In the spring of 2025, the dust storm in Beijing turned the sky dark, the concentration of PM10 rose by more than a thousand, and the dust source pointed directly to the Gobi desert in southern Mongolia. Behind this ecological crisis is the brutal reality of 76.8% of the land desertification in Mongolia, and the new challenge faced by China's "three northern" protection forest project. Since 1978, this ecological project has invested more than 100 billion yuan, built 300,000 square kilometers of protection forest, but has lost two percent due to cross-border dust.
In Mongolia, the grassland has been changing. In the 1990s, there were only 25 million sheep, cattle and horses. By 2023, it has soared to 70 million. The grassland is full of animals, the grass cannot grow at all, and the grass roots on the ground cannot be seen. The ecological line has long been stepped on, and the grassland cannot hold it, and it becomes sand when it is crowded.
The side of the mine is more directly, more than eight hundred mining points in the country, many have no word, heavy machinery bubbling rolls up, the grassland is a deep dungeon, becomes a scar, desertification has a fifth of the head, is the mine made, the climate did not help, 75 years began the temperature to rise more than 2 degrees, less rainwater, seventy percent of the lakes have no water, the Gobi desert has a strong expansion, swallowing a Beijing every year, this speed is no one.
As long as the wind blows south, the dust has crossed the national border line, China's northern first peak, in the spring of 2023, the meteorological department said that the sand on the Mongolian side, accounted for four percent more of the northern pollution, in 2021, the big dust, Beijing's visibility is not less than a hundred meters, in 2025 the dust blows to Sichuan has not stopped, the three northern defensive forest, some trees are buried by sand, the area of land sanding is on the rise, some scholars say that the Mongolian dust once, the efforts of China's sanding are offset by more than one percent, four years of the ten major projects, equal to eight years is dry.
History turns back, Mongolia in 1924 independence, the 156.000 square kilometers of land on the map became a neighbor, our northern natural grassland barrier is so gone, now Mongolia engaged in the "third neighborhood" policy, cooperation is always not so bad, copper mine mining rights given to Australia, but also with a condition that can not turn hands to China, such as solar sand management cooperation projects, also fear what sovereign risk, in 2023, Mongolia engaged in a desertification prevention and control center, billion of sand money is so stuck, has always been uncontinued.
The Mongolian government itself has a bunch of problems, 3 million, more than 4,700 kilometers of borders can not be kept, the infrastructure can not keep up, the shipment of a ton of mines is three times more expensive than Australia's shipping, the policy is still changing, in 2025 the prime minister resigned, the sand cutting program is stopped, the shepherds for the day to keep more livestock, the government wants to pull the economy must release mining, poverty, destruction, and poverty, is like a dead cycle.
China on this side is also very difficult to do, let it matter, the three-northern project has been dusted, wanting multinational cooperation and fear of being said to be interference, can only first engage in joint monitoring, help a bit of technology, in the history of Bel Lake that kind of water cooperation is not also possible, but now the environment is deteriorating too fast, can not follow the pace, more troubling is, the Mongolian grassland degradation, which affects the entire East Asian atmospheric cycle, scientists say if it is uncontrollable, then the extreme sand dust weather in the north, may become normal.
If you want to break this situation, you can't just focus on this matter in front of you. If Mongolia's minerals really stay so close, copper mines cannot be sold and the economy is under pressure, it will be possible to discuss cooperation in desertification control. China has to learn from Kazakhstan and establish a multilateral ecological fund to tie desertification control and new energy together. In 1962, border negotiations were able to give up some land to reach an agreement. Now that the environmental crisis is at this point, this kind of thinking is even more needed.
Herdsmen in Ulaanbaatar drove thin sheep around the sand, and people in Beijing were wiping the sand on the windowsill. These pictures are actually connected together. No one can avoid ecological matters. In the past 100 years of Mongolia's independence, the lesson of the relationship between man and nature is there. Only when everyone stops counting small accounts and allows that green line of defense to cross national borders, will future generations not come to ask why a sandstorm can cover all the greenery that has been worked hard for decades.