Inner Mongolia, China (1999)

Abstract

In 1993 climatologist Professor Bob Balling and I completed a major report for the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation on interactions between climate and desertification , as a prelude to the final drafting of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Our revised and updated report was published as a book in 1996 (M.A.J. Williams and R. J. Balling, Jr., Interactions of Desertification and Climate, Arnold, London). In July–August 1999 I took part in a joint China-Australia project investigating the causes and consequences of desertification in the arid Alashan Plateau of Inner Mongolia in northern China. Part of our brief was to suggest possible solutions in close liaison with scientists from the Desert Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. An episode of exceptionally heavy rain in early August 1999 caused us to take refuge in a Mongolian farmhouse in the mountains and brought to an end the severe drought that had been afflicting this region for over three years. The heavy rains turned the sandy alluvium in the local valley floors to quicksands, which nearly engulfed our Mongolian guide. The local Mongolian farmers and camel herders met to celebrate the end of the drought.