A Saudi official has expressed confidence that China can contribute to Saudi Arabia's drought resilience initiative, which was unveiled at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) currently underway in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
Running until Dec 13, under the theme of "Our Land. Our Future," the COP16 marks a milestone as the largest UN land-focused conference to date and the first UNCCD COP to take place in the Middle East and North Africa region.
In an interview on the sidelines of the COP16, Osama Faqeeha, deputy minister for Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture of Saudi Arabia, praised China's leadership in combating desertification, highlighting its large-scale projects.
"In combating desertification, China has always been a leader and they take it very seriously. So, they have programs, they have large projects that are among the largest in the world," he said.
Shortly before the conference was held, China had recently completed the encirclement of the Taklimakan Desert, the largest desert in the country, with a green belt. It is a part of the country's Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program (TSFP), the world's largest afforestation program to tackle desertification.
Faqeeha expressed expectations that China would leverage its advantages in innovation and technologies and collaborate with the rest of the world, including Saudi Arabia, to jointly promote global desertification control and environmental protection.
He believes China can help promote the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership, an initiative Saudi Arabia announced at the opening ceremony of the COP16 on Monday.
"We also launched the Riyadh Global Partnership for Drought Resilience and this is to call upon countries, organizations and the private sector to help address the drought and I think China can be a big support to this initiative," Faqeeha said.
The initiative is part of Saudi Arabia's ongoing efforts to address drought globally and limit its impact on vulnerable communities.
It aims to boost preparedness against droughts through measures including assessing drought risks, improving early warning systems, promoting sustainable agriculture and drought-resistant crops, facilitating financing for improved water infrastructure, and offering insurance solutions for small farmers.
Saudi Arabia has pledged to contribute 150 million U.S. dollars to the initiative over the next 10 years.
Saudi official praises China's role in combating desertification
A veteran agricultural scientist and deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, shared his decades-long mission to reduce the country's reliance on food imports and safeguard its food security by developing high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.
Gao Derong, a researcher from the Lixiahe Regional Institute of Agricultural Sciences in east China's Jiangsu Province, detailed his relentless pursuit of better wheat varieties while taking a question at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing "two sessions", a major event in China's political calendar.
He has dedicated more than 30 years to wheat breeding and succeeded in the fight against Fusarium head blight, a serious fungal disease of cereals, including wheat and other small-grain crops, by implanting "disease-resistant genes" inside seeds.
"After 30 years of countless and repeated trials, we finally developed our first Fusarium head blight resistant variety in 2021. It exhibits strong disease resistance and high yield, with a yield of up to 600 kg per mu (0.066 hectare) in a demonstration plot. This means farmers can use fewer pesticides, produce more wheats, and secure a more stable harvest," said Gao.
Addressing the tight rotation schedule in the rice-wheat rotation system in south China, his team developed time-smart varieties like "Yangmai 25," which can be sown as late as December and still achieve a yield of 6,00 kg per mu.
"We have also cultivated a high-quality weak-gluten wheat variety tailored for biscuits and pastries, reversing China's long-standing reliance on imports. These grain varieties, like elite guard teams, help us hold our rice bowl firmly and contribute to securing our food security," Gao said.
As an NPC deputy, Gao extends his research from the lab to the field, gathering farmers' concerns alongside experimental data.
"My duty as a deputy is also written in the fields. 'Can we construct high-standard farmland at an accelerated pace?' 'Can we have more targeted agricultural subsidies?' These are the voices I often heard in the fields, which I carefully recorded like experimental data and transformed into suggestions," he said. Gao said he will continue working to enable the land to yield more grain, help farmers increase their incomes, and contribute to ensuring national food security.
This year's "two sessions," the annual meetings of China's top political advisory body and national legislature, opened in Beijing Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. As the world's second-largest economy embarks on the inaugural year of its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) period, these gatherings will serve both as a review of past achievements, and as a strategic compass guiding the nation's future development.
NPC deputy vows to fortify China's food security through seed innovation
