1995 trip to the northern loess plateau

1. Rehabilitating the gullies


In July 1995 I had the exceptonal good fortune of given a chance to visit Yellow River's northern loess plateau for the first time in my life, participitating in a supervision mission to the Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project. The World Bank had provided a loan to develop several watersheds in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Gansu, to improve the areas for agricultural purposes, where terrace fields, warping dams, forests and orchards were to be established. The mission was to supervise the project's implementation. For me, serving as a World Bank consultant, its was a rare opportunity to reach the villages, oftentimes over difficult terrains, and see for myself the nature of the land and the livihood of the people settled there.

The World Bank component of the mission consisted of six persons, divided into two teams. One went south and our team went north, covering several small watersheds in northern Shanxi, southern Inner Mongolia, and northern Shaanxi. I was pleasantly surprised that the region was not as poor, or isolated, as I had imagined it to be. Coal mining was booming all over the place, and new paved roads and rail bridges were being constructed here and there. The region was exploited for its energy resources, such as coal and natural gas, with heavy government investment for the past seven or eight years.

In the project areas, the hill slopes were no longer terraced by massive teams of laborers, but by tractors at a cost of 600 to 1,000 yuan per mu. The tractors were owned privately by their operators who were contracted to work the fields, or at the mines. A new market economy was rapidly taking hold. Laborers were deserting the farms to work at the mines, or at the nearby Wanjiazhai Dam project (Íò¼ÒÕ¯). Afterall, the region was suffering from its worst drought in the past 30 years (no decent rain for the past eight or nine months). Terrace fields were dry like dust bowls. I saw nothing planted. Even if rain were to fall in late July, it would be too late to plant. All households were living on their grain reserve from the previous year, but they must rely on government grain relief the following year.

The only places showing signs of green were the gully floors, where some water sipped down from the surrounding hills to nourish a marginal corn crop. The sight reinforced my conviction to target the gully floors for primary develoment before reaching for the terrace fields up on the slopes. In the future I hope the government will implement policy to allow every household to have a plot of the gully land, which would provide its members with assured yield even in bad years, so that no household will ever need to rely on relief again. The terrace fields will add additional incomes to the households, but must not be their only source of food and income.

[As I have been trying to explain in several articles included in this Home Page, the reason that the gullies cannot be fully utilized is becasue they are not protected from flood damage. Invariably, a destructive flood will rush down each gully around late August every year. The flood can do huge damage to whatever planted in them, especially for narrow gullies, which are seldom utilized. Villages along such gullies are usually situated about 10 m above gully floor. Gullies with wide floodplains can better survive the onslaught of a severe flood, which will wipe out just a part of the planted crop, and that is why only such sites are being developed into productive land. However, all gullies can be fully utilized if they are protected from floods by the so-called key dams, as I have tried to explain in these articles.]

I was still pushing for a master plan to improve 30,000 gullies in the loess plateau with small earth dams so as to retain water, create arable land, and control sediment. I used a color photograph of an existing project to illustrate my idea, showing a key dam protecting a long stretch of sediment plots downstream. Everybody I talked to supported the idea.

Returning to Beijing I had the opportunity to meet several congressional members on the standing committee, one of whom saw us off at the airport, and taking advantage of a departure delay I used half an hour of uncommitted time to explain my plan to him, who was very supportive of the idea and gave me valuable suggestions.

An academician of the Academy of Science also expressed willingness to organize an appraisal discussion within the Academy, and invite me to present my proposal to its members, who would then advise the government on its merits. His effort resulted in a workshop on "China's Water Resource Strategy in the 21st Century," in Beijing on Oct 17-19, 1995, which I participated. I presented my analysis of the cost-effectiveness of such a gully-rehabilitation scheme.

One of the most heavily eroded areas in the loess plateau is a region by the northern bend of the Yellow River between Shanxi and Inner Mongolia where annual erosion rate reaches 60,000 tons per sq km of land. There, the eroded soil is sandy with large grain sizes, making it difficult to be flushed out to sea. Such erosion is the main source of sediment deposition in the river channel, worsening the river condition year by year. To control sediment production from the region, check dams across all such gullies should be built without delay to stop the eroded soil from reaching the river tributaries. I just don't see how can people turn a blind eye to such a severe destructive situation, while the means to prevent it is well within grasp!