Great Green Wall (China)
The Great Green Wall, officially known as the Three-North Shelter Forest Program (simplified Chinese: 三北防护林; traditional Chinese: 三北防護林; pinyin: Sānběi Fánghùlín), is a series of human-planted windbreaking forest strips (shelterbelts) in China, designed to hold back the expansion of the Gobi Desert and provide timber to the local population. The program started in 1978 and is planned to complete around 2050, at which point it will be expected to have created a vast green barrier spanning approximately 4,828 kilometres (3,000 mi) long and up to 1,448 kilometres (900 mi) wide in certain regions, and will encompass around 88 million acres of forests.