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June 17 marks World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. After decades of long-term and sustained efforts, the work of combating desertification has yielded positive results. As of 2019, China had 2.57 million square kilometers of desertification land, a decrease of some 38,000 square kilometers compared with 2014. The area of desertification land has changed from an average annual expansion of over 10,000 square kilometers at the end of the last century to an average annual reduction of more than 2.3 thousand square kilometers today.
Conservation efforts cannot be done without many ordinary people. Watch the video to learn the story of Niu Aiguo, a villager who has planted more than 200,000 trees in over 40 years on 2,000 acres of barren mountains with his family.