By Narek Khachatryan

Usually, when you say “desert,” you imagine a desolate area where there is only sand—but that is not the case with the Kubuqi Desert.

Located in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region of China and covering an area of about 17,000 square kilometers, this desert has today turned into a large oasis thanks to decades of coordinated work. About 80 percent of the desert is already covered with vegetation. Over the decades, several hundred million trees have been planted here, and today 40 percent of Kubuqi is forest.

The Engebei Scientific Ecological Center, located in the Kubuqi Desert, exhibits all the phases of this great national program, and the demonstration greenhouse displays all the plant species, fruits, and vegetables that are obtained from the cultivation of desert lands today.

The Chinese government has been fighting desertification since the middle of the last century. As a result, the entire ecosystem has changed here. Now sheep, goats, cattle, camels, and horses are bred in the Kubuqi Desert.

The sandy areas have been turned into a huge area of sowing corn, sunflowers, grains, and several other crops.

And bananas, mangoes, papayas, pomelos, and many other tropical fruits grow in spacious greenhouses.

To implement this incredible project, huge investments have been made in the Kubuqi Desert, including diverting water from the nearby Yellow River to the desert.

The Kubuqi Desert is also home to the world's largest solar power plant. About 4 million photovoltaic panels are installed here. Built in 2018, the Junma Solar Power Station, shaped like a running horse and with over 196,000 panels, set a world record as the largest solar power plant in the world just a year later.

Today, the fight against desertification continues in the Kubuqi Desert. New saplings line dozens of kilometers of roads, and behind them, scattered sand fields show where Kubuqi’s incredible success story began.