Red basket is disappearing. Climate change and decades of overexploitation（(对资源等的)过度开采） is resulting in the growth of a huge desert. Is it possible to stop the expansion of the Sahara（撒哈拉沙漠） on the Danube? Something like this has no reason to exist. In 50, maybe 100 years, Bucharest will also be covered with sand. Can this still be prevented?

  We are in an ongoing race with the sand and climate change. Octavian Berchanu is an environmental activist（积极分子） and opposition politician from Bucharest. His mission is to stymie the expansion of the desert and prevent his homeland（ 祖国） from becoming desolate（荒凉的）. This forestry expert fights nonstop（不休息地） for his cause, sacrificing（牺牲） both his private life and his career. He even confronts（使面临） the mafia when necessary. Octavian is driven because around him, the desert in Romania is expanding.

  And due to climate change, the situation gets worse and worse every year. The certification across Europe and Romania doesn't mean only sands on the ground, sand on the ground, but only losing vegetation（[植]植被）, trees and things like this. Behind me you can see landfill, the highest structure in Bucharest. And we lost our vegetation here. It was a forest in the past, now it has become a desert without trees, just shrubs（灌木） and things like this. Octavian has identified two culprits that are responsible for turning the outskirts of Bucharest into sandy plains.

  Illegal garbage dumps and deforestation. Planting trees helps prevent the sand from advancing further. Lots of trees. Gorilla planting is what Octavian and his helpers call what they do. Reforestation without official permission. The work is arduous（费劲的）.

  Every time when I'm arriving here, we are donkey hunters. We have to fight a lot to maintain biodiversity（生物多样性） in this area, to maintain a wetland here, because it was a wetland. And we try to plant trees, thousands and thousands of trees on that hill, of garbage hill, in this place, and to keep animals and birds together in the best possible way. The sand at this garbage dump has traveled 200 kilometers. A desert is growing here that is already 800 square kilometers in size. The sand travels as far as Bucharest.

  Other European countries including Spain, Portugal（葡萄牙(欧洲西南部国家)） and Greece have a problem with desertification（（土壤）荒漠化） too. Octavian is determined to find a way to counteract（抵消） it. As a member of parliament for Romania's third strongest party, Save Romania Union, Octavian walks through the corridors of power. He has far more influence now as an elected official than he did when he was solely（单独地） an environmental activist（积极分子）. Today he's known far beyond Bucharest. Concerned citizens from all across the country send him photos and videos that show the full extent of desertification.

  This is the desert from the south of Romania. We saw this Sahara landscape. Actually, this year was a rainy one, but this is an ordinary landscape in the south of Romania. You see a lot of storm of wind, wind that is bringing a lot of air pollution across half of Romania. Octavian sets out to the two main sources of encroaching（(逐步或暗中)侵占） sand, to the region known as Little Wallachia. He has found people there who have taken up the fight to preserve nature.

  He plans to meet them and later promote their cause in the capital. Octavian is doing pioneering work in small communities in the countryside, ones that are often ignored by the authorities. I go exactly where the authorities and the state is stuck and is doing nothing. I started looking on the satellite maps to see the origin of the air pollution. And I saw those points on the map and I realized that I had to go there to find actually what happened in the field, to talk with the communities and with all the stakeholders. He doesn't benefit financially from this.

  On the contrary（相反）, it costs him money. Actually, I don't have financial support for what I'm doing. All the money comes from my pocket and my pocket is very small because I'm working（使工作） for the state. Actually, the state pays me with 200 euros per month as a city councilor. Today Octavian is pinning his hopes on a forest owner named Dan Popescu. Dan has deeper pockets.

  He earns his money by selling timber（木材）. But these trees have much more than just economic value for the entrepreneur. When I touch this tree, I feel connected to my father. He planted this forest and I continue planting for him, as he's no longer alive. 13,000 hectares（公顷） were felled in the 1970s for large-scale agricultural（ 农业的） projects. It was my father's dream to replant（再植） the forest.

  Not only do I want to fulfill my father's dream, I want to plant even more trees. This part of Volekia has always been threatened by drought due to the sandy soil. For centuries, large forests prevented it from becoming a desert. Dan Popescu wants to reverse（颠倒） the clear-cutting（剪枝） of the past. But climate change makes（使） the struggle to rectify（矫正） previous environmental missteps a race against time. Reforestation not only offers protection from further devastation（毁坏）, it is also a sustainable source of income.

  These workers earn 18 euros a day for their backbreaking（非常辛劳的） work. That might not sound like much, but it is enough to live on in this region. Many of them previously went abroad as harvest（收获） and seasonal workers, but now they are able to make a living here. Dan Popescu plans to plant 100,000 hectares, an area larger than Berlin, Germany. Dan Popescu needs someone with influence in the capital who will campaign for his reforestation plan and ensure the land is his to use. Octavian not only has good contacts and politics.

  As a former Greenpeace member, he is also well-connected in Europe's environmental protection movement. Former mayor, Alexandru Dunoyu, works on gaining the trust of small farmers and convincing them to give up their plots of land for the forestry project. It's no easy feat（技艺）. At the start, he had to push hard to win them over. We have 45 years of communism and cooperatives（合作社） behind us. The people were dispossessed of their land and only had it returned a few years ago.

  Then we came along and asked them to make their plots available again. In the first villages we approached, the people were very reluctant（不情愿的）. We returned with the mayor and officials from the Ministry（(政府的)部） of Agriculture to show them we meant what we said. We didn't want to take their fields away from them, we just wanted to work with them. Ten years later, we gave them wood to sell.