How should planting industry enact business practices that demonstrate sustainable and responsible business ethics thinking in environment?

1. Introduction (300 words)

Desertification has been a big issue all around the world since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit identified desertification as one of the three challenges to sustainable development. Desertification is “the process of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas as a result of various climatic and human factors”. This process will seriously affect biodiversity, ecological security, poverty eradication, socio-economic stability and sustainable development. Desertification alters local ecology, reducing arable land, and could displace 50 million people in the next decade. In addition, the uncovered surface will increase radiation absorbed from sun and the frequency and intensity of sandstorm, affecting atmospheric circulation and the climate system. Desertification has both natural and man-made causes, but at present the main cause is man-made, which means we can do something to alleviate, stop, or even reverse this process. The desertification of China's land is a serious environmental problem that has had a negative impact on China's ecological environment and sustainable development. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is committed to sustainable development and strongly supports environmental protection. This report focuses on desertification in China, aiming to see how they deal with desertification, which can be a common method to solve desertification worldwide. It can be seen that China has been very effective in combating desertification. This report will also address some of the problems encountered in the fight against desertification. Although this report attempts to find universally applicable methods to combat desertification by analyzing China's actions to combat desertification, the natural conditions and causes of desertification are slightly different in different regions, and local people and government are different, so direct copying may not be feasible.

2. Literature Review and discuss the key challenges (700 words)

Wang et.al (2008) focus on desertification in different regions of arid and semiarid China, pointing out that the main form of desertification in China is "sandy" desertification, and geomorphological setting and vegetation cover are important factors of desertification. Guo et.al (2023) talk about rocky desertification in karst areas of southwest China, and help to precisely prevent and control karst desertification.

Qi etl.al (2020) propose four key strategies, including developing a protocol of United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), setting up a global observation network, compiling a global desert directory, and initiating global governance actions. Lyu et.al (2020) mention three ways to combat desertification, including vegetation construction, ecological industrialization and technological innovation, as well as policy support and economic incentive. You et.al (2020) talk about “Chinese model”, which integrates natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences. It not only cares about ecological construction, but also helps poor people to gain wealth.

Feng et.al (2019) focus on Alxa region, where is ecologically fragile and impoverished. By the efforts of the local government, enterprises and people, Alxa has achieved a goal of ecological protection and economic development. Liu et.al (2021) focus on marginal parts of the Taklimakan Desert. Unlike Alxa, this study finds that there are conflicts between policy objective and local residents’ interest, which means they are hard to work together to combat desertification. Zhang et.al (2021) focus on Hongsibu, where local people combat desertification by wine industry. By planting grapes, local people benefit from wine, and it also increase vegetation cover, decrease blowing sand. Wei et.al (2020) focus on Yanchi, find that the environment and economy become better in total but there are some problems such as low farmer participation, income affecting project sustainability, and adverse effects of complete grazing bans.

Relevant literature related to your topic.

Then specific discussions about your selected industrial context and implications.

What you are going to discuss/ highlight/ contribute through your research

C. Research methodology (250 words)

This section includes relevant frameworks through which you will be viewing the issue:

How you find the existing situation: practice, norms and approaches related to your selected topic in the case of your selected organisation. Describing that in the general sense

Method of data collection

Documents: organisational documents, newspaper clips/ blogs and relevant resources.

Observation

How you analyse your collected data

Interpretations: how you interpret based on your theoretical framework.

D. Findings (800)

E. Discussion &Conclusion (250 words)

Policy recommendations (200 words)

Suggest policy recommendations for sustainable business development appropriate for this organization

Reference list

Wang, X., Chen, F., Hasi, E., & Li, J. (2008). Desertification in China: an assessment. Earth-Science Reviews, 88(3-4), 188-206.

Guo, B., Yang, F., Fan, Y., & Zang, W. (2023). The dominant driving factors of rocky desertification and their variations in typical mountainous karst areas of Southwest China in the context of global change. Catena, 220, 106674.

Qi, L., Jiaqiang, L., Xiaosong, L., Youlin, Y. A. N. G., & Feng, W. A. N. G. (2020). China's combating desertification: national solutions and global paradigm. Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version), 35(6), 655-664.

Lyu, Y., Shi, P., Han, G., Liu, L., Guo, L., Hu, X., & Zhang, G. (2020). Desertification control practices in China. Sustainability, 12(8), 3258.

You, Y., Zhou, J., & Wang, Y. (2020). “Chinese Mode” of combating desertification. In IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science (Vol. 435, No. 1, p. 012033). IOP Publishing.

Feng, Q., Tian, Y., Yu, T., Yin, Z., & Cao, S. (2019). Combating desertification through economic development in northwestern China. Land degradation & development, 30(8), 910-917.

Liu, S., Zhang, J., Zhang, J., Li, Z., Geng, Y., & Guo, Y. (2021). Assessing controversial desertification prevention policies in ecologically fragile and deeply impoverished areas: a case study of marginal parts of the Taklimakan Desert, China. Land, 10(6), 641.

Zhang, L., Wang, Z., Xue, T., Gao, F., Wei, R., Wang, Y., ... & Wang, H. (2021). Combating desertification through the wine industry in Hongsibu, Ningxia. Sustainability, 13(10), 5654.

Wei, X., Zhou, L., Yang, G., Wang, Y., & Chen, Y. (2020). assessing the effects of desertification control projects from the farmers’ perspective: A case study of Yanchi County, Northern China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(3), 983.