Chairman Mao was not an environmentalist. Where a landscape did not conform to his vision, he ordered it razed, bulldozed or dammed. ‘Man Must Conquer Nature!’ was one of his domestic policy slogans: Ren Ding Sheng Tian! He composed lyrical poems about bridging and blocking the mighty Yangtze River. One of his favourite essays concerned an old man who successfully flattened two mountains, digging them out with a spade and two buckets.
Unsurprisingly, China’s environment came under massive stress during Mao’s rule (1949-1976). And since Mao, the country’s environmental difficulties have only increased. China’s remarkable economic explosion of the past two decades has created an ecological implosion. In terms of air pollution, water shortage, biodiversity loss and habitat damage, the country is in deep trouble and its problems are visibly becoming the world’s problems.
And yet there is increasing evidence – heartening, hopeful evidence – that a green revolution is underway in China. The icon of this revolution is, of course, the giant panda. With its chessboard colour scheme, the black spectacle-like fur patches around its eyes, and its cud-chewing gentleness, the panda is instantly recognisable and irresistibly charming. This charm also has to do with the panda’s placidity: in a globalised world of haste and speed, how does something so unhurried survive, you wonder?
It almost didn’t. Only 80 years ago, the hunting of pandas was legal. In 1929, two of US President Theodore Roosevelt’s sons travelled to southwest China, where they tracked and shot dead a male bear. Subsequently, the panda’s population was devastated by poaching, intensive land reclamation and human development. Remarkably, however, it has avoided extinction: around 1,600 animals still exist in the wild, all in the bioregion of the Upper Yangtze River watershed. The panda’s survival is due to the collaboration of the World Wildlife Fund and the Chinese government. The WWF is the international NGO with the longest history of involvement in China. It began work there in 1980, and a year later started its panda conservation initiative, following research by the legendary field biologist George Schaller. As early as 1961, WWF had taken the panda as its logo. They have since classified it as a flagship species, and now describe it as the ‘emblem of hope both for a nation and for global biodiversity’, deliberately echoing the panda’s reputation within the Chinese Taoist tradition – according to which it possesses mystical powers that can ward off natural disasters. Until recently, WWF panda protection was focused primarily on the Qinling and the Minshan mountains. Now, however, the organisation is trying to join up the remaining fragments of panda habitat, which are scattered across Yunnan, Gansu and Sichuan. It remains to be seen what effects Sichuan’s terrible earthquake will have upon panda protection.
The panda initiative is only one of many WWF projects that are underway in China. While living in China last year, I travelled out to the mountains of western Sichuan to spend a week walking the high forests and snow peaks in the company of a man called Jon Miceler. Miceler, who has recently been appointed by WWF-US to manage its Eastern Himalayas programme, has spent 20 years travelling in the mountainous borderlands of Tibet, China, Burma and India. He speaks Chinese fluently and Tibetan serviceably, and is learned in Buddhism. A freckled sun-polished face, rimless glasses and a mop of curly dark hair give him the look of an intellectual as co-designed by Henry David Thoreau and Mark Twain.
Miceler is especially interested in the potentially positive relationship between tourism and the environment. He gives the example of the great wild areas of western China, like the Chang Tang Reserve, which supports bear, snow leopard, wild antelope and wild yak. ‘Many of these reserves are in areas where locals are tempted to poach or extract resources to supplement a meagre living,’ he says. ‘And many reserves themselves are so strapped for cash they cannot carry out their conservation mandate in an effective manner. But eco-tourism, if managed carefully, can help to alleviate both of these stresses.’ Miceler is bringing the same approach to the protected areas of the Upper Yangtze River watershed area, the bioregion of the panda, where he wants to increase the activities available to eco-tourists, enhance the interpretation skills of park staff, and involve tourists in surveys of flora and fauna.
