By Dolma Yangzom
Background
China’s contemporary environmental problems can largely be attributed to its authoritarian system, culture, tradition and national history. The history of ecosystem damage dates back to Mao’s war against nature. A powerful national drive towards the expansion and exploitation of resources led the nation towards a great loss of its natural ecosystem. Besides being a peasant himself, Mao’s relationship with nature was that of an oppositional one. Mao didn’t respect nature and tried to build China and improve the lives of its people at the cost of defeating nature. He believed in the illusion that “men must conquer nature”. (Shapiro 2001 a)
Some of the primary reasons for the loss of biodiversity in China are due to exploitation and extraction of natural resources, intensive farming schemes to improve the land productivity to feed its growing population and massive human transfer into wildlife habitat. These actions greatly disturbed the fragile ecosystem in the region.
China – A hub of biodiversity
China is a vast country with a diverse physical environment, rich biodiversity and complex forest types. China holds approximately 600 different types of terrestrial ecosystems, including a wide range of forests. Within these ecosystems, are more than 30,000 species of advanced plants (10 percent of the world total) and over 63,000 kinds of vertebrates (14 percent of the world total), these totals make China the third richest nation in the world in terms of biodiversity. South central China also features 230 rare species of rhododendrons. The region is also home to snow leopards, forest musk deer, antelope, and baileys goral. But the best known resident of south central China is the giant panda. Pandas, once roamed over wide areas in China but their numbers are significantly decreasing due to human induced climate change and habitat destruction. As a result, today there are only about one thousand pandas remaining in the wild and about one hundred in captivity (Hillstrom 2003).
Causes of environmental destruction
Out of the several reasons for the huge loss of wildlife and the raping of natural resources, the primary cause was China’s massive growth of population. This expansion of population led to the destruction of large forest areas to make room for farmland, and to increase the area of arable land. However, the actions taken in accordance with the Maoist belief of forcefully bending nature to human will ended up destroying the very basis for the people’s subsistence.
Initially, the policies were designed to compete with the industrial world in steel production. One of the primary and the earliest causes for the great loss of biodiversity in China was created during Mao’s policy of “The Great Leap Forward.” Mao desired to excel China in steel production (Sanders, 1999 b). He also wanted to catch up with Great Britain in steel production and he cut down many trees to fuel steel furnaces, therefore much of the forest destruction was caused as a need to fuel steel furnaces. This steel making campaign made a huge negative impact on the natural ecosystem of the nation. A scholar in Chinese traditional philosophy recalled that “when I was a child, there were jackals and foxes in the wood, but after the big trees had been cut down during the leap forward movement to fuel the furnaces, there wasn’t even a rabbit.”(Shapiro 2001 b). In 1979, China ranked 120th in the world forested land with a total forest area of 12.7%. The forested area later decreased to about 8 percent of land area. This sharp decline in forested land embodies Mao’s enormous inhuman policy of attacking nature.
One of the most general reasons for the deforestation and the loss of plants as well as animal species in China still remain. It is the need to feed the ever increasing population. Being the world’s most populated nation in the world, China has to feed the growing population which tends to incur the cost of losing the natural environment and forested land. China’s huge population is putting a lot of pressure on the forest areas in the region. Conversion and degradation of vital wildlife habitats are a serious problem in some of the mountainous regions of the south western China, in places such as Dequin. The establishment of various regulations and natural reserves and parks seemed to have served no purpose to prevent the extinction of some of the world’s rarest endangered species such as snub nosed monkey. The destruction of forested land and loss of habitat for these animals can be blamed primarily to the fact the locals have a very limited economic opportunity, coupled with the huge population pressure which in turn has resulted to a variety of ecologically destructive practices including illegal hunting, over grazing, firewood collection, logging, expansion of agricultural land etc.( Li, 1990)
The Great Leap Forward led to the disruption of the ecological balance of large agricultural regions in China. China was hit with a great famine in 1959-1962, which turned out to be a huge environmental and human disaster. The famine disturbed China’s food system so severely that starvation was widespread throughout the entire country. In desperation, people started consuming tree bark, seeds, roots and anything that was remotely edible. The very living creatures people depended on were hunted down and eaten. Jesper Becker quotes an informants recollection, “there were no birds left in the trees, and the trees themselves had been stripped off their leaves and bark. At night there was no longer scratching of even rats and mice, for they too had been eaten or had been starved to death.” (Shapiro 2001 c).
In a nationwide campaign in the name of “Wipe out the Four Pests” during the great leap forward era, China’s sparrows were literally wiped out. School children were the main participant in the pest drive and sometimes the whole school was sent out to kill the sparrows (Shapiro 2001 d). It was only years later that they realized that the sparrows were good friends as they ate unwanted insects, in contradiction to what they were told which was that sparrows eat grain. This is an example of the shortsighted and unsustainable policy of Mao. Most of the nation building campaigns adopted by Mao had hardly any long time benefits. As a matter of fact China’s much of the biodiversity loss occurred as result of such narrow views of Mao. Following the great famine which continued for three years, concerns about feeding the growing population in the wake of the crisis took precedence over the environmental factors and concerns, leading to another mass campaign called “Take Grain as the Key” Link” which was more commonly known as the Dazai campaign. The campaign involved clearing away large swamps and forests in mountainous areas for the cultivation of crops (Sanders 1999). Despite the fact that these mountains didn’t support crops they tried to use them for crops anyway. These are clear indications of Mao’s little knowledge regarding environment and his kill the nature attitude.
A recent example of continued ecological destruction is in the Qinghai province of Chinese occupied Tibet, where 670,000 hectares of grassland were converted into cropland altering the local people’s nomadic way of living. (Shapiro 2001 e) The nomads were forced to change their agricultural lifestyles, since much of the grazing lands were converted into deserts beyond recovery. Natural disasters such as soil erosion, sandstorms etc. have been increasingly common due to deforestations due to agricultural conversion, over cultivation and over grazing.
Future implications
China’s huge population is putting a lot of pressure on the forested land in the country thereby decreasing the scope of preserving biodiversity. China’s urban population grew by more than 160 million from 1980 to 1995, which adds to the nation’s environmental problems to a large extent (Ma.2000 a). The massive transfer of people from the rural to urban areas leads to a significant increase in the clearing of forest. Despite the tremendous degradation of wildlife observed so far due to the its huge population and increased pace of economic development over the recent decades, the environmental concerns are getting very little priority. Much of this is due to the fact that there are very few Chinese citizens who are concerned with the issue.
Meanwhile, there has also been a progressive group of people who claim to value conservation efforts, but are still struggling with the trade off between the economic growth and environmental damage. They believe that nature can be sacrificed at the cost of human welfare and economic growth. Many believe that it is more important to provide people with jobs and food than to save the rain forest and protect wildlife. However, China should realize the importance of economic growth with environmental protection, and not at the cost of environmental damage.
Despite several reforestation programs conducted in China in the last four decades, things have failed to improve. The tremendous rising trend of China’s population growth poses one of the greatest obstacles for the Chinese to recover the loss of biodiversity and prevent further degradation. The growing pace of China’s economic development together with the ever increasing population threatens the existence of the remaining wildlife. Land areas suitable as habitats for many native species are declining at an alarming rate. For example, a government report indicates the extinction of birds in many areas due to the increased use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers by farmers (Ma 2000 b). Deforestation, the conversion of grassland into agriculture land and the increased pace of economic development have all threatened the integrity of China’s ecosystem.
How far China can go to recover its lost natural habitat and prevent further loss of biodiversity still remains a question. It is unlikely that China would be able to restore the lost biodiversity due to its authoritarian regime and low scope of nongovernmental activism for the cause. Although, China was a signatory to the CITES convention and its government has some written regulations for the environmental concerns, these remain no more than mere written documents. Although, the environmental problems have become a genuine central concern of the Chinese government, its drive for economic and material development overpowers the government’s environmental policy and hence rules and regulations on papers are rarely put into practice. The most urgent need for China is strong environmental law enforcement.
Population control can perhaps be one of the possible solutions to prevent any further damage. The One Child Policy in China has been in practice for the last few decades but still the population continues to grow at an alarming rate. On January 2005, China’s official population figure marked 1.3 billion, which is expected to increase to about 1.46 billion by 2030s, making an increase of about 10 million a year. (BBC 2005). Hence, most pragmatic need of the hour is to realize that to prevent against the further loss of biodiversity, china need better environmental law enforcement and more transparent environmental policy.
In many other countries, most of the environmental issues and problems have been taken up generally by nongovernmental organizations and lobbyists who fight for environmental protection, but in China, the lack of a strong guarantee of freedom to express one’s views poses one of the greatest threats to the protection of wildlife and biodiversity. In China, the suppression of grassroots organizations has left the environmental movement poorly equipped to mobilize popular support for environmental protection. A recent incident in Chinese-occupied Tibet highlights an example of the unique obstacles that conservationists face in China due to the government’s skeptical view towards non-governmental organizations. Even when these organizations are not politically motivated, their environmental efforts are greatly inhibited by the authoritarian government. Earlier during the kalachakra, when His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke on discouraging the use of costumes made up of animal skins, and encouraging conservation, Tibetans in Chinese-occupied Tibet burned animal hides and pledged never to use them again, to show their concern for the endangered species and respect for their leader. The incident angered the Chinese government and led to the detention of volunteers involved in the campaign based on “political grounds”, even though the campaign was actually based on concern for the protection of wildlife and had nothing to do with anti-Chinese activity. Such consequences suppress the environmental voice throughout China.
Since China has shown very little tolerance towards organized environmental activism, cases such as these are rare. As a matter of fact, the first environmental group was authorized by the government only in 1994. This denotes the Chinese government’s negative attitude towards the freedom of speech and its intolerance for the formation of non-governmental organizations and groups. Nevertheless, a large group of student organizations function quite effectively through various universities, which organize some educational and environment awareness programs as well as protection of wildlife species. There have been few courageous groups and individuals who have acted to publicize the plight of endangered species such as Tibetan antelope. There have been nationwide student campaigns working in collaboration with the Friends of Nature which coordinates workshops, educational programs and theatrical performances for the protection of the endangered species.
One such student group is working hard to protect the white river dolphins which are likely to become extinct in the wild when the three gorges dam is completed. Hopefully, the government doesn’t suppress this student movement and instead cooperates with them, so that these dolphins can be saved. Such a kind of cooperation can help China a great deal in conserving the natural ecosystem and biodiversity, not just for China, but for the world at large. China definitely needs a democratic and a more liberal government, which gives more freedom to the common people to work towards the field of environmental sustainability. This will help China conserve its vast natural ecosystem and also bring about a sustainable economic development.
References
• China’s population passes 1.3bn
• Hillstrom, Kevin, 2003, Asia: A Continental Overview of Environmental Issues, ABC CLIO, Santa Barbara, California.
• Li, Jing Neng (2002), Population Effects on Deforestation and Soil Erosion, Population and Development review, volume 16, pp. 254-258.
• Ma, Xiaoying, 2000, Environmental Regulations in China, Rowman and littlefield publishers, New York.
• An Accomplished WildLife Awareness Campaign:Press Release.
• Sanders, Richard,(December01,1999),The Political Economy of Chinese Environmental Protection: Lessons of the Mao and Deng years, Third world quarterly, volume 20, number 6, pp. 1201-1214.
• Shapiro, Judith. 2001, Mao’s War against Nature, Cambridge university press,
With gratitude and appreciations to Alexis Sampson and Justin Hoover for editing and proof reading the paper.
