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DESERTIFICATION is a major problem across the world, as insidious sand invades arable lands and threatens food production. This problem is likely to get worse with expected climate change. But in the Hobq Desert, the opposite has happened. Over 5,000 square kilometers of barren land has been turned into an oasis, and another area twice that size has been saved from desertification.
This feat has been accomplished by Elion Resources Group over the last 24 years, and won the company’s chairman, Wang Wenbiao, the United Nations Environment and Development Award(UNEDA) at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Wang is the first Chinese entrepreneur to have received the award. It was introduced at the 1992 Rio conference to acknowledge contributions by outstanding individuals to environmental protection and green development.
Drawn to the Desert
Wang’s life seems destined to have been closely connected to the desert. In December 1959, he was born in a small village on the fringes of the Hobq Desert in Hanggin Banner, a county-level jurisdiction in Inner Mongolia. His home was a mere 15 kilometers from the Yellow River, which watered China’s early civilizations. But the desert was close by, and his mother forbade him from playing there, feeding in the small boy a sense of the desert’s mystery.
Desert is often associated with poverty, backwardness and formidable environmental challenges. Wang’s village was no exception, and Wang studied hard to escape from the destitution and dusty environment he grew up in. After graduating from a teacher’s school, he became a middle-school teacher in the county seat. Later, he was transferred to the general office of the local government where he became a secretary.
But a decision he made in 1988 changed the path of his life and eventually led to the creation of Elion Resources Group and the Hobq desertification control project. That year 29-year-old Wang decided to give up his stable job in the local government and compete for the contracted leadership of Hanggin Banner Salt Field. He won the position and took over the helm of the state-owned enterprise, which, at that time, was on the brink of bankruptcy. “It was a bold decision made by a reckless young man,” Wang recalled.
The salt field was only 60 kilometers from the county seat, but Wang had to drive for three hours each way and take someone along to help free the car wheels every now and then from treacherous sand. However, the salt field was a resource jackpot. It was not only full of salt, but also rich in other mineral resources like mirabilite and various alkalis. After three years of strenuous effort, Wang brought the salt field back from the brink, pulling it out of the red and making it profitable. In 1992, the salt field set out on an inorganic salts development strategy, and in 1995 it merged four other enterprises to become Elion Building Materials and Chemicals Company.
However, transportation continued to be a major obstacle for the business. Surrounded by the Hobq Desert, its most convenient route to the closest train station just 60 kilometers away as the crow flies required a detour of 330 kilometers. Transportation increased its production costs by RMB 15-20 million every year,“eating up almost our entire profit from chemical products,” said Wang.
To remedy this, in 1997 they decided to build a road across the desert. Although they had support from the local government, it was still a hard task. The final cost of the road amounted to RMB 75 million, far beyond their financial capabilities at the time. In 1999, they managed to complete the 65-km highway, but in doing so had gotten deep in debt.
But the fight for efficient transport links wasn’t over. To protect the company’s new lifeline from encroaching sand, they began to control desertification by planting liquorice and Salix monogolica, and ploughed more investment into new roads. Today, Elion has built five highways across the desert of a total length up to 500 kilometers, and cultivated a 242km-long, 3-to-5km-wide shelter forest along the northern edge of the Hobq Desert and the south bank of the Yellow River.
Holding Back the sand
When asked about his motivations for getting involved in desertification control, Wang answered simply and honestly, with no self-aggrandizing claims of sacrifice for the greater good. “It was out of private interest rather than from lofty ideals about global green development,” he explained.
Determined that their efforts were both effective and sustainable, Wang and his team visited many research institutions, including the Chinese Academy of Forestry and Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, and later worked with many domestic and overseas research institutions to explore different ways to control desertification.
The result was that Elion blazed a new way of desert afforestation, which included methods such as using planes to sow seeds. Throughout the development of their environmental project, Wang constantly kept an eye on how it could gain returns from his huge investment and therefore make the project sustainable.
Wang spent years researching plants that would grow cheaply in formidable environments, such as liquorice, which is a medicinal herb. “I thought expanding the planting of herbs and industrializing the process would be in the interests of our company’s long-term development,”Wang said. In the end they planted over 13,000 hectares of greenbelt consisted mainly of resilient liquorice, Salix monogolica and poplar along the two sides of their desert highways. During this period, Wang was faced with a difficult choice between continuing in the company’s original industry, which over the years had brought them sizable profits but could cause long lasting damage to the environment, or to charge full steam ahead into his new endeavors. These were two conflicting industries. In 1999, Wang closed the salt field, which had already accumulated a net asset of RMB 0.9 billion, and set off along a new development road.
Elion designed its desert afforestation efforts to provide ingredients for the Chinese medicine industry. In 2000, it planted 43,000 hectares of liquorice, which not only brought the company sizable returns but produced impressive social and environmental benefits for the local area. The next year, Elion continued to increase herb production and initiated a large scale project to hold back desertification and protect the river by planting a huge amount of liquorice.
Today, Elion Group farms more than 130,000 hectares of medicinal herbs and produces its own natural medicines. The overall output value has reached more than RMB 4 billion. Its economic activities now cover modern agriculture, natural pharmacy, renewable energy, new materials and tourism, all based on the desert. The company has successfully transformed itself from a polluting mining business into a comprehensive ecological enterprise.
Wang has also brought local farmers into the project. “Farmers can become shareholders by investing their desert wasteland and get paid by planting trees and herbs,” he explains. “The company gets returns from its cash plants, which, in turn, curb desertification and reverse damages it has done. This approach benefits both the farmers and the company and contributes to the improvement of the local environment.”
Using this strategy Wang has mobilized 130,000 local farmers to take part in Elion’s business and the undertaking of desertification control. The enterprise has attracted a total investment of over RMB 100 billion, created 100,000 jobs, and increased local farmers’ annual per capita income to RMB 30,000 from less than RMB 2,000 back when the desert was slowly eating up their livelihoods.
Making a Profit
Wang’s endeavor has gained an international reputation, referred to as the“Hobq Desert control mode.” Not only does it promote company growth and large-scale afforestation in desert, but the resulting green economy provides jobs and a better living environment for local people. As such, this sustainable approach has won widespread support from both profit-driven businesses and local communities. It has also drawn the attention of the UN. At the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang spoke highly of Wang and his team’s achievements over the past two and a half decades. Sha described how their green economy based on desertification control and covering nearly 20,000 square kilometers had lifted thousands of farmers out of poverty.“His approach, foresight and outstanding achievements have provided valuable experience and reference for the global development of sustainable green economy,”he remarked.
Currently, over 100 countries are plagued by desertification. In China a whopping 2.622 million square kilometers are classified as desert, accounting for 27.4 percent of its total land area and affecting some 400 million Chinese people.
Wang, meanwhile, is delighted to see the unexpected social and economic benefit brought by his initially profit-motivated undertaking to control desertification. It has become a tempting investment for enterprises in both China and around the world. “In the beginning, sand control was unprofitable, but the situation changed gradually, and now it has become a lucrative business,” he said.
Their activities’ benefits aren’t limited to just the company and those in the project’s immediate surroundings. The Hobq Desert is the seventh largest desert in China and affects a significant population. After 24 years of efforts made by Elion Group and local farmers and government, the annual rainfall there has increased to over 300 millimeters from just 70 millimeters, and sandstorms occur just 3-5 times a year compared to almost 100. Similar improvements have also reached surrounding cities as far away as Beijing.
In 2011, Elion Group started a new program in the Horqin Desert after signing a cooperation agreement with the local government. Implementing Elion’s development strategy, combining devel- opment of the local environment, tourism and renewable energy, the program aims to control local desertification and improve farmers’ lives just as the project in Hobq has.
“The desertification control program in Horqin is based on the Hobq mode, and will adopt similar technologies and mechanisms,” Wang explained. The first phase of the project involves desertification control over 67,000 hectares of land, and Wang is confident that Horqin will see improvements faster than it took in Hobq.
“Although we’re not among the wealthiest companies after 20-plus years of development, I believe we have created the largest number of desert oases,” Wang said proudly. And this green land is bound to expand in the future. Elion Resources Group plans to establish the China Elion Green Foundation to funnel RMB 10 billion towards creating a 10,000-square-km desert oasis in just 10 years. pot lucK
Stewed Dongpo Pork
(Dongpo Rou)
Dongpo is the pen name of Su Shi (1037-1101), a prominent writer of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). His father Su Xun was also a highly regarded writer and personally tutored him from an early age. Su Shi took part in the imperial exam at 19, and achieved exceptionally high marks. This success won him a judicial position in the government. Years later a new emperor took the throne and introduced sweeping political reforms at the proposal of Prime Minister Wang Anshi. Appalled at the suffering of the people under the new policies, Su Shi sent a petition to the emperor railing against their implementation. In 1079 he was thrown into prison for his poems satirizing the new policies. Later, he was exiled to Huangzhou in Hubei Province, serving as a petty functionary.
While serving as deputy militia commissioner in Huangzhou, Su Shi reclaimed wasteland and did farmwork, calling this plot of land on hillside “Dongpo” (Eastern Slope) and naming himself “Dongpo Jushi” (Dweller of the Eastern Slope). There he developed his own recipe for stewed pork and wrote a poem about it.
But it wasn’t until years later that his method of cooking became better known far and wide. By that time China was under the rule of a new emperor and Su Shi had been appointed magistrate of Hangzhou. When a downpour one summer overflowed the drainage system of the West Lake and inflicted heavy damages on crops, Su Shi took several measures to minimize the losses during and after the deluge. To show their gratitude, local people sent him a large amount of pork and wine during the Spring Festival. Inundated with all this food and drink, Su Shi taught chefs to prepare the pork using his method and sent out portions of the dish to everyone who had participated in the dredging of the West Lake. They all liked it, and named it “Dongpo Pork.” The dish later spread all over the nation and has remained popular to date.
Method:
Boil a slab of streaky pork for 30 minutes, and then cut it into cubes. Scatter sliced shallots and ginger in a clay pot, and place pork cubes skin downward over them. Add soy sauce, crystal sugar, rice wine and more sliced shallots on top. Cover with a lid and turn on the heat to maximum until it starts to boil and then cook on a low flame for two hours. Transfer the pork to a covered clay jar and steam for 30 minutes. The finished dish is succulent but not oily.
This feat has been accomplished by Elion Resources Group over the last 24 years, and won the company’s chairman, Wang Wenbiao, the United Nations Environment and Development Award(UNEDA) at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Wang is the first Chinese entrepreneur to have received the award. It was introduced at the 1992 Rio conference to acknowledge contributions by outstanding individuals to environmental protection and green development.
Drawn to the Desert
Wang’s life seems destined to have been closely connected to the desert. In December 1959, he was born in a small village on the fringes of the Hobq Desert in Hanggin Banner, a county-level jurisdiction in Inner Mongolia. His home was a mere 15 kilometers from the Yellow River, which watered China’s early civilizations. But the desert was close by, and his mother forbade him from playing there, feeding in the small boy a sense of the desert’s mystery.
Desert is often associated with poverty, backwardness and formidable environmental challenges. Wang’s village was no exception, and Wang studied hard to escape from the destitution and dusty environment he grew up in. After graduating from a teacher’s school, he became a middle-school teacher in the county seat. Later, he was transferred to the general office of the local government where he became a secretary.
But a decision he made in 1988 changed the path of his life and eventually led to the creation of Elion Resources Group and the Hobq desertification control project. That year 29-year-old Wang decided to give up his stable job in the local government and compete for the contracted leadership of Hanggin Banner Salt Field. He won the position and took over the helm of the state-owned enterprise, which, at that time, was on the brink of bankruptcy. “It was a bold decision made by a reckless young man,” Wang recalled.
The salt field was only 60 kilometers from the county seat, but Wang had to drive for three hours each way and take someone along to help free the car wheels every now and then from treacherous sand. However, the salt field was a resource jackpot. It was not only full of salt, but also rich in other mineral resources like mirabilite and various alkalis. After three years of strenuous effort, Wang brought the salt field back from the brink, pulling it out of the red and making it profitable. In 1992, the salt field set out on an inorganic salts development strategy, and in 1995 it merged four other enterprises to become Elion Building Materials and Chemicals Company.
However, transportation continued to be a major obstacle for the business. Surrounded by the Hobq Desert, its most convenient route to the closest train station just 60 kilometers away as the crow flies required a detour of 330 kilometers. Transportation increased its production costs by RMB 15-20 million every year,“eating up almost our entire profit from chemical products,” said Wang.
To remedy this, in 1997 they decided to build a road across the desert. Although they had support from the local government, it was still a hard task. The final cost of the road amounted to RMB 75 million, far beyond their financial capabilities at the time. In 1999, they managed to complete the 65-km highway, but in doing so had gotten deep in debt.
But the fight for efficient transport links wasn’t over. To protect the company’s new lifeline from encroaching sand, they began to control desertification by planting liquorice and Salix monogolica, and ploughed more investment into new roads. Today, Elion has built five highways across the desert of a total length up to 500 kilometers, and cultivated a 242km-long, 3-to-5km-wide shelter forest along the northern edge of the Hobq Desert and the south bank of the Yellow River.
Holding Back the sand
When asked about his motivations for getting involved in desertification control, Wang answered simply and honestly, with no self-aggrandizing claims of sacrifice for the greater good. “It was out of private interest rather than from lofty ideals about global green development,” he explained.
Determined that their efforts were both effective and sustainable, Wang and his team visited many research institutions, including the Chinese Academy of Forestry and Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, and later worked with many domestic and overseas research institutions to explore different ways to control desertification.
The result was that Elion blazed a new way of desert afforestation, which included methods such as using planes to sow seeds. Throughout the development of their environmental project, Wang constantly kept an eye on how it could gain returns from his huge investment and therefore make the project sustainable.
Wang spent years researching plants that would grow cheaply in formidable environments, such as liquorice, which is a medicinal herb. “I thought expanding the planting of herbs and industrializing the process would be in the interests of our company’s long-term development,”Wang said. In the end they planted over 13,000 hectares of greenbelt consisted mainly of resilient liquorice, Salix monogolica and poplar along the two sides of their desert highways. During this period, Wang was faced with a difficult choice between continuing in the company’s original industry, which over the years had brought them sizable profits but could cause long lasting damage to the environment, or to charge full steam ahead into his new endeavors. These were two conflicting industries. In 1999, Wang closed the salt field, which had already accumulated a net asset of RMB 0.9 billion, and set off along a new development road.
Elion designed its desert afforestation efforts to provide ingredients for the Chinese medicine industry. In 2000, it planted 43,000 hectares of liquorice, which not only brought the company sizable returns but produced impressive social and environmental benefits for the local area. The next year, Elion continued to increase herb production and initiated a large scale project to hold back desertification and protect the river by planting a huge amount of liquorice.
Today, Elion Group farms more than 130,000 hectares of medicinal herbs and produces its own natural medicines. The overall output value has reached more than RMB 4 billion. Its economic activities now cover modern agriculture, natural pharmacy, renewable energy, new materials and tourism, all based on the desert. The company has successfully transformed itself from a polluting mining business into a comprehensive ecological enterprise.
Wang has also brought local farmers into the project. “Farmers can become shareholders by investing their desert wasteland and get paid by planting trees and herbs,” he explains. “The company gets returns from its cash plants, which, in turn, curb desertification and reverse damages it has done. This approach benefits both the farmers and the company and contributes to the improvement of the local environment.”
Using this strategy Wang has mobilized 130,000 local farmers to take part in Elion’s business and the undertaking of desertification control. The enterprise has attracted a total investment of over RMB 100 billion, created 100,000 jobs, and increased local farmers’ annual per capita income to RMB 30,000 from less than RMB 2,000 back when the desert was slowly eating up their livelihoods.
Making a Profit
Wang’s endeavor has gained an international reputation, referred to as the“Hobq Desert control mode.” Not only does it promote company growth and large-scale afforestation in desert, but the resulting green economy provides jobs and a better living environment for local people. As such, this sustainable approach has won widespread support from both profit-driven businesses and local communities. It has also drawn the attention of the UN. At the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang spoke highly of Wang and his team’s achievements over the past two and a half decades. Sha described how their green economy based on desertification control and covering nearly 20,000 square kilometers had lifted thousands of farmers out of poverty.“His approach, foresight and outstanding achievements have provided valuable experience and reference for the global development of sustainable green economy,”he remarked.
Currently, over 100 countries are plagued by desertification. In China a whopping 2.622 million square kilometers are classified as desert, accounting for 27.4 percent of its total land area and affecting some 400 million Chinese people.
Wang, meanwhile, is delighted to see the unexpected social and economic benefit brought by his initially profit-motivated undertaking to control desertification. It has become a tempting investment for enterprises in both China and around the world. “In the beginning, sand control was unprofitable, but the situation changed gradually, and now it has become a lucrative business,” he said.
Their activities’ benefits aren’t limited to just the company and those in the project’s immediate surroundings. The Hobq Desert is the seventh largest desert in China and affects a significant population. After 24 years of efforts made by Elion Group and local farmers and government, the annual rainfall there has increased to over 300 millimeters from just 70 millimeters, and sandstorms occur just 3-5 times a year compared to almost 100. Similar improvements have also reached surrounding cities as far away as Beijing.
In 2011, Elion Group started a new program in the Horqin Desert after signing a cooperation agreement with the local government. Implementing Elion’s development strategy, combining devel- opment of the local environment, tourism and renewable energy, the program aims to control local desertification and improve farmers’ lives just as the project in Hobq has.
“The desertification control program in Horqin is based on the Hobq mode, and will adopt similar technologies and mechanisms,” Wang explained. The first phase of the project involves desertification control over 67,000 hectares of land, and Wang is confident that Horqin will see improvements faster than it took in Hobq.
“Although we’re not among the wealthiest companies after 20-plus years of development, I believe we have created the largest number of desert oases,” Wang said proudly. And this green land is bound to expand in the future. Elion Resources Group plans to establish the China Elion Green Foundation to funnel RMB 10 billion towards creating a 10,000-square-km desert oasis in just 10 years. pot lucK
Stewed Dongpo Pork
(Dongpo Rou)
Dongpo is the pen name of Su Shi (1037-1101), a prominent writer of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). His father Su Xun was also a highly regarded writer and personally tutored him from an early age. Su Shi took part in the imperial exam at 19, and achieved exceptionally high marks. This success won him a judicial position in the government. Years later a new emperor took the throne and introduced sweeping political reforms at the proposal of Prime Minister Wang Anshi. Appalled at the suffering of the people under the new policies, Su Shi sent a petition to the emperor railing against their implementation. In 1079 he was thrown into prison for his poems satirizing the new policies. Later, he was exiled to Huangzhou in Hubei Province, serving as a petty functionary.
While serving as deputy militia commissioner in Huangzhou, Su Shi reclaimed wasteland and did farmwork, calling this plot of land on hillside “Dongpo” (Eastern Slope) and naming himself “Dongpo Jushi” (Dweller of the Eastern Slope). There he developed his own recipe for stewed pork and wrote a poem about it.
But it wasn’t until years later that his method of cooking became better known far and wide. By that time China was under the rule of a new emperor and Su Shi had been appointed magistrate of Hangzhou. When a downpour one summer overflowed the drainage system of the West Lake and inflicted heavy damages on crops, Su Shi took several measures to minimize the losses during and after the deluge. To show their gratitude, local people sent him a large amount of pork and wine during the Spring Festival. Inundated with all this food and drink, Su Shi taught chefs to prepare the pork using his method and sent out portions of the dish to everyone who had participated in the dredging of the West Lake. They all liked it, and named it “Dongpo Pork.” The dish later spread all over the nation and has remained popular to date.
Method:
Boil a slab of streaky pork for 30 minutes, and then cut it into cubes. Scatter sliced shallots and ginger in a clay pot, and place pork cubes skin downward over them. Add soy sauce, crystal sugar, rice wine and more sliced shallots on top. Cover with a lid and turn on the heat to maximum until it starts to boil and then cook on a low flame for two hours. Transfer the pork to a covered clay jar and steam for 30 minutes. The finished dish is succulent but not oily.