CNN carried news about Roots & Shoots in China that my coworker at the Jane Goodall Institute forwarded to me yesterday. Youth group promotes green shoots of change is about an eco-audit program.
Says a student at the Shanghai Financial Institute who is doing these eco-audits for Shanghai companies, “The reason why there is a lot of improvement needed in most offices is not because people deliberately waste energy or neglect environmental protection but indeed because that they lack opportunities to learn the right skills,” said Tsao. Chinese people are not inherently abusive to their environment–I’m going to risk sounding too paternalistic, and say that they just don’t know better. China’s relationship with the environment is a problem that is being solved. And we’re making a movie about it.
I don’t want to hear this crying about Chinese polluters from people in the United States. There are important issues to consider: “It is estimated that the average American still pollutes between five and six times more that the average Chinese person.” (BBC) There are tons of people in China who don’t pollute, and, living in the United States, it’s impossible not to pollute. I was having coffee today with Celia Hoffman, and we talked about keeping a daily journal of waste produced. This is an interesting idea, and I think this is a really important! It’s only a matter of being aware of how you’re affecting, and believing the Chinese kid in the environmental education program when he tells you one plastic bag matters when every person is thinking about their one plastic bag. This is the scale issue that Bill Moomaw tells us about in our film. It comes down to an issue of education, and China is doing work to solve this problem.
According to the BBC article “China building more power plants”, the policy of moving manufacturing out of the developed world into China and India has been a “climate disaster”. This article was published in the middle of June, take note. I think China’s environment has become a more contested issue since the Olympics in August. I think it’s important to note that, as Greenpeace director John Sauven, also quoted in this BBC article, said, “Responsibility for China’s soaring emissions lies note just in Beijing but also in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo.” It’s something important to think about, but it doesn’t get the same kind of attention, because, I guess, it’s not easy blame.
The rapid growth of the Chinese economy at the end of the 20th century has pushed China’s environment into the international spotlight—unsustainable use of the country’s resources and the waste that is generated through the use of those resources is affecting the world environment adversely. The rest of the world is becoming increasingly aware of the interconnected nature of ecological systems because of global climate change and its manifestations. The interconnectedness of the global ecological system is reinforced by interconnections that have been realized through technological advances—“The World is Flat” phenomenon—and also through the increased fluidity of the movement of goods, people, and ideas.
Continue reading Environmentalism in China [pdf]
The Hengduan Mountains are located in southwest China, where the Tibetan plateau meets the eastern Himalayan Mountain range. Bordered by Myanmar to the west and Yunnan Province, China to the south, the Hengduan Mountains are rich in species and ecosystem biodiversity. Three major rivers cut through these mountains, running within 85 kilometers (50 miles) of each other at some parts. UNESCO World Heritage Foundation has named this area the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Area for its stunning beauty and its biological and cultural importance. Conservation International, an international non-governmental organization, calls the Hengduan Mountains a biodiversity hotspot, one of 34 such places in the world.
Continue reading Conservation Biology In the Hengduan Mountains Sub-alpine Conifer Forests [pdf]
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.
