Wang Wenbiao has spent most of his life fighting that most implacable of enemies: sand.
Today, the Chinese businessman is chairman of the eco-company Elion Resources Group but he has never forgotten his roots in the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia.
“I was haunted by hunger and sand in my childhood. At that time, I yearned for two things: one was turning the sand into lush oases free from sandstorms; the other was no more hunger,” said Wang, who received a UN Champions of the Earth award in 2017 for a lifetime of leadership in green industries.
That boyhood dream of lush oases became the mission of a lifetime, and today Elion is China’s largest private green industries enterprise. It all started when Wang, who is known as the Son of the Desert, took over a saltworks in his home district of Hangjin Banner in 1988.
“When I took over the operation of the saltworks… the top challenge facing the factory was an expanse of sand driven by endless sandstorms that kept creeping in around the salt lake where production was based,” Wang said.
He decided to take a portion of earnings from every metric ton of salt sold to finance sand control activities and also assigned 27 out of the factory’s 100 workers to plant trees. Through partnerships with local communities and the Beijing government, he provided opportunities for people living in the area, notably encouraging the growth of hardy licorice plants that thrive in deserts and are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Today, around one third of the desert has been greened and Wang has expanded Elion’s business empire to include healthcare, environmental protection, clean energy, farming and livestock, tourism and feed processing.
Wang now hopes to share Elion’s experiences and methods with other countries, particularly those along the Belt and Road initiative, a Beijing-led plan to boost economic integration through infrastructure and energy investments in Asia and beyond.
If appropriate safeguards are in place, the Belt and Road Initiative can play a significant role in supporting the development goals of numerous countries, bringing economic benefits which may in turn contribute to eradicating poverty and hunger, reducing inequalities and improving health, education and sanitation for millions.
“I will not quit this combat until desertification is eliminated in our world, as it is what I am ready to devote my whole life to… I will continue to follow (Chinese) President Xi’s ecological philosophy that ‘Green is golden’ and share what we have learned with other countries and regions along the Belt and Road and beyond,” Wang said.
The role of nature-based solutions in combating climate change and securing a sustainable future for the planet’s people was highlighted by the United Nations decision in March to declare the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030. The aim is to massively scale up the restoration of degraded and destroyed ecosystems as a proven measure to fight climate change and enhance food security, water supply and biodiversity.
At a United Nations conference on desertification in September 2019, delegates heard that land restoration could be the starting point for resolving some of the biggest issues of our time. Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, said that the world must invest in land restoration to improve livelihoods, reduce vulnerabilities contributing to climate change and reduce risks for the global economy.
The need for radical action on climate change is the focus of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ Climate Action Summit in New York on 23 September 2019. The Secretary-General has urged world leaders, businesses and civil society to come to the summit with concrete ideas of how they will cut emissions by 45 per cent in the next decade and achieve net zero emissions by 2050, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Secretary-General has prioritized six action portfolios as having high potential to curb greenhouse gas emissions. These include finance, energy transition, industry transition, cities and local action, resilience and adaptation, and nature-based solutions to reduce emissions and enhance resilience across forestry, agriculture, oceans and food systems.
Wang believes China can be a world leader in afforestation.
“China has been the largest contributor to the greening of the earth in the past two decades thanks to the government’s relentless efforts to promote afforestation programmes, such as the Three-North Shelter Forest Programme and the Beijing-Tianjin Sandstorm Source Control Programme. Kubuqi alone accounted for 1 per cent of the increased leaf area,” he said.
More broadly, Wang hopes China can lead a global push towards a more sustainable development model. Although his country is one of the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gases with serious pollution challenges, it has also been the biggest investor in renewables capacity over the past decade.
“The development of clean energy technologies and green industries, along with ecosystem improvement, remains a strategic focus of the Chinese government… I truly believe, as the second largest economy in the world, China is responsible for and will play an even bigger role in leading the world to move towards a greener economy,” he said.
Like other corporate environmental pioneers, Wang believes going green makes good business sense. He says the Kubuqi model shows that successful businesses can drive ecosystem restoration and help local communities, striking a healthy balance between ecosystems, economy and livelihoods.
“Short-term profitability, as far as I am concerned, is trivial compared to sustainable quality development,” he said. “I believe that development that comes at the cost of the environment will eventually lead to greater financial loss and take a heavier toll on the planet we share and the interests of future generations that we are obliged to respect.”
