<i>But farming is also becoming more difficult. Huang Chunmei, who grew up in the town of Tonggunao’er and now farms there, said the water table was two meters, or about six feet, below ground during her childhood, and “now, you have to dig four or five meters.”</i><p>This is the bottom line; you can plant trees all you like, but this is not a matter of simple erosion due to overuse or clear-cutting. Rather, the climate systems of the region are changing, and presumably they suffer from the same overuse of subterranean water that everyone else does in the developed/developing world.<p>I feel terribly for these people, desperately slapping band-aids on a sucking chest wound, especially since the story of this century seems to be that the people on the front lines of climate change are the people who contributed least to the creation of the problem in the first place. It's also hard to see a happy outcome for them, since they're first on the metaphorical chopping block; even if the world suddenly woke up and took notice, it would be too late for them.