的黃河水系的水資源。

“It’s looking like there is a point at which the revegetation will become too successful in that it actually then swings the water balance of the landscape, reducing the potential for water to go into the rivers and be available for human use,” says Bridgewater.“So this is another element that was not really thought about at the start, because the aim wasn’t ‘let’s stabilise the system’.But it’s a good lesson as to how all these interconnecting factors need to be thought about very carefully before you launch into these things.”

Bridgewater說："當(dāng)植被恢復(fù)過度成功的話，可能會打破區(qū)域水平衡，減少入河徑流量，影響人類用水。這是一個很好的教訓(xùn)，提醒我們啟動此類工程前，必須系統(tǒng)考量各生態(tài)要素的復(fù)雜關(guān)聯(lián)。"


A big factor in the success and demands of the programme was and remains the changing climate.The plateau sits in a transition zone between arid and semi-humid climates.The varied natural factors of the region, combined with unsustainable human activity, had contributed to the fragility of the plateau, a 2021 study found.

氣候變化始終是影響工程成效的關(guān)鍵變量。2021年研究顯示，處于干旱與半濕潤氣候過渡帶的黃土高原，在人為活動與自然因素疊加下生態(tài)脆弱性顯著。

“At the same time, the climate in this region has shown warming and wetting, particularly in the south in which precipitation increased by 20-50 mm from 2000 to 2014.”

“與此同時，該地區(qū)的氣候表現(xiàn)出變暖和濕潤的趨勢，尤其是在南部，降水量從2000年到2014年增加了20-50毫米?！?/b>

The climate around the Loess plateau is changing, which means what existed, or even thrived, several decades ago can’t necessarily be put back, says Bridgewater.“But we can produce something, a system that will produce ecosystem services at a better range and a better quality and more regularly than the systems that we’ve destabilised.”

"氣候變遷意味著數(shù)十年前的生態(tài)系統(tǒng)難以簡單復(fù)原。"Bridgewater強(qiáng)調(diào)，"但我們可以構(gòu)建新型生態(tài)系統(tǒng)，使其以更優(yōu)質(zhì)量、更廣范圍、更可持續(xù)的方式提供生態(tài)服務(wù)。"


Bridgewater adds: “Given the speed of climate change, and not just climate but hydrology and all the other associated global changes, we need to be thinking about what we want.What we want out of our ecosystems are actually services.We need to think actually in multi-dimensions … to develop a whole new way of thinking as to how we manage the landscape.And in a way, the whole Loess plateau project is a good example of that, [even if] that wasn’t the way of thinking at the start.“

Bridgewater補(bǔ)充道：“面對氣候、水文等全球性變化，我們需要思考我們想要的是什么，我們從生態(tài)系統(tǒng)中所期望的實際上是服務(wù)。我們實際上需要多維度思考……開發(fā)一種全新的思維方式，來管理我們的景觀。從某種意義上，黃土高原工程正是這種思維的實踐典范，盡管其初始設(shè)計尚未完全體現(xiàn)這種系統(tǒng)性。"

Lu FuChin, a former farmer, told the official state news outlet xinhua that the programme had boosted local employment.“I used to cut trees for firewood, but now I grow them instead,” said the 52-year-old forestry worker.“It used to be that people had to go far for work, but now they can find employment by the Yellow River.As the environment is improving, I believe the villagers’ lives will become more prosperous too.”

52歲的林業(yè)工人（曾經(jīng)的農(nóng)民）盧福勤向新華社講述他的轉(zhuǎn)型故事："我以前砍樹取火柴木，但現(xiàn)在我反而種樹。過去人們必須遠(yuǎn)行工作，但現(xiàn)在他們可以在黃河邊找到工作。隨著環(huán)境的改善，我相信鄉(xiāng)親們的日子定會越來越紅火的。"

theearthgarden John D Liu in this article made one of my favorite documentaries of all time Green Gold about the Loess and other rehabilitation projects around the globe. Pretty shocking results!

在這篇文章中提到的John D Liu參與制作了我有史以來最震撼的紀(jì)錄片之一《Green Gold》，這部紀(jì)錄片聚焦黃土高原生態(tài)修復(fù)工程及全球其他類似項目，效果簡直炸裂！