Volunteers earn 'green passports' by planting trees in yellow sand

LANZHOU — In the Zhonglin ecological public welfare forest base of Minqin county, Wuwei, Northwest China's Gansu province, volunteers water newly planted saxaul trees while showing off their service credit points on their smartphones.

"Planting saxaul trees to earn points and enjoying discounts at tourist attractions — these green seedlings have become a 'green passport'," says one volunteer at the site.

Minqin, sandwiched between the country's third- and fourth-largest deserts — the Badain Jaran and the Tengger — has 94 percent of its land area covered by sand and desertified land. As a result, it is one of the country's major sources of sandstorms.

Confronted with pressing survival challenges and the daunting task of desert control, the county has blazed a new trail by using novel "credit points" as an incentive tool. This approach connects volunteer services with tangible cultural and tourism consumption benefits.

The innovative approach makes every drop of sweat spent on desert control and every act of integrity "quantifiable and perceptible", turning the passion for protecting the oasis into tangible "green benefits", according to the authorities at the Zhonglin forest base.

Every morning, volunteers arrive at the base and check in through a mobile app called Volunteer Hub to participate in voluntary tree-planting. At the end of the day, they check out, and their eight hours of service are recorded in the app, accumulating points for their efforts.

To safeguard the rights and interests of volunteers, the Minqin government launched an initiative to spend volunteer service points like money. With a simple tap on their phones, volunteers can use their service points to enjoy preferential policies at tourist attractions, exchange them for cultural and creative products, or obtain street food coupons.

Since March, the base has attracted more than 41,000 volunteers from all over the country to Minqin's sandy expanse. To date, they have planted over 1.52 million saxaul and caragana trees, making a green promise in the yellow sands, according to the base's latest statistics.

Minqin has enhanced its unique desert eco-tourism experience by integrating the credit point system for tree planting. Tourists with a high number of credit points in the Volunteer Hub app can enjoy priority access to in-depth guided tours and intangible cultural heritage experiences. The green passports have quietly become the golden key to unlocking a rich cultural and tourism experience for its visitors.

To protect the hard-won results of their afforestation efforts, the county has implemented a strict "blacklist" system targeting individuals who engage in behaviors that destroy the ecosystem or violate regulations by crossing protected areas. Those found to be in serious violation may face being banned from entering local tourist attractions.

This year, more than 8,753 hectares of manual afforestation and some 8,773 hectares of sand fixation have been completed in Minqin through engineering, greatly shrinking the desertified land.

The innovative model has also invigorated the local cultural and tourism industry, injecting green momentum into the local economic growth.

Xinhua