Chinese walker

In Beijing, the weather forecast says that more sandstorms are on the way. The capital was hit by four sandstorms in March, and even Shanghai was recently smothered by dust clouds from the north. Television reports now describe these events as “sandy weather”, rather than “sandstorms”. But whatever you call them, they are becoming ever more frequent visitors to Beijing in springtime.

While everyone is cursing the weather, I find myself worrying: how many tonnes of soil are being lost? And how long will it be before there is nowhere in China for plants to take root? Academics argue to what extent these sandstorms are “imports” from Mongolia and the former Soviet Republics, or whether they are the “domestic” products of the arid deserts and damaged grasslands of China’s west. But either way, there is no denying the degree of environmental degradation in western China over the last three decades. Regardless of whether the capital`s weather comes from beyond its borders, China needs to put measures in place to restore the grasslands and reduce the risk of sandstorms.

Sixty billion yuan has been invested in projects to control the sandstorms that are hitting northeastern China. Tree-planting projects have also been running for 30 years across north China. But why haven’t they worked? And more importantly – what will?

To answer this question, let`s first consider the difference between trees and grass. Ecologists look at vegetation in terms of its quantity and the area it covers. In China`s deserts and grasslands, grass is by far the most common form of vegetation, followed by scrub and then trees. On the Xilinguole grasslands, for example, trees account for only 0.87% of the total vegetation. The current strategy – to plant trees to help with problems caused by a lack of grass – contradicts principles of ecological management. In fact, our repeated calls for change have now resulted in more attention being placed on scrub. Scientists agree that millions of years ago these areas were once covered with trees, but this is the distant past – no amount of spending will bring ancient forests back. In fact, grass is much more effective than trees at stopping sandstorms, and it does not need to be planted. Simply protect it, and it will grow. Trees use up groundwater, while grass uses only rainwater. Grass is denser and fixes the soil in place; it also keeps the ground moist by retaining precipitation, meaning there is no dust to blow away – something trees cannot do.

Secondly, we need to consider where we are focusing our sandstorm-control efforts. Currently, our work ends up being concentrated in areas that are easy to reach and monitor: regions that are accessible by road. Lots of money has been spent, with some good results. But nobody asks questions about the very remote, ecologically-degraded areas that are less accessible, but have more responsibility for sandstorms. I once asked a local forestry official why they were not using aerial sowing techniques to rehabilitate these areas. His answer was simple: “Who would notice?” Current schemes are designed to be seen by the officials who approve their funding. Do not get too excited by those recovered grasslands and forests you see alongside the highways; they only cover 10% of the total affected area. The other 90% causes the continuing sandstorms.

Thirdly, we need to look at the relationship between man and nature. Arid and semi-arid areas can only support one or two people per square kilometre. In China, population density in these areas is over 10 people per square kilometre. The original inhabitants were nomadic, and would move in search of grass and water, giving the grasslands a chance to recover. But now they have settled, increasing the pressure on the environment – and inevitably damaging it. Measures are needed to move this scattered population into towns and cities; funds for ecological management should be used to this end.

Fourthly, we must reconsider the relationship between ecological management and poverty relief. Sandstorms are caused by the consumption of grass by livestock, by the clearing of grasslands for crops and by deforestation. At present, sandstorm-control programmes have little regard for the lives of local people. The money that is being spent brings them scant benefit, and only helps the people that receive the funding directly. My rough calculations show that spending on major sandstorm control projects amounts to around 326 yuan (US$42) per mu (666.67 square metres). In the south of Inner Mongolia that works out to almost 500,000 yuan (around US$64,705) per household. If as little as one-tenth of that figure was actually spent on getting the locals to give up their livestock and plant trees, there would be no danger of sandstorms. And the locals would still end up better off – at present, none of this funding reaches them, and most struggle to earn 10,000 yuan (US$1,294) per year. In one part of Inner Mongolia, a fortune has been spent on restoring the grasslands, but no one can come up with the 10,000 yuan needed to retain it.

Finally, we need to ask questions about the relationship between China`s east and west. At present, much of China’s livestock is in the west, in ecologically-vulnerable areas such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. Ideally, these animals would eat straw, which is a by-product of agriculture. But all of the straw is in the east, in provinces such as Shandong, Henan and Hebei, which have a far greater production capacity for animal fodder than the grasslands – 50 to 100 times greater, in fact. This holds back the development of livestock farming. Straw in the east is simply burnt off, while degraded ecosystems in the west struggle to support livestock. The largest source of income for the west is funding for reforestation and environmental protection projects, with highly marked-up animal products coming second. These products cost five to 10 times as much to produce than they would in agricultural areas with better conditions. China`s west should not develop its animal farming further, or sooner or later the grasslands will be grazed bare, leaving the rest of the country to pick up the bill for its recovery.

Can China stop the sandstorms? If we do not take heed, maybe not. Of course, it may not be too long before all the soil is blown away. That would put an end to the capital`s sandstorms, but it might also put an end to Beijing.

Jiang Gaoming is a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences` Institute of Botany. He is also vice secretary-general of the UNESCO China-MAB (Man and the Biosphere) Committee and a member of the UNESCO MAB Urban Group.

Homepage photo by Ben

Lamoko, 240 kilometres down the Maringa river, sits on the edge of a massive stretch of virgin rainforest in central Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On February 8, 2005, representatives of a major timber firm arrived to negotiate a contract with the traditional landowners.

Every year around this time, many cities and regions of China hold a tree-planting month. Employers in the cities often fund tree-planting outings for their staff. In counties, towns and villages, farmers are given support for tree-planting projects, which they hope will bring in some extra earnings. A renewed enthusiasm for greening the country seems to take hold of everyone.

The Chinese government has committed itself to achieving a target of 20% forest cover by 2010. And as a result, the State Forestry Administration has been promoting greater integration between forestry and the paper industry, as well as promoting tree-planting initiatives, especially of fast-growing, high-yield trees. However, just as these measures are being enthusiastically put into place, something very worrying is happening to China’s forests – they are becoming empty. So, how are these “empty forests” being created?

Golf courses

The health of an economy cannot be separated from that of its natural support systems. More than half the world`s people depend directly on croplands, rangelands, forests and fisheries for their livelihoods. Many more depend on forest products, leather goods, cotton and wool textiles, and food processing for their jobs.

A strategy for eradicating poverty will not succeed if an economy`s environmental support systems are collapsing. No matter how carefully crafted and well-implemented, a poverty-eradication programme will not succeed if croplands are eroding and harvests are shrinking, if water tables are falling and wells are going dry, if rangelands are turning to desert and livestock are dying, if fisheries are collapsing, if forests are shrinking, and if rising temperatures are scorching crops.

Restoring the earth will take an enormous international effort — one even larger and more demanding than the often-cited Marshall Plan that helped rebuild war-torn Europe. And such an initiative must be undertaken at wartime speed, lest environmental deterioration translates into economic decline, just as it did for earlier civilisations that violated nature`s thresholds and ignored its deadlines.

We can roughly estimate how much it will cost to reforest the earth, protect its topsoil, restore rangelands and fisheries, stabilise water tables and protect biological diversity. Where data and information are lacking, we can fill in with assumptions. The goal is not to have a set of precise numbers, but a set of reasonable estimates for an Earth-restoration budget.

In calculating the cost of reforestation, the focus is on developing countries, since the forested area is already expanding in the northern hemisphere`s industrial countries. We calculate that meeting the growing fuel-wood demand in these countries will require an estimated 55 million additional hectares of forested area.

Anchoring soils and restoring hydrological stability would require roughly another 100 million hectares located in thousands of watersheds in developing countries. Beyond this, an additional 30 million hectares may be needed to produce timber, paper and other forest products. Only a small share of this tree planting is likely to come from plantations. Much will be on the outskirts of villages, along field boundaries, roads, on small plots of marginal land, and on denuded hillsides.

The big success story in addressing deforestation is South Korea, which, over the last 40 years, has reforested its once denuded mountains and hills, using local labour. Other countries — such as China — have tried extensive reforestation, but mostly under more arid conditions and with much less success.

Turkey has an ambitious grassroots reforestation programme, as does Kenya, where women`s groups, led by Nobel peace prize winner, Wangari Maathai, have planted up to 30 million trees.

If seedlings cost US$40 (%26pound;19) per thousand, as the World Bank estimates, and if the typical planting rate is roughly 2,000 trees per hectare, then seedlings cost $80 per hectare. Labour costs for planting trees are high, but since much would consist of locally mobilised volunteers, we can estimate roughly $400 per hectare, including seedlings and labour. With 150 million hectares to be planted over the next decade, this will come to roughly 15 million hectares per year at $400 each, for a total annual expenditure of $6 billion.

Conserving the earth`s topsoil by reducing erosion to the rate of new soil formation or below, involves two principal steps. One is to retire the highly erodible land that cannot sustain cultivation — the estimated 10% of the world`s cropland that accounts for perhaps half of all erosion. For the United States, that has meant retiring 14 million hectares (nearly 35 million acres), at a cost of close to $50 per acre or $125 per hectare, for an annual cost approaching $2 billion.

The second initiative consists of adopting conservation practices on the remaining land that is subject to excessive erosion — that is, erosion that exceeds the natural rate of new soil formation. The initiative includes incentives to encourage farmers to adopt conservation practices, such as contour farming, strip cropping and, increasingly, minimum-till or no-till farming.

In expanding these estimates to cover the world, it is assumed that roughly 10% of cropland is highly erodible and should be planted to grass or trees before the topsoil is lost and it becomes barren land. In both the US and China, the two leading food-producing countries — which account for one-third of the world`s grain harvest — the official goal is to retire one-tenth of all cropland.

In Europe, it probably would be somewhat less than 10%, but in Africa and the Andean countries it could be substantially higher. For the world as a whole, converting 10% of cropland that is highly erodible to grass or trees seems a reasonable goal. Since this costs roughly $2 billion in the US — which represents one-eighth of the world`s cropland area — the total for the world would be roughly $16 billion a year.

Assuming that the need for erosion-control practices for the rest of the world is similar to that in the US, we again multiply the US expenditure by eight to get a total of $8 billion for the world as a whole. The two components together — $16 billion for retiring highly erodible land and $8 billion for adopting conservation practices — give an annual total for the world of $24 billion.

For cost data on rangeland protection and restoration, we turn to the United Nations plan of action to combat desertification. This plan, which focuses on the world`s dryland regions — containing nearly 90% of all rangeland — estimates that it would cost roughly $183 billion over a 20-year restoration period, or $9 billion per year. The key restoration measures include improved rangeland management, financial incentives to eliminate overstocking, and revegetation with appropriate rest periods, when grazing would be banned.

This is a costly undertaking, but every dollar invested in rangeland restoration yields a return of $2.50 in income from the increased productivity of the ecosystem. From a societal point of view, countries with large pastoral populations, where the rangeland deterioration is concentrated, are invariably among the poorest.

The alternative to action — ignoring the deterioration — brings not only a loss of land productivity, but, ultimately, a loss of livelihood and millions of refugees, some migrating to nearby cities and others moving to other countries.

The restoration of oceanic fisheries centres primarily on the establishment of a worldwide network of marine reserves, which would cover roughly 30% of the ocean`s surface. For this exercise, we use detailed calculations by the conservation biology group at Cambridge University. Their estimated range of expenditures centres on $13 billion per year.

For wildlife protection, the bill is higher. The World Parks Congress estimates that the annual shortfall in funding needed to manage and to protect existing areas designated as parks, comes to roughly $25 billion a year. Additional areas needed — including those encompassing the biologically diverse hotspots not yet included — would cost perhaps another $6 billion a year, giving a total of $31 billion.

There is one activity — stabilising water tables — where we do not have an estimate, only a guess. The key here is raising water productivity, and for this we have the experience gained, beginning 50 years ago when the world started to systematically raise land productivity.

The elements needed in a comparable water model are research to develop more water-efficient irrigation practices and technologies, the dissemination of these research findings to farmers, and economic incentives that encourage farmers to adopt and use these improved irrigation practices and technologies.

In some countries, the capital needed to fund a programme to raise water productivity can come from cancelling the subsidies that now often encourage the wasteful use of irrigation water. Sometimes, these are power subsidies, as they are in India; other times, they are subsidies that provide water at prices well below costs, as happens in the US. In terms of additional resources needed worldwide, including the economic incentives for farmers to use more water-efficient practices and technologies, we assume it will take additional expenditures of $10 billion.

So we estimate that restoring the earth will require additional expenditure of $93 billion per year. Many will ask if the world can afford this. But the only appropriate question is: can the world afford not to?

–

The global rush to switch from oil to energy derived from plants will drive deforestation, push small farmers off the land and lead to serious food shortages and increased poverty unless carefully managed, says the most comprehensive survey yet completed of energy crops.

The United Nations report, compiled by all 30 of the world organisation`s agencies, points to crops like palm oil, maize, sugar cane, soya and jatropha. Rich countries want to see these extensively grown for fuel as a way to reduce their own climate-changing emissions. Their production could help stabilise the price of oil, open up new markets and lead to higher commodity prices for the poor.

But the UN urges governments to beware their human and environmental impacts, some of which could have irreversible consequences.

Released on May 8, 2007, the report, which predicts winners and losers, will be studied carefully by the emerging multi-billion-dollar-a-year biofuel industry, which wants to provide as much as 25% of the world`s energy within 20 years.

Global production of energy crops is doubling every few years, and 17 countries have so far committed themselves to growing the crops on a large scale.

Last year more than a third of the entire maize crop in the United States went to ethanol for fuel, a 48% increase on 2005, and Brazil and China grew the crops on nearly 50 million acres of land. The European Union has said that 10% of all fuel must come from biofuels by 2020. Biofuels can be used in place of petrol (gasoline) and diesel fuel and can play a part in reducing emissions from transport.

On the positive side, the UN says that the crops have the potential to reduce and stabilise the price of oil, which could be very beneficial to poor countries. But it acknowledges that forests are already being felled to provide the land to grow vast plantations of palm oil trees. Environment groups argue strongly that this is catastrophic for the climate, and potentially devastating for forest animals like orang-utans in Indonesia.

The UN warns: “Where crops are grown for energy purposes, the use of large-scale cropping could lead to significant biodiversity loss, soil erosion and nutrient leaching. Even varied crops could have negative impacts if they replace wild forests or grasslands.”

But the survey`s findings are mixed on whether the crops will benefit or penalise poor countries, where most of the crops are expected to be grown in future. One school of thought argues that they will take the best land, which will increase global food prices. This could benefit some farmers but penalise others and also increase the cost of emergency food aid.

“Expanded production [of biofuel crops] adds uncertainty. It could also increase the volatility of food prices with negative food security implications”, says the report, which was complied by UN-Energy.

“The benefits to farmers are not assured, and may come with increased costs. [Growing biofuel crops] can be especially harmful to farmers who do not own their own land, and to the rural and urban poor who are net buyers of food, as they could suffer from even greater pressure on already limited financial resources.

“At their worst, biofuel programmes can also result in a concentration of ownership that could drive the world`s poorest farmers off their land and into deeper poverty,” it says.

According to the report, the crops could transform the rural economy of rich and poor countries, attracting major new players and capital, but potentially leading to problems. “Large investments are already signalling the emergence of a new bio-economy, pointing to the possibility that still larger companies will enter the rural economy, putting the squeeze on farmers by controlling the price paid to producers and owning the rest of the value train,” it says.

The report also says the crops are not guaranteed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Producing and using biofuels results in some reductions in emissions compared to petroleum fuels, it says, but this is provided there is no clearing of forest or peat that store centuries of carbon.

“More and more people are realising that there are serious environmental and food security issues involved in biofuels. Climate change is the most serious issue, but you cannot fight climate change by large-scale deforestation,” said Jan van Aken, of Greenpeace International in Amsterdam.

“Bioenergy provides us with an extraordinary opportunity to address climate change, energy security and rural development. [But] investments need to be planned carefully to avoid generating new environmental and social problems,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Plant power

Gold first lured outsiders to claim the rainforests. Later, medicines became the prize, then land for ranching cattle, soya and, more recently, biofuels. Now a different part of the Amazon is ours to buy: its massive stocks of carbon. A new scheme launched in the United Kingdom this month aims to exploit the surge in interest in saving trees to save the planet, and offers individuals the chance to pay to protect swaths of rainforest.

Called Cool Earth — and set up by the Swedish entrepreneur Johan Eliasch and the British member of parliament Frank Field — the scheme says it will “price deforestation out of the market” by securing forest in local trusts, and watching it “around the clock to keep the carbon where it belongs”.

It might sound familiar; schemes to buy up and protect the rainforests have been around since campaigns to highlight their plight peaked in the 1980s. But climate change has brought those concerns into new focus, and the organisers of Cool Earth hope to capitalise on the recent boom in ethical consumerism, carbon labels and offsetting services.

The problem is clear. Deforestation releases massive amounts of carbon. The recent Stern review (for the UK government) into the economics of climate change said greenhouse gas released from the 150,000 square kilometres of tropical forest destroyed each year now accounts for 18% of global emissions — more than from any single nation.

Conversely, this makes tackling deforestation a cheap way of fighting global warming. A recent report from the international consultancy firm McKinsey identified forest conservation as the “single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon”. And the most recent report from the UN`s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that “forest-related mitigation activities can considerably reduce emissions from sources, and increase CO2 removals by sinks, at low costs.”

Each square acre of Amazon rainforest absorbs and stores up some 260 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2). To protect it, Cool Earth will charge %26pound;70 (US $140) per square acre (0.836 square metre), which works out as 27 pence (54 US cents) a tonne. As far as saving carbon goes, that is at the very cheap end of the scale. Offset companies, such as Climate Care, will typically charge %26pound;7.50 (US $15) per tonne of CO2.

Cool Earth operates as a charity and denies it is in the offset business (although its website offers companies the chance to go “carbon neutral”). “We are not offering an offset or any guilt alleviation mechanism,” says Matthew Owen, a spokesman for Cool Earth. “If people want to use Cool Earth as one, there is not much we can do, since we think it`s important to advertise how much CO2 an acre stores.” Field calls Cool Earth`s work “offsetting plus”.

So who is buying? So far, outgoing British prime minister Tony Blair, magazine editor Ian Hislop, rock star Jarvis Cocker and Mark Ellingham, founder of the Rough Guides series of travel books, number among supporters. Donors are almost entirely individuals, with donations ranging from %26pound;5 to %26pound;5,000, says Owen. The travel agency First Choice says it is planning a large investment. Field talks of getting philanthropists to unite to buy land tactically, so that “buck for buck [dollar for dollar], you`re making a bigger impact”.

Others have tried before to sell the British public shares in the rainforest. The World Land Trust has bought 142,000 hectares (350,000 acres) of endangered habitats with individual donations since 1989. RainforestForever.org sells “tree kits”, the deluxe editions complete with a framed certificate of ownership. But certificates are seldom guarantees against chainsaws. WWF`s figures for land ownership in the Brazilian Amazon show 35% to be “public or private lands in dispute”, which, they say, shows “why any initiatives to encourage land purchase as a strategy for conservation are likely to be limited”. Cool Earth says it will place microchips in protected trees and display the location of preserved areas on the Internet.

Perhaps more worrisome to potential investors is the sense that Cool Earth is taking land from native Brazilians. Eliasch was accused of “green colonialism” in 2006 when he bought up a piece of rainforest the size of Greater London to protect it, forcing the closure of a sawmill and putting 1,000 people out of work.

He says: “You either keep the forest standing, which takes jobs away from indigenous people who need to feed themselves, or you cut down the trees, which affects the climate. In the long term, you have to protect the forest.”

Contrary to such criticisms, says Field, Cool Earth`s policy aim is to “disadvantage the west”, forcing polluting nations to compensate rainforest states for the ecological services they perform. The resultant source of income has “huge potential” which, he says, “will begin to make overseas aid redundant”.

The US-based Rainforest Action Network discourages direct purchase of tropical forests, as “most %26lsquo;buy-an-acre` programmes ignore the fact that there are people who live in and depend upon the rainforest”. Cool Earth insists it works in a different way, by leasing land from the Brazilian government. It says this will ensure “full access for local people to protected areas for rubber tapping, nut and fruit extraction and other traditional trades”.

Whether or not Cool Earth succeeds in its ambition to price deforestation out of the market, the idea of paying countries such as Brazil not to chop down their forests is gaining momentum. Negotiations continue on how rainforest nations could be compensated for such “avoided deforestation” in a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, and deforestation will be a key issue on the agenda at the United Nations climate talks in Bali in December.

British chancellor of the exchequer – and incoming prime minister — Gordon Brown announced last autumn that the UK would work with rainforest countries to “explore ways of mobilising international resources to assist in sustainable forestry management”. In this year`s national budget he proposed an “environmental transformation fund”, to deliver %26pound;50 million (US $100 million) to protect the Congo Basin forest.

Field claims that while these initiatives will take time to get off the ground, schemes such as Cool Earth can act immediately. “Acting in consort takes time,” he says. “And the one commodity the world no longer has is time.”

Perched on a mountain rising on the western side of the Nu River, Xiao Chala is in some ways a typical village, in one of the most remote and impoverished parts of southwest China’s Yunnan province. The village of 142 people largely relies on subsistence farming, although there is growing participation in the cash-based economy, and as in much of the country, traditional culture is being eroded by the impacts of media and education.

Its population is mostly Dulong, one of the smallest official ethnic minority groups in China (7,426 according to the 2000 census). The villagers drink from fresh mountain streams and breathe clean air. Close to a third of those in Xiao Chala are Protestant Christians who attend services at the village church.

Xiao Chala`s future is an open question, but it has been spared the fate of some villages in the region, which were entirely displaced by development projects and reforestation plans. Nonetheless, what until recently had been a process of growth driven locally by local needs, is now treated as an international issue, in which various levels of government, NGOs, and the tourism industry all claim a stake.

Living on the land

You don`t stumble upon Xiao Chala. The breathtaking gorge along the Nu River`s upper reaches, which locals claim as the world`s second largest (after Arizona`s Grand Canyon), is traced by this rural region`s only paved road, running along a sensitive border region with Myanmar.

From the road, a few hours` walk up a steep bridle path brings you to the first signs of settlement, but it is difficult to say when you`ve actually reached the “village”. Xiao Chala is, in reality, a scattering of homes and fields — some of which are separated from each other by as much as a rugged half-hour walk.

The community sprawls across the mountain; it has evolved without a central focus and without any planning authority. Speak to a Xiao Chala old-timer like Jincai and they will say the community dates to 1953 or 1954, when three families migrated here from the township of Kongdang in the neighbouring Dulong River Valley.

The reason for the move was environmental: devastating floods drove the families in search of a mountain home. With the arrival of other settlers and a birthrate subject to looser restrictions than the Han majority, the population has surged. As a result, says the village head (or cunzhang) with a laugh, the mountain almost feels crowded now.

Nonetheless, almost every household (of which there are now 39) inhabits at least two or three wooden buildings with adjacent fields, and new structures are easily built with pine logs and slate roofing, both found on the mountain itself. A kitchen building centred on a fire pit is where the family gathers, while separate structures, raised slightly from the ground and reached by a ladder, serve for bedrooms. Chicken coops and pig pens are part of the ensemble, with animals ever-present. However, trash is simply left where it is, or thrown haphazardly onto a pile.

Going hi-tech, just a bit

Telephone lines have climbed their way up to the village for a number of years now, though many families had their lines cut for non-payment of bills. More unusual for a mountain village, is the presence of a light-bulb in many rooms, and a TV often placed just opposite the fire pit.

The village`s vice village chief (or fucunzhang), Ahua, says proudly that his was the first home in the village to get electricity, but there still is not enough to run the lights and enjoy CCTV (China’s state television network) at the same time. For all of Beijing’s plans for rural electrification, and the building of dams to serve that need, Xiao Chala`s power is home-grown.

The power of the Nu River, surging just below, may in the next decade be used to support 13 huge hydroelectric dams, not to mention smaller power stations on its tributaries. But Xiao Chala harnessed the power of a swift mountain stream five years ago; the village gets its power from a basic micro-hydroelectric project that the villagers devised themselves. Another stream powers the village`s communal water-wheel.

Most of the area inhabited by the Dulong people, in the valleys of both the Nu River and Dulong River, is now a national park, with restrictions on development. Beijing`s policy of “stopping farming to let the forest return” was intended to prevent the return of disastrous floods in China`s east, which have been blamed on deforestation upstream.

Forests and opportunities

In the Dulong River Valley, where most Dulong live, the reforestation policy launched in 2003 aimed at 14,000 mu (9.3 square kilometres), when fewer than 15,000 mu (10 square kilometres) were under cultivation. Although farmers are, in effect, paid not to farm (originally 50 yuan for each mu that is reforested), the traditional practice of slash-and-burn agriculture has been called to a halt, and hunting and logging have also been curtailed.

In Xiao Chala, the restrictions seem to be grudgingly accepted. Some of the current terraced agriculture can continue, but is essentially limited to corn, rice, and a few other vegetables. During a recent visit, I found that middle-aged villagers were at home tilling the land, while most young men were on an extended trip in the higher mountains to collect medicinal herbs (such as coptis and fritillary) and sell them in Bingzhongluo, the nearest town.

Supporting government restrictions, but with priorities of their own, are international development agencies, particularly the World Bank and The Nature Conservancy. Since 2000, Shuangla, on the road below Xiao Chala, has been part of a major Global Environmental Facility Trust Fund project to develop a sustainable forestry in southern China.

The Nature Conservancy started a long-term project in the area “to protect this healthy and incredibly valuable ecosystem before it is too late,” focusing particularly on developing reserve management with local authorities. In both cases, communities like Xiao Chala are being asked to rethink how they use their land.

With agriculture, logging, and hunting discouraged or banned outright, villagers seem to be pondering their options. In addition to collecting medicinal herbs (which has a long history in the region), some families have acquired cows to protect their savings. One family in Xiao Chala is making a go of raising fish in a small pond. Playing the China Welfare Lottery (China’s national lottery) is tremendously popular too.

For Ana, 25, one of the few villagers to have entered university, the answer is to work in a government bureau in Gongshan, the county capital. She said many of the villagers who receive secondary education will also choose to work and live outside Xiao Chala.

And for those like Andu, 24, who has only three years of primary-school education, finding part-time work away from the village is increasingly important. He had recently returned from 7 months doing road construction across the border in Myanmar. Work in eco-tourism, which is slowly making its way to Bingzhongluo, still seems a remote prospect at present.

A village of only 142 inhabitants can hardly represent all of the varied environmental challenges faced by rural China, but it makes for an interesting point of departure. Xiao Chala feels in some ways like a world unto itself, a quiet vantage point for watching the development of the valley below. But at the same time, villagers increasingly feel their dependence on that world below, and its relentless economic and environmental pressures.

Ross Perlin is completing an MA at London`s School of Oriental and African Studies, focused on endangered language preservation in western China. He has written on language and the environment in China and Central Asia.

What has the welfare of a remote, dirt-poor hamlet in deepest Borneo got to do with global warming? There is an important connection and it goes like this.

Europe needs to lessen its dependence on fossil fuels in order to reduce carbon emissions. The European Union’s target, set in March 2007, is to replace at least 10% of its transport fossil fuel with biofuels by 2020.

Prices for palm oil have risen sharply since early 2006 largely because of increased demand for food and other products in the booming economies of China and India, but to a significant degree due to the expectation of growing European demand.

Indonesia has embarked on a headlong rush to grow more palm oil. It is set to overtake Malaysia in 2007 and become the world’s largest producer. The two countries aim to supply 20% of Europe’s biofuels by 2009.

One of the best places to grow palm oil is on cleared land that was previously virgin rainforest. West Kalimantan is one such place. It is situated in the Indonesian part of Borneo, and is one of the main boom areas for palm oil. So are international climate- change solutions helping the local indigenous populations there? Or could they if conditions were right?

Masters no more

To the environmentally conscious, recent comments by China’s leaders are encouraging.

At the recent seventeenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), CPC Central Committee general secretary, Hu Jintao, called on the Party to build an “ecological civilisation” while reiterating the “scientific outlook on development”, which features putting people first and ensuring comprehensive, harmonious and sustainable development.

At the fifteenth Economic Leaders’ Informal Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Sydney, Australia, in September, Hu, in his capacity as president of China, put forward an initiative to set up an Asia-Pacific Network on Forest Rehabilitation and Sustainable Management in order to better tackle global problems presented by climate change.

Prior to this proposal, China’s State Forestry Administration and the Ministry of Commerce jointly released in August the Guidelines for Sustainable Forestry Management by Chinese Enterprises Operating Overseas.

According to Chinese officials, this was the first document in the world aimed at regulating the overseas operations of a country’s businesses with regard to sustainable development.

Collectively, these developments mean Chinese enterprises going overseas for new investment opportunities must be more socially responsible and conscious of their impact on the environment. More than that, they mark a departure from the conventional approach to globalisation, in which advanced industries often enrich themselves at the expense of other nations’ environments.

The scientific outlook on development and the forestry guidelines push Chinese enterprises to do more than just abide by the law in their host countries. They must also contribute to local efforts to manage and preserve the environment and develop communities even if these are not provided for by local legislation.

According to the guidelines, a Chinese enterprise that has timber operations overseas must conduct an environmental impact assessment of its project before it enters the host country. It must also make sure its business will not create serious environmental problems.

To hedge against possible hazardous impacts on local people, the enterprise should also set aside funds for remedies or ecological compensation to help local residents increase incomes and engage in new environmentally friendly operations.

This represents a win-win model for all parties – Chinese enterprises, host countries and local communities. It requires managers to look beyond short-term profits. The concept of ecological civilisation and the scientific outlook on development will no doubt facilitate such a vision.

The effort to instill this vision in Chinese enterprises reflects China’s commitment to being a responsible power.

As Jin Jiaman, executive director of the Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute (GEI), put it: “To be a responsible power is not a mission of the government alone. Every enterprise, every civil organisation and every member of society has a share in it.”

A non-governmental organisation providing market-based solutions to environmental problems, GEI was a key presence behind the scenes of the drafting of the overseas forestry management guidelines and is working with several governmental and financing institutions to thrash out some overall guidelines balancing the economic and ecological impacts of Chinese enterprises operating overseas.

The effort to push Chinese enterprises to take the spirit of China’s green policies with them overseas represents a new approach to globalisation.

People have seen China’s increasing imports of raw materials like timber, ore and oil; and some people are anxious about its impact on the environments of exporting countries.

Yet this big importer of these raw materials may not necessarily be the exclusive consumer of them. Because China is something of a factory for the world, a big proportion of the imported raw materials are transformed into products that are sent to industrialised countries in Europe and America.

In other words, many end consumers of the raw materials are not in China. Yet China takes the heat for using resources at the expense of other countries’ environments.

China cannot simply opt to dump “dirty” industries and become “cleaner”, as many of its predecessors have done. In globalisation, there are always late-comers who step in to fill vacancies once the early birds leave the woods for a better habitat.

If China simply dumps its polluting industries without changing its pattern of development, other developing countries will easily take over.

That is why we applaud the concept of an ecological civilisation and the idea of having green policies go overseas together with Chinese enterprises. This arrangement could be the beginning of a new mode of globalisation: green globalisation.

The model of globalisation mobilized by the global capital has been too “brown” and benefited too few. It has tarnished many developing countries’ air, water and land and deprived many people of their health.

Based on the concepts of an ecological civilisation and the scientific outlook on development, green globalisation is sure to become a popular way to make this planet a better place to live on for everyone.

It may require time and difficult decisions to achieve the goals of green globalisation. But we have the conceptual framework, determination and measures like the forestry guidelines on our side.

Xiong Lei is a council member of China Society for Human Rights Studies.

This article is reprinted with permission from China Daily

Homepage photo by Steve Webel

In the months leading up to the just-completed United Nations-led climate talks in Indonesia, a great deal of pressure built up for the meeting to produce a definitive roadmap by 2009 for an international climate-change framework after the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. Numerous high-level global events and conferences, a flood of media coverage and a deluge of analysis from NGOs, business and government bodies were topped off with the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. With this increased publicity generating sky-high expectations among many, a “post-Bali” let-down was almost inevitable, with negotiators, scientists, journalists and the public disappointed with its less-than-perfect results.

On the ground at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties, delegates worked feverishly into the night. As negotiations took an acrimonious turn on the last day, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon made a return visit to ensure the conference was not a “failure”. There was strong disagreement between the EU and US over plans for emissions reduction targets. The real problem, however, was that mandatory targets were never actually on the table at Bali – too many countries were simply unready for them. In the end, delegates agreed to consider making “measurable, reportable and verifiable nationally appropriate mitigation actions” a part of their post-2012 mitigation strategy.

However, the four building blocks of a post-2012 framework%26mdash;adaptation, mitigation, technology, and financing%26mdash;did make progress in Bali. There was increased attention on adaptation and forestry in particular, which resulted in some useful measures. The discussion moved forward on technology transfer and financing mechanisms, though not as far as many had hoped. Delegates also made progress on mitigation measures, with global sectoral emissions targets for certain industries now on the table for further discussion.

The future of Asia

These outcomes are important for Asia. Deforestation and adaptation are two of its most important issues, but up to this point in the Kyoto process they had taken a backseat to mitigation. Moreover, China and India, which the developed world have repeatedly called on to make a meaningful commitment in the second period of the Kyoto Protocol, showed that they are taking the issue more seriously. China and India presented their national climate-change strategies. Both countries have also created high-level cross-ministerial national bodies to address global warming and are beginning to implement policy measures by setting targets on renewables and energy intensity.

However, China and India are unready to make commitments to match developed countries. Throughout the conference they emphasised the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”%26mdash;that those with greater historical responsibility and greater capacity should do more to address climate change%26mdash;as well as the need for a flexible future framework that includes deep emissions cuts and technology transfer from major emitters. Many voices in the west are still calling for a treaty with strong enforcement mechanisms and mandatory commitments%26mdash;although not necessarily economy-wide targets%26mdash;for all major emitters. The precise wording of the Bali decision leaves the debate open on this point, and will no doubt be a point of contention over the next two years.

Developing countries in Asia still resist binding targets because they fear their economic growth will suffer. Most Asian countries are only just beginning to understand the risks of climate change and are in the early stages of creating national strategies. The difficulty of forecasting economic growth patterns in the region also makes setting accurate long-term emissions reduction targets very challenging. But despite this, huge projected increases in Asian emissions, the extreme vulnerability of countries in the region and recent scientific reports showing the increased potential for catastrophic impacts mean it is necessary to produce meaningful results for a second commitment period.

Climate mechanisms

Climate change may not be a high priority issue for many Asian countries, but sustainable development policies already have a broad appeal. Reforming the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), under which developed countries with greenhouse-gas reduction commitments invest in projects to reduce emissions in developing countries, could be a step in the right direction. A Sustainable Development Policies and Measures (SD-PAMs) approach would see developing countries pledging specific policy commitments that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while benefiting economic growth. These voluntary commitments could then generate Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs), which can be traded. The wording of the Bali roadmap supports this approach, calling for mitigation measures from developing countries to be “in the context of sustainable development”. Furthermore, CERs from less desirable, much-criticised projects, such as those involving hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), could be “discounted” from the mechanism. In these ways, the CDM could be re-engineered to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions, rather than shift them from the industrialised countries to the developing world.

Many Asian countries plan to address energy security concerns by relying on extensive domestic resources of coal. However, domestic policies in China and India demonstrate there is increasing political support for renewable energy in Asia. The Bali roadmap calls on developed countries to assist developing countries in mitigation efforts of this nature with technology transfer and financing. Working out the specifics of this support will be one of the main issues to discuss over the next two years. Stepping up current co-operation initiatives, dramatically increasing research-and-development funding for projects such as carbon capture and storage, and lowering trade barriers for environmental technologies are all vital options for decoupling development from emissions growth and improving energy security. It will also be useful to set-up an international “clearing house” of technologies to fight climate change. This will help decision-makers understand and choose the appropriate technologies for national mitigation plans – a complex area often requiring expert assistance.

“Menu” of options

Many countries around the world, including those in Asia, are not ready to take on binding targets. However, many of these nations are acknowledging the risk of climate change and realising they should accept some form of targets. The Bali roadmap reflects this reality. The important task is now to ensure there is a range of meaningful options for developing countries to adopt. It is critical that developing countries also prepare for increasing future responsibility by building domestic capacity and institutions for effective national planning, implementation, monitoring and enforcement of climate-change policy.

The post-2012 framework can promote this acceptance of obligations and domestic capacity building with two main strategies: firstly, by aligning sustainable development goals with greenhouse-gas reduction through a reformed CDM that has a “menu” of options, including adaptation policy, forest-management policy and “discounted” CERs; secondly, by addressing energy-security concerns with dramatically increased technology transfer and co-operation. Developed countries should match this increase in responsibility by reducing their emissions more aggressively, building co-ordinated and multi-dimensional governance frameworks, increasing collaboration on research, encouraging investment in alternative energy, continuing to refine and expand carbon markets and following through with the technology transfer and financing for developed countries urged in the Bali roadmap.