A recent Financial Times column on the Iran war exemplifies how the Western elite worldview is more concerned with strategy and power than legality or human life, writes ANDREW MURRAY
China’s Great Green Wall is a vision of hope for the planet
Chinese socialist planning and action over decades have created the world’s greatest reforestation programme, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ, and now its lessons in fighting desertification and climate change are taking root worldwide
Taklimakan desert workers
STEVE BISHOP considers the prospects for a settlement of the conflict and how the demands of both sides are being viewed
The PM is drawing cautious distance from Donald Trump over Iran – but history suggests Britain’s support may run deeper than it appears, just as it did during the Vietnam war, says KEITH FLETT
Years of austerity and political failure have left classrooms overcrowded and staff overstretched – now educators are organising across roles to demand change, says ED HARLOW
While US restrictions tighten economic and social pressures on Cuba, international allies and grassroots campaigns are stepping in to support the island’s resilience, writes BERNARD REGAN, secretary of Cuba Solidarity Campaign
Labour’s approach to Scotland reveals a long-running tension between rhetoric and reality, warns PAULINE BRYAN
IN 1978, China launched its Three North Shelter Forest (Green Great Wall) Programme, aimed at creating a forest chain extending from Xinjiang in the far north-west to Heilongjiang in the far north-east, to prevent further expansion of the Gobi and Taklimakan deserts. This multi-generational project is scheduled for completion in 2050.
According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the programme “has greatly increased the forest coverage and effectively combated desertification in the programme area, improved the overall situation of serious wind-sand hazards and soil erosion, enhanced the resilience and adaptability to natural disasters and climate change.”
Further, “thanks to the development of forest and fruit-related industries, tens of millions of local people have been pulled out of poverty.”
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One of the major criticisms of China’s breakneck development in recent decades has been the impact on nature — returning after 15 years away, BEN CHACKO assessed whether the government’s recent turn to environmentalism has yielded results
PAWEL WARGAN juxtaposes the thriving industrial centre Jiayuguan in China, with the prevailing images of decaying East European great industrial cities
Activists from across the world gathered in China for an educational exchange where they witnessed the progress the country has made in building an ecological society and discussed the path to peaceful international relations, reports CALLUM NORRIS
