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The steppes of Inner Mongolia are arid even at the best of times, but low rainfall is turning these grasslands into sand.
"The wild grass reached up to my knees in the past," said a herdsman as he pointed to barren fields in this remote part of China
near the Mongolian border. "But there's very little grass now. It hasn't rained here in six years and we have to buy fertilisers and feed for our livestock. We never needed these before."
Deserts make up about 27.5 per cent of China's total land area today compared to about 17.6 per cent in 1994, experts say. Many homes in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Qinghai and Gansu have been swallowed up by sand.
In spring, dust storms dump sand not only on Beijing but also send dust particles as far away as Korea, Japan and even the United States.
Doctors are seeing the health effects as fine dust inhaled during increasingly frequent dust storms cause respiratory problems, especially for children and the elderly. Sandstorms also cause eye infections.
China's "Green Great Wall", a 700km barrier of shrubs and trees planted to hold back the advancing desert, has slowed down the desertification but hasn't stopped it completely. Environmentalists say the government needs to do more than just plant trees, it needs to prevent overexploitation of the land which is another cause of the expanding deserts.
"With the pursuit of more profit and lack of regulation, some grazing is done all year round, when it should be seasonal to allow the land to recover. Pastures don't have a chance to rest and it leads to more degradation of the land," said Li Yan, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace in Beijing.
The problem has been compounded by agriculture projects and development such as mining, especially coal mining. Beijing is battling the problem in earnest, especially as the deserts are moving east, threatening even the capital city.
One local official said the government was pushing hard to reduce exploitation of the fragile grasslands.
He said they urged herders to rear fewer livestock.
"If their land is small and grass quality is bad, they should have fewer animals," he said. "In the last century, the directive was to rear as much livestock as possible. Now, we are more concerned with quality.
But for the herders living on the harsh, dry steppes, life appears unlikely to get better any time soon.
- Reuters