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A student at work in the Kubuqi desert, one of the regions involved in the Great Green Wall of China in Inner Mongolia.Credit: Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty

In Nature this week, researchers describe an initiative that is greening some of the world’s drylands — including deserts, shrublands and other water-scarce regions. The Great Green Wall of China, officially called the Three-North Shelterbelt programme, is one of the largest and longest-running projects of its kind. Outside China, the initiative is less well known than other programmes, such as Africa’s Great Green Wall. But, as Lilin Zheng, a researcher in geographical information systems at Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s School of Design in China and colleagues write, the project is succeeding whereas other green-wall initiatives are struggling. The programme’s strategies need to be studied — not only for land-restoration initiatives elsewhere in China, but also for those in other parts of the world, such as Africa.

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