Chinese walker

In 1995, the World Bank asked John D. Liu to record the early stages of its Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project for a film called Investing in People. That film was about initiatives that were changing the bank`s focus from large infrastructural projects to ones in which poor people living in remote parts of the world would directly benefit.

Over the following decade, Liu led the Environment Education Media Project on numerous other visits to the Loess Plateau, which is considered the cradle of Chinese civilisation. Approximately the size of France, the plateau is 640,000 kilometers square, situated in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River, and stretching over parts of seven provinces. Its name comes from the powdery, mineral-rich, windborne loess soil that characterises the area – and which gave the Yellow River its name.

Settled agriculture is thought to have emerged 9,500 to 10,000 years ago on the Loess Plateau. Throughout the plateau`s long and complex history, human activity produced a great civilisation, while also ecologically destroying the region. It came to be known as the most eroded place on earth. Silt raised the riverbed, making it more prone to flooding – flooding that often preceded drought and famine. The Yellow River, which has flooded more than 1,500 times in recorded history, became known as “China`s Sorrow”. But each time it flooded, the people rebuilt.

The ecological devastation of the region took place over generations with the cutting of forests and removal of vegetation cover, leading to soil erosion, disruption of the water cycle and the disappearance of wild plants and animals. A cycle of poverty and environmental destruction ensued, a cycle that fed on itself.

In the 1990s, the Chinese government decided to restore what took 10,000 years to destroy. Thanks to a complex programme of watershed management – formulated by the World Bank in cooperation with the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources and the local people — an astounding transformation has occurred within just 10 years. Ecological improvements have shown tremendous promise, and local people`s income and quality of life have improved.

Planting on steep slopes has been banned, as has tree-cutting and grazing of goats and sheep. Farmers are responsible for maintaining tree-planting areas and terraced fields, to reduce erosion. Sand dunes have been stabilised, and grasses and bushes are taking hold again. Small dams are helping to restore productive croplands in eroded gullies, and perennial crops (such as orchard fruits) are reducing the disruption of soil cover and helping to diversify local economies.

The successful start to the ambitious rehabilitation of the Loess Plateau has significant implications for other places on earth which suffer from large-scale environmental degradation as a result of human impact, and can serve as model for those regions.

The plateau`s tale, Liu believes, provides the kind of critical knowledge the world needs now if it is to envision a sustainable future for a human race living in harmony and sharing the planet`s resources. With support from several development agencies, he has collected more than 100 hours of videotape of the region, its people and the ongoing rehabilitation effort. A fraction of those tapes will make up his latest film project, China`s Sorrow, Earth`s Hope.

The Author: Maryann Bird is a London-based journalist

Still image taken from John D. Liu’s film China`s Sorrow, Earth`s Hope

“Flooding has brought the most destruction to Fujian” over recent years, says deputy professor of ecology at Xiamen University Li Zhenji, but “the people can`t understand [why].”

There is no confusion that natural disasters can be deadly. Floods, droughts and (to a lesser extent) earthquakes cost countless lives and billions of yuan each year. Li recalls the 1998 flooding in Fujian as “the worst flood for 200 years.” The question which locals do not understand, rather, is why forests are not doing the job they were designed to do.

Ordinarily, forests shelter the earth`s soil from excess moisture, helping to avert natural disasters such as flooding and landslides and Fujian has the highest rate of forest coverage in China – more than 60%. “So why do we suffer these floods?” asks Li rhetorically.

In fact, Fujian`s status as China`s most forested province is misleading. “Since 1949 there have been three major changes in vegetation,” explains Li. “The last in the 1980s occurred when many mountain areas became orchards or bamboo forests – natural forests faced continued destruction” he continues, adding that Jian`nou City, in the north of Fujian, converted all of the natural forest which covered 10% of its land.

Bamboo forest, photo by Aaron Corey

Reforestation projects during the 1990s improved the overall situation, and by 1995 forestry reserves had increased slightly. But the replacement of older self-sustaining, native species trees with young fast-growing plantations is not like-for-like.

“The root system of a pure forest – fir, pine and eucalyptus – is much less able to retain soil than that of a natural forest and this can give rise to disasters such as landslides,” says Li, adding that “The water retention ability and biodiversity of pure forests are [also] much lower than that of natural forests [which historically covered large swathes of Fujian.]”

Research conducted by fellow colleagues at the Faculty of Ecology which studies the effect of natural forests on soil fertility, soil and water retention in the Min River Basin is unequivocal in its findings. A natural forest, research shows, can retain rainfall of up to 200mm in a single downpour and only begins to fail at 400mm. In a pure forest or orchard, floods can occur even if there is only 200mm of rain. The upshot is that the same amount of rain will produce much greater risk. Even an average downpour can result in flooded crops, it concludes.

“So why do we suffer these floods?” asks Li, repeating his earlier question – “Because of the destruction of natural forests” comes his reply.

Disaster prevention means protecting forests

Protection, however, offers salvation. “Without human interference this [ecological] weakness remains dormant,” concludes the above study. Li also claims that natural forests, if restored, would reduce the economic losses from flooding and droughts by 50% to 80%, bringing benefits worth hundreds of billions of yuan.

“The efforts spent on disaster relief would be better used for disaster prevention – and the best method of disaster prevention is to increase protection for natural forests and severely punish those who destroy them,” insists Li. Protection of natural forests that contain multiple species, he promises, would also preserve biodiversity, help to prevent disease (by diverting bugs away from local crops) and reduce local poverty, which has been hit by soil erosion associated with deforestation.

But “If fast-growing forests continue to replace natural ones, these natural disasters will worsen,” warns Li.

Forestry authorities are an accomplice in environmental destruction

Local forestry bureau chief Hong Shenghe confirms that forestry officials are on the frontline in protection efforts and provides reassurances that “Without our approval, nobody can touch a single tree.” But the commitment of the bureau has been directly challenged by villagers in Fuzhu Village who allege that regulations have been routinely broken to accommodate local businesses such as Fangte, a local forestry company accused of felling natural forests in cahoots with local officials.

“Fangte were employing people to fell trees before they had permission” according to villagers. Fires, they say, were lit (in contravention of bureau rules) to help clear the natural forest behind Fuzhu, bogus paperwork passed onto Fangte by forestry officials to cover the incident up. “They even said it was us villagers who did it [set the fires],” add locals.

Villagers eventually turned to forestry police, but were met by unyielding officials who denied any knowledge of the forest, which brings back vivid memories for the locals. “The trunks were that wide you couldn`t wrap your arms around them. It was dark in there, and steep. We never dared to go in, even to cut firewood,” they recall.

But academics at Xiamen University including Li Zhenji acknowledge that natural forests are indeed being secretly replaced, with forestry firms using underhand methods to obtain the necessary legal documents and that southern China now faces an eco-crisis. If the actions of these self-interested officials are not controlled, says Li, the forestry authorities will not only fail to protect these natural resources, they will actually have the opposite effect – becoming an accomplice to the destruction of the environment.

Meanwhile, Hong Shenghe reports that reforms which address the issue of forestry rights are now on trial in Fujian and meet with his own personal approval, but warns that “the principle of %26lsquo;who plants, profits` is more suited to the less fertile and less forested north, where it will encourage locals to improve the environment. In the south where natural forests are abundant, it may at times have the opposite effect.”

A better role for the forestry bureau, Hong believes, is in the provision of guidance and advice to locals, who currently hold land rights. “Forestry officials don`t just need to protect the natural resources, in the future they also need to offer good guidance to local residents,” he says, adding that “If we don`t, they [locals] will transform their natural forests to artificial pure forests, or transfer the land to commercial forestry firms, with the same dangerous consequences.” But villagers may ask: what use is such a reform when there are so many bad eggs on the inside?

The author: Yongfeng Feng is an award-winning journalist with the Guangming Daily.

Homepage photo by Matthew J. Stinson

Climate change has been a foreign-policy issue since well before the Kyoto Protocol, but it is only recently that the international community has acknowledged that it also is a security issue. Now, it is making up for lost time. In March and April 2007 alone:

%26bull; The United Nations Security Council debated “climate change”;

%26bull; Legislation was introduced in the United States asking for a National Intelligence Estimate on the security implications of “global warming”;

%26bull; An influential panel of retired US generals and admirals released a study entitled National Security and the Threat of Climate Change. Among their findings: “Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America`s national security %26hellip; Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world %26hellip; Projected climate change will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world.”

Governments realise that climate change will increasingly become a security problem. There is a growing understanding that, among other things, the international legal system, access to essential resources and the integrity of critical infrastructure are all at risk. But the discussion has confused so many different topics that many of the suggested solutions will not solve the most imminent threats. One core confusion derives from the use of the term “climate change”, when what is really meant is the wider issue of environmental change.

To understand the real threats to global security and the challenge to policy-makers, it is not enough just to look at climate change. Climate change is only one component of the larger problem of direct, man-made environmental change.

As a species, humans often make direct and major alterations to the natural environment. In fact, irrigation (which substantially changed regional environments) made possible what we think of as early civilisation. In the more recent past, massive population increases have had a dramatic effect on global sustainability. At the turn of the 20th century, there were around 1.65 billion people on the planet. At the turn of the 21st, there were around 6 billion. The result is more groundwater pumped up, more forests cut, more urban sprawl, more developments in floods plains, and so forth – and, ultimately, a changed environment.

As humans push the boundaries of the carrying capacity of the planet, a smaller degree of environmental variation has larger implications. This means that climate change may significantly exacerbate existing problems, but even if there were no climate change, those problems would still exist.

For example, the explanation of the social, economic and security crisis created by Hurricane Katrina — the costliest hurricane in US history, which hit the southern part of the country in August 2005 — lay to a large degree in problems with the US Army Corps of Engineers, poor town planning, a failure of emergency services and a breakdown in the chain of command.

There is no question that this naturally dynamic coastal region also was going through a period of man-made environmental change, but much of that change was more direct than anything caused by climate change. It included large-scale subsidence (by about a metre in three decades in one area of New Orleans) probably caused, at least in part, by the draining of wetlands, the extraction of groundwater and inappropriately designed waterways.

Katrina showed how poor regulations, planning and emergency response can aggravate the kind of environmental disasters that will almost certainly increase because of climate change. But one cannot say that the tragedy in New Orleans was caused by such change alone. Curbing climate change without addressing the way in which city planning and disaster management are done will not stop other Katrinas (though it may keep the numbers from dramatically accelerating).

The same holds true for some of the coastal development in China that occasionally fails to take account of naturally occurring environmental change (or even the future impact of climate change) when decisions are made about where to build cities and infrastructure. That can place even the most innovative projects at risk.

Take Dongtan, for example, China`s multi-billion dollar “eco-city”. The plan is for it to be entirely self-sufficient in water, energy and most food, with a zero-emission transport system. Unfortunately, it is to be built on a low-lying alluvial island off the coast of Shanghai, an area of extreme environmental vulnerability.

Just by its choice of placement, Dongtan is in unnecessary danger, and were it (or worse, Shanghai) to be hit by strong storm surges, there could be the same type of severe disruption that was seen with New Orleans.

This is not hypothetical. One can see foreshadowings of the problem in what happened to coastal southeast China in the summer of 2006. By August 11 last year, it had been hit by eight typhoons, one of them (called Saomai) the most powerful in half a century. In all, more than 1,700 people died, more than five millions homes and 323,750 square kilometers of farmland were destroyed, and there was at least US$20 billion in damage. More than 1.5 million people were evacuated, 40,000 ships were recalled to ports, and all business “not related to fighting the typhoon” was suspended. The summer of 2007 also has seen devastating floods and crop damage in China.

Yes, climate change is a security threat. But by labeling the security issues as relating to “global warming” and “climate change” alone, the US Congress and the UN inadvertently limit the range of possible responses and ignore many critical issues that are relatively easy to fix. If the issue was climate change alone, the answer would be to cut emissions. But climate change is just one component of the larger problem of environmental change, a problem that includes building on flood plains, regulations that encourage major population movements into areas that are not able to sustain them, and even planting inappropriate crops on marginal lands.

It’s not enough simply to focus on cutting emissions, because no matter what we do about emissions, we still will have serious problems if we don`t do anything about the other components of environmental change. The inertia in the system means we already are heading for major change: it is like a boulder that has started to roll down an unstable hill. And through general environmental change, we have been, in effect, building houses on weak foundations in the path of the oncoming boulder. Putting on the emissions brakes may slow the boulder down and lessen the ultimate impact, but the momentum is already there, and the house is already shaky.

There is no question that environmental change, including climate change, is a global, critical, security risk and a broad attack on the political, economic, social and strategic status quo. Protecting against it requires a multifaceted defence. But, once we acknowledge the complex reality of the situation, we can do it. If we try.

Next: Climate change and borders

The Three Gorges Project Corporation may herald its dam project as “the greatest undertaking in the last 1,000 years of Chinese history,” but China`s current central government does not seem to want to take credit for this achievement. In September, Chinese officials and experts said that unless steps are taken quickly to solve the environmental problems caused by the project, an ecological catastrophe could be just around the corner.

Despite almost 20 years of debate and criticism of the dam – and the fact that its negative effects are already being felt – there had, until that moment, never been an official admission of its problems. This sudden admission from the Three Gorges Construction Committee is a sign that the central government is starting to look objectively at the dam`s negative consequences – and will try to do something about them.

For the past 20 years, the public impression of the dam project in China has been shaped by an endless stream of glowing propaganda. Finding out the truth about the project (and not only about its environmental effects) has not been easy, including for journalists like me.

In June 2004, a year after the filling of the Three Gorges reservoir began, I interviewed Lu Qinkan, a 91-year-old flood defence expert. Lu was one of the original consultants advising on flood defence for the Three Gorges Project. He is also a former deputy chief engineer at the planning department of the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power. Two weeks before I met him, Lu joined 36 other experts in writing a letter to the central government. This letter suggested that in order to avoid severe flooding and the accumulation of sediment at the end of the reservoir near the port city of Chongqing, the reservoir should not be filled to the 175 metre level too rapidly. It was the first time I heard about the potential flood threat to Chongqing from the Three Gorges reservoir.

Rong Tianfu is on the Three Gorges project’s panel of sediment experts. He is also a former chief engineer at the Transport Ministry’s Yangtze Navigation Bureau, and was responsible for issues relating to Chongqing port. He told me that once the water level in the reservoir reaches 175 metres, due to the accumulation of sediment, Chongqing’s Jiulongpo port and Chaotianmen wharf will both become unnavigable.

I also spoke on the telephone to Li Changjun, deputy head of the planning section of Chongqing Transport Department. He said that the accumulation of sediment is “slowly becoming a reality” for Chongqing port. Jiulongpo is the largest port on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and is vitally important as a logistics and distribution base, both for Chongqing and the whole of southwest China.

Despite being well aware of the severity of the problem, the Three Gorges Project Corporation has never mentioned anything about it to the public. However, one employee of the company told me that its former general manager, Lu Youmei, once suggested the corporation could pay the few hundred million yuan to relocate Jiulongpo port to a more navigable location. When I interviewed the deputy general manager, Cao Guangjing, he put forward the same idea.

“The corporation thinks that if it lets through more water, it can generate more electricity,” said a source who works in water resources and is familiar with the Three Gorges Project Corporation. “If it generates more electricity, then it can earn a lot more money, and it can simply give some of the money to Chongqing to pay for dredging. They look at the problem in business terms, but Chongqing doesn’t see it that way. If sediment accumulates in large quantities, the riverbed will rise, and that will cause flood waters to rise too. This would require a second phase of mass relocation of people. Even worse, if accumulation reached a certain point, then the port would be cut off. At that point, the question for Chongqing would be no longer one of money, but of survival.”

Jin Shaochou, a 78 year-old geographer, told me: “If, once the reservoir reaches the 175-metre level, we see floods on the same scale as China saw in 1998, the tail end of the reservoir would fill up with hundreds of millions of tonnes of sediment and shingle. Chongqing, China’s most important inland port, would be cut off.”

However, in order to generate as much electricity and earn as much money as possible, the Three Gorges Project Corporation has given the go-ahead for the reservoir to reach the 175-metre level. Not only that, but they also told me: “the quicker this takes place, the better.”

The problems faced by Chongqing port were not all that surprised me. On my visit to the Three Gorges, I saw how the dam is becoming a bottleneck for river transport on the Yangtze. Many large ships are unable to pass directly through the lock; heavy goods vehicles now have to leave the ships and motor further up the banks, where they board roll-on/roll-off ships. The Three Gorges Project Corporation always said in its publicity that the project would bring clear improvements to transport on the 660-kilometre stretch of the Yangtze River between Yichang and Chongqing, and that 10,000-tonne ships would be able to pass directly to Chongqing. They said that one-way capacity would increase from 10 million tonnes a year to 50 million tonnes, and that shipping costs would be reduced by 35% to 37%. But when people from Chongqing load up their boats and head downriver, they find that the Three Gorges dam is a formidable obstacle. At best, it takes 3 hours and 20 minutes to pass through the lock. Sometimes it can take several days and nights. Just before Chinese New Year in 2004, ships from Chongqing loaded with live pigs, oranges and vegetables were held up for so long that the perishable goods on board started to rot. Some of the pigs even starved to death.

People quickly started to realise that the dam was not as easy to pass through as had been predicted. Its annual capacity has never come close to reaching the 50 million tonnes it was designed for, and not one 10,000-tonne ship has ever been able to reach Chongqing directly.

Once I had completed my interviews, I sent the Three Gorges Project Corporation a copy of my draft report so that they could check for factual errors (this was a condition of the corporation agreeing to interviews), and I set off by boat for Chongqing. That evening, the corporation called me constantly. Before, they had praised me for my professionalism. Unlike most journalists who cover the dam, the corporation did not pay my expenses, and I covered my own interview costs, plane tickets and accommodation. But suddenly, their tone became sterner and far less friendly. They were unable to pick out any factual errors, but advised me to cut out the parts about Chongqing port and the transport bottleneck as a matter of “national interest”. Of course, there is nothing unusual in this. Many companies wheel out the “national interest” as an excuse to protect their own interests. In the end, the head of the corporation’s publicity department contacted me and – as if speaking to a friend – warned me that some of the experts who had criticised the project were “enemies of the state” and I should not associate myself with them. I turned off my mobile phone.

I knew that many similar reports had been spiked before publication, but luckily I was working for a newspaper that was committed to reporting the truth, and the article was published. A week later, I was on an unrelated assignment in Lichuan, on the banks of the Yangtze River in Hubei province, when I received a visit to my hotel room from four middle-aged men clutching large wads of documents. These documents were signed by several hundred people who had been relocated by the Three Gorges project and should have received compensation payments. However, the foreman of the factory where they worked had made off with several million yuan in compensation funds. The workers now found themselves utterly penniless. It was clear to me that all the propaganda surrounding the “great project” was concealing even more shocking facts.

We can take some comfort from the fact that more of the truth has emerged in recent years, and people now have a more realistic understanding of the Three Gorges project. Despite denial after denial from some, the indisputable facts are beginning to show through.

The Three Gorges Project Corporation claimed that the dam would bring prosperity to the local people. But the corporation has set up its own travel firm, which has a monopoly on tourism in the area, shutting out local travel companies. The Three Gorges Project Corporation also insists on tourists paying a large sum of money to visit the dam, even though it is funded with tax-payers` money – a part of every monthly electricity bill in China still goes to the “Three Gorges Construction Fund”.

The Three Gorges Project Corporation said that there would not be a problem with landslides in the reservoir area. Their initial report said that the banks were stable, and there were only 150 places where landslides might occur. Once the project had received approval, however, this figure jumped to 1,500. Landslides have now taken the lives of several local villagers.

The former head of the Three Gorges Project Corporation, Lu Youmei, said in 2004 in an interview with the Beijing News that water in the Three Gorges reservoir was of Grade 2 quality, and was therefore drinkable. However, water inspection departments have since shown that the water quality in the main stream of the reservoir is at Grade 3, and if coliform group bacteria are taken into account, this goes down to Grade 5 or below. Lu Youmei’s response? “Maybe we calculated it wrong”. He later added: “Coliform group bacteria are everywhere. They are even in the human stomach.”

The main reason the Three Gorges project was given the go-ahead was that it would prevent flooding. However, more and more evidence suggests that its flood-prevention capabilities will be well below what was claimed at the time.

The number of people who been relocated by the project is higher than was predicted. Lu Youmei said that to increase the number of displaced people by a million would be impossible because “there are only 1.13 million people being moved to begin with”. But a report in September in the 21st Century Business Herald says that the Chongqing municipal government is currently planning a huge second phase of relocation for people living in the area of the reservoir. The number of people moved this time will be double the number relocated 10 years ago – and could reach 2.3 million. The reason for this second phase of relocation is the fragility of the ecosystem around the reservoir and the high cost of developing it. Of the 1.13 million people who were relocated in the first phase, only 140,000 were moved to completely new areas. The rest were simply moved further up the banks, above the water line. Zhang Xueliang, head of the agricultural committee of Chongqing CPPCC, told me: “The development of the hillsides and the relocation of over a million people to higher areas, has led to environmental destruction and increasingly severe soil erosion.”

Lu Youmei says that the people who have been relocated are now living happy lives and claims that “there have been no instances of people trying to return”. However, many people who relocated from counties including Yunyang, Fengjie and Wushan have had no choice but to return home. They were not content living in the unfamiliar places they were moved to. A colleague who had been to the area told me: “Over 159 people were moved from Xintong village, near the county town of Yunyang, to Jiangxi province. Out of those moved, 130 have come back to the area. They have moved into ramshackle houses in the old county town, where all the old villagers can be together again. Standing in that part of the town, I looked downhill and all I could see to the edge of the horizon was water. And under that water were the homes that the villagers would never be able to return to.”

More of this news is now being revealed, partly due to the efforts of researchers, the public and the media. Equally important, however, has been the tolerance of China`s central government in allowing this news to be published, which stems from a wise and comprehensive stance it has taken towards the project. This stance has allowed leaders to see the benefits and the drawbacks of the project. None of the central government leaders was present at the ceremony to mark the completion of the dam on May 20, 2006. When talking about the Three Gorges dam, premier Wen Jiabao has always emphasised the importance of solving problems of relocation and environmental protection. Wang Xiaofeng said that earlier this year, Wen talked about the potential environmental problems associated with the dam at a State Council meeting.

These signs all indicate that China is going to extricate itself from the forced praise of the Three Gorges project, and objectively look at the associated problems. This is a good thing for the Chinese people – and for the dam project.

Liu Jianqiang is a reporter with Southern Weekend and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley.

As the sun went down on the evening of October 9, 1963, Longarone was a sleepy, traditional market town located in the Dolomite region of northern Italy. The next morning, the first rays of the sun illuminated a different sight – the town had been almost completely washed away, leaving a barren wasteland of boulders. The remains of just a few of the town`s buildings poked through, and buried in the sediment or washed tens of kilometres down the river were the bodies of 2,500 of the town`s inhabitants. The town had suffered the impact of Europe`s worst dam disaster; the flood had come from a new dam located in a valley above it.