百鸟归巢，中国引领世界防风治沙|卫报

作者：一天一篇外刊          来源：一天一篇外刊

All the birds returned’: How China led the way in water and soil conservation

本篇文章节选自《卫报》

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. 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.

黄土高原横跨三省四地，总面积超过64万平方公里（24.5万平方英里），养育着约一亿人口。然而，到了20世纪末，这片曾经肥沃富饶的土地，却在生态学家约翰·D·刘的一部纪录片中显露出这是地球上水土流失最严重的地区之一。

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”

1999年，中国政府采取了紧急而果断的措施，启动了“退耕还林”试点项目，该项目得到了世界银行的资金支持。项目的目的是让黄土高原重新焕发生机，扭转因过度放牧和过度耕种所造成的破坏。经过修复，那些曾经覆盖着森林的山坡，在2004年被世界银行誉为“全球最大、最成功的水土保持工程”。

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. Tree-cutting, planting on hillsides and uncurbed sheep and goat grazing were banned. The sustainable practices demonstrated in some small villages were scaled up.

世界银行的参与者与专家、社区、政府官员以及农民携手合作，花了三年多时间来精心设计该项目。他们共同探讨如何扭转长期存在但不可持续的放牧和畜牧方式。项目中，砍伐树木、在山坡上种植作物以及无节制地放养羊群和山羊等行为被明确禁止。同时，一些小村庄中展现的可持续做法被推广应用到了更广泛的区域。

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.

政府为将耕地退还为草地、经济林或生态保护林的农民提供了粮食和现金补贴，并出台了税收减免和额外补贴政策，以补偿农民因退耕而遭受的经济损失。同时，政府还提供了长期土地使用合同，鼓励农民转向更加可持续的农业方式，如发展果园和坚果种植。此外，还开展了大规模的植树造林就业项目，为农民提供更多就业机会。

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

根据《自然气候变化》杂志上发表的一项研究，截至2016年，中国已将超过11,500平方英里的雨养耕地转化为森林或草地，植被覆盖率在十年间提高了25%。其他研究也表明，水土流失现象大幅减少，植物生产力呈现出积极的变化趋势。

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.

林业工人严如峰在接受国家媒体CGTN采访时这样说道：环境改善之后，所有的鸟儿都飞回来了，森林也自然而然地形成了自己的生态系统。

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.”

Bridgewater表示，黄土高原周边的气候正在发生变化，这意味着几十年前存在甚至繁盛的生态系统，如今并不一定能够完全恢复原样。“不过，我们可以构建一种新的系统，这个新系统能够比我们曾经破坏的系统提供更为广泛、更高质量且更为稳定的生态服务。”

作者：一天一篇外刊          来源：一天一篇外刊