ABSTRACT
This essay seeks to resist apocalyptic narratives of the Anthropocene, which do not participate in the task of addressing ecological degradation thereby revealing a lack of agency and responsibility. Drawing on ecocritical theories, my inquiry regarding desertification control and afforestation in China focuses on the agency of local and transnational multi-lateral collaborations, particularly the grassroots activism of people who have suffered from expanding deserts for generations. While situating these interventional projects in local, regional histories and geographies, I foreground the ways in which individuals and communities who refuse to be ecological migrants have transformed large areas of three deserts—the Tengger Desert, the Maowusu Desert, and the Kubuqi Desert—into oases. This transformation, I argue, entails ecological knowledge and land ethics that underlie the emergence of ecological citizens of the planet earth among those who have been, or would have been, displaced by desertification in China. The stories of greening the deserts in China demonstrate that rehabilitating damaged ecosystem on the large scale entail a paradigm shift from an anthropocentric relationship between humans and the more-than-human, to an ecological one, in which humans are part of the web-of-life, which sustains them and for which they must assume the responsibility of stewardship.
