Tessa Venell and Jeff Arak
Brandeis University

12 June 2008

Beijing’s Olympic-inspired Greening

This summer, from August 8-24, the Summer Olympics are to be hosted in Beijing, China; this is an established framework for positive connections between China and the rest of the world. China’s increased participation in the international community has opened the country up to international scrutiny concerning the way China’s recent rapid industrial growth has caused a casual disregard of the environment. A popular maxim was introduced in the 1980s that rationalized the environmental degradation that was taking place: “First development, then environment.” This continued to be the prevailing environmental ethos through the 1990s; just now sentiments are starting to change in China. China has taken the environmental scrutiny of the last decade as constructive criticism, and this year, the country is pursuing the first “Green Olympics.” The air quality in the city of Beijing has improved for eight straight years due to movement away from coal and natural gas. Beijing has introduced higher emissions standards and regulated traffic. Despite these recent steps in the correct direction, we worry about sustainability.

The Olympics have given China a reason to project an environmentally-friendly attitude. Proving to the world that the country is serious about improving its environment will attract positive attention, which can then lead to more international investment. My cameraman, Jeff Arak, and I will make a film in China that showcases the way that Beijing has scrambled to clean up for the Olympics. We will travel to Kunming, Yunnan Province to talk with some environmental contacts there and learn if the “greening” movement is catching on in other parts of the country. Our film will look at what has been done in Beijing and attempt to gauge its sustainability. By showing the positive steps that China is taking, we hope to affect international opinions and increase the likelihood that the “greening” will be sustainable.

We want to address the controversies surrounding the Games in Beijing upfront. Although no state will boycott the Olympics, groups are organizing independent coalitions against the games. Many have proposed boycotting the Beijing Olympics because of China’s refusal to acknowledge Tibet’s independence, its continued economic investment in Sudan and its military connections to Burma. More recently, child labor scandals have tarnished international opinions. However, we do not want these tensions to take the center of this project, as our film will show the positive steps that China has taken in the correct direction environmentally. We are confident that, given space to develop, China’s positive interactions with environment can overshadow the negative societal aspects of the country’s rapid development.

In pursuing the first “Green Olympics,” the Olympic Bid Committee aims first to promote environmental education, in order to increase awareness in the Chinese public of environmental issues. By introducing environmental education in all public schools, the Chinese government is introducing an attitude of environmentalism to the Chinese population. In 2003, the Ministry of Education passed the National Environmental Education Guidelines. These guidelines, once implemented, will help to increase environmental awareness by embedding it in the public education system. We will show the potential for environmental improvement in China by highlighting this generational discrepancy—young people in China do care about the environment.

The emphasis on environmental education will affect change gradually by informing the Chinese public about the potential effects of their everyday actions. By implementing environmental education guidelines, Chinese people are becoming more environmentally conscious. These subtle changes need to be highlighted for an audience in the West. Businesses and investors are wary of China because of the effect that development has had in China, and this film is an opportunity for us to show the positive steps that China is taking.

In Beijing during the Olympics, we will make a film about the efforts being made to increase environmental awareness, and we will try to determine whether or not these efforts are sustainable. We will gather information and package it to be readily accessible internationally to interested parties, including interviews with affected individuals and those doing environmental work in China. I am in contact with Fulbright grant recipients in Beijing who are doing sustainability work and with NGOs based in China. I am also in touch with Steve Blake and Zhu Li in The Nature Conservancy/Beijing office. Blake and Zhu are developing environmental education/promotion events in Beijing that coincide with the Olympics. Our work will connect affected parties in Beijing with the international environmental community by showcasing the positive work that China is doing. Because sustainability is so important to us, we will distinguish between efforts with potential for long-lasting effects and those without. After spending a semester in 2005 in Kunming, China, learning about the disconnection between the image that the country projects and the attitude of China’s citizenry, and I have a healthy skepticism about the sustainability of a Chinese “greening” movement.

My work leading up to this project in China has concerned resource management and environmental policy. I did research in the fall of 2005 about a proposed dam project on the Yangtze River upstream from the Three Gorges Dam. My work concerned the environmental ramifications of a dam project of that size, and the government’s failures in dealing with the people who would have been displaced by the project. I extrapolated from the dam project on the Yangtze River to China’s environmental policies in general as established in China’s history of environmental negligence. My coursework at Brandeis University is in International and Global Studies, with a concentration in Global Environmental Issues. I have years of experience interviewing for the print media, beginning in high school and continuing through involvement in college newspapers.

Jeff Arak has spent a substantial amount of time in Southern Mexico over the last four years working with indigenous media activists and filmmakers in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. His senior honors thesis was an hour-long documentary called “Those with Voice”, for which he received an endowed anthropology award and highest honors in both Anthropology and Latin American and Latino Studies. The film is now being distributed by Documentary Educational Resources, an educational non-profit. This past summer he organized three months of filmmaking workshops in a small indigenous town on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. His work continues to be guided by a desire to hear diverse voices of self-representation and to meld elements of collaborative ethnography and engaged filmmaking.

The Olympics will be held from August 8-24, 2008. We plan to be there for the entirety of the Games. We are in touch with China Homestay, an organization based in ChaoYang district in Beijing, about staying with a family in Beijing for the duration of our stay in China. We have also been in touch with a graduate student, who introduced himself as Ardor, who is studying politics at Beijing University. He is interested in working with us to translate for our film. Ardor is now translating a book about Chinese civil society. I am also in touch with The Nature Conservancy office in Beijing. I have been in touch with Zhu Li, who is heading up TNC’s Olympic projects with the Beijing team, Kristian Smith just left the United States to work with TNC in Beijing, and Steven Blake, also working in the TNC/Beijing office to improve conservation management at a nature reserve in Beijing. Blake is applying Western management practices to Chinese conservation.

By September 2008, we will have gathered information through observation of the environmental improvement work in Beijing and also through environmental non-governmental organizations in China and individuals doing work concerning China’s environmentalism. Jeff and I will package the environmental information we gather to be accessible to a Western audience, in the form of a short film (30-40 minutes). Our framework for doing so will emerge as we begin to observe and listen to stories in Beijing, although we have some initial ideas about how to organize the film. One idea is a generational study of how environmentalism is seen by three generations—our hypothesis is that the population’s perception of environmentalism has changed. Daniel Duffy, also a Class of 2007 graduate of Brandeis University, will produce the soundtrack for the film in Boston when I am back during the fall of 2008. Our film will be shown at environmental film festivals in the United States, at academic conferences and in classrooms as well as be available for individual viewing in order to raise general international awareness of China’s “greening”.