Foreword
-
Every year when spring comes and the region is afflicted with yellow dust storms, some 100 students of Green Corps from the <Future Forest> visit deserts in China to plant trees to combat desertification.
Recently, the situation has been worsening and now 40% of Koreans are direct victims of yellow sand storm related disease. Economically speaking, it is reported that there is a yearly loss of 7 billion US dollars in Korea alone; and the number soars to multi-billion US dollars when we take into consideration the 300 million people affected by these dust storms in both Korea and China. Globally, one fifth of the land surface of the earth has already turned into desert and one third is at high risk of desertification. China has large desert areas and it is still pushing its boundary by some 2,000 square kilometers eastward every year.
On October 20, 2006, hand in hand with the All China Youth Federation (China Communist Youth League), the Future Forest initiated an ambitious project of building the <Great Green Wall> across the Kubuqi desert in Inner Mongolia. This desert is the easternmost frontier of the moving desert and one of the origins of yellow dust storm affecting vast areas including northern China and the Korean Peninsula.
The 28km-long Great Green Wall is now under construction from the northern top to the southern end across the Kubuqi desert. In 2006, the first year of the five year-long project, half a million trees were planted, and one million in 2007. More than 1.5 million trees are scheduled to be planted this year alone.
The <Great Green Wall> project has been tried against the false belief that the expansion of the moving desert like Kubuqi can not be stopped by human efforts, and now more than 10km of the 28km of the Great Green Wall has been erected against the sand storms and moving sand. Once completed, it is probably going to be the first case in human history to erect a green windbreak stopping the moving desert.
Last year we expanded the <Great Green Wall Project> into <Green Eco Park Project>, which aims to vertically spread the green wall zone into the deeper desert, transforming the desert into Green Eco Parks.
We will not stop planting trees until the desert turns into a green forest, and yellow dust turns into clean air. Young future leaders of not only China and Korea but also all over the world, hand in had, are there to join the Green Corps to transform today’s desert into Future Forests.
Join us to create a more beautiful, greener and cleaner future.
March 24, 2008
Byong Hyon Kwon
President of the Future Forest
Byong Hyon Kwon
President of the Future Forest
