Jeff and I are just processing our visa applications now, and I am continuing to get in touch with people in China who we may want to connect with when we are in Beijing and possibly in Kunming. What I’m realizing is that things just take much longer than they should. no matter what. Maybe it’s me though.

I was thinking about a few things. First, Jay suggested to me tonight that I try to get in touch with some Olympic athletes in Beijing. For viewers to be able to connect with people in the film is important, and we may have this opportunity if we introduce athletes. And, at this point, I have been told, athletes are happy to get media coverage.

Another thing I was thinking about this morning is the way to affect change. In two situations, I’ve noticed change in a situation only from calling attention to it. An illustrative example: At the boat launch, I have been sitting for six years checking boats for invasive weeds–a fabulous job that I love dearly. In the beginning, boaters didn’t care much about the dangers of aquatic invasives, but just having someone stationed at the boat launch put invasives in the radar, and because boaters are more aware, our program is more effective. in theory.

Also, at my other fabulous job in The Office at Brandeis dispatching for the Escort Safety Service, callers used to–like four years ago–not show-up for their pick-ups fairly frequently. More recently, callers have been calling to cancel. This means that drivers are not waiting for pick-ups who do not plan to come, and service runs more efficiently. I think this change happened partly because the Coordinators started thanking callers for canceling their pick-ups. The change in behavior was affected by noticing and commenting on the positive behavior that the Coordinators wanted to increase. Making change in this way–by drawing attention to invasives by stationing lake hosts at ramps and through commenting on positive caller behavior–is similar to the way we want to affect the Chinese environment; we think that by highlighting all of the really positive things that China is doing, these systems will grow, and “choke out” the negative things that are happening to China’s environment–the things that are getting a lot of Western media attention.

I’ve been thinking more directly about the connections between this project and a card that my adviser wrote to me last year. He said that I had a deep caring that was tied to the people and things of this world–I’m probably paraphrasing badly, but that was the gist. At the time, I thought that I’m happy that this is the way I presented myself to him, but I didn’t feel that way about myself. But after thinking a little more about it (for like a year), I think he may be right. I’ve been thinking about where this caring for the people and things of this world comes from, and I think it is tied to being connected. Being connected is just another way to talk about love. In this case, the love connects a person to a place. But how to teach this connection to place? It doesn’t seem possible.

But then I was looking at the Tufts Nutrition Program magazine and there was a piece about gardens in public schools. My friend Gwen is getting her teaching degree in Scotland right now, and she wants to come backand plant a garden in our elementary school eventually. Having a garden in a school fosters awareness of where your food is coming from (potentially mitigating the environmental costs of transporting food all over the world), encourages a sense of community within the school, and also instills this connection to place that I think is so important.

Reading this book about sustainability, and much of it resonates with what I know of the environmental movement in China (all of which is subject to change from what we see when we make “Beijing’s Olympic-inspired Greening” in August).

From page 11, “The difference between many random initiatives that add up to something and a revolution that can transform society boils down to a shift in thinking.” But I will argue that “a shift in thinking” is a scape goat. I would argue that Senge’s “shift in thinking” is actually increased interconnections and information sharing. Maybe it is the framework that I’m looking at the problem from–my training is in International and Global Studies–but I think that increasing the flow of information and the strength of the interconnections between the information can cause everyone to grow in a stronger and healthier way.

Peter Senge goes on to list the basic premises for creating in a more sustainable way, and I think that we should focus on these premises when Jeff and I are shooting our film. The three core premises that Senge outlines are: seeing systems, collaborating across boundaries, and creating versus problem solving. I think I need to think more about Senge’s third premise more carefully. What does it mean to create versus to just problem solve? I can understand that problem solving doesn’t change the system that gave rise to these problems, and maybe that’s the point of creating instead. It’s an idea that I haven’t fully adopted yet, because maybe it’s the most difficult to implement.

Air quality in Beijing has improved for eight straight years. In order for the International Olympic Committee to award Beijing the Summer Olympics in 2008, Beijing had to show air pollution levels consistent with levels of Olympic cities in the past. I just read “China’s Silver Lining” by James Fallows in the Atlantic Monthly, and it was more positive about China’s environment than many other sources I have looked at.

His comments on air quality reminded me of something a source said to me when I was in China in 2005. I was in Tiger Leaping Gorge doing research about the environmental and societal effects of a dam that the government was planning to build on the Jisha Upper Yangtze River. I visited the gorge three times during my semester in Kunming. Sean Xia, a guesthouse owner in the gorge, said to me once, “Pollution everywhere. Have to take airplane to see blue sky. So that’s why this gorge you have to protect.”

Sean’s comment is also related to the tricky balance between the micro aspects and the more macro aspects of development. China’s air quality is a HUGE, macro issue, but Sean’s explicit connections between his own local environment and Chinese air quality is interesting and important. The way that Sean’s livelihood is directly connected to the environment through ecotourism reinforces Sean’s connection to his place, which further strengthens Sean’s connection to the environment.

I am hoping to further explore the way that a connection to place inspires conservation in the film that Jeff and I shoot in August. Also I would like to look more directly the micro and macro aspects of development, and try to make connections between the two.

29 May 2008

Tessa, Jeff,

Good news! You will get your grant. It’s not official yet, and you won’t receive a letter of approval for another few weeks, but you’re at or near the top of everyone’s list, and the rest is just standard protocol.

It’s a rare exception that we tell anyone in advance of such approval, though we have done it a couple of times before in special circumstances. In your case, we recognize your need to start making plans and committing yourselves to a course of action, so you are now free to go ahead.

Congratulations and best wishes,

John