When a Billion Chinese Jump

When a Billion Chinese Jump Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: When a Billion Chinese Jump Read Online Free PDF
Author: Jonathan Watts
Tags: General, Political Science, Public Policy, Environmental Policy
companies were felling 40 million square meters of forest, almost fifty times the permitted limit. 27 Since then, efforts to reverse the destruction had been compromised by Yunnan’s shift toward cash crops. By the Burmese border, the ecologically rich tropical rain forests of Xishuangbanna—one of the last homes of elephants in China—were steadily being replaced by rubber and sugarcane plantations. 28 In Simao, ancient pines were felled for a project to convert 1.8 million hectares of land for fast-growing eucalyptus cultivation by Asia Pulp & Paper, the region’s biggest tree chomper.
    It was a poor long-term investment. Old forests were filled with lifeaccumulated over thousands of years. Their biodiversity and vitality enabled them to cope with invasive species just as a body on a balanced diet is better able to withstand illness. The rows of new monoculture trees, however, were felled every ten years or so. Little life could be nourished beneath their temporary canopy and the trees often succumbed to the invading competitors. Not for nothing were these plantations called “green deserts.”
    Environmentalists believe we need to look back to move forward. Bob Moseley, an expert in alpine ecology who set up the Nature Conservancy’s Yunnan programs, sees traditional beliefs and customs as the best hope for the sustainable management of the land and forests. This runs contrary to the prevailing wisdom in top-down, technocratic China, where poor, uneducated villagers are often blamed for gathering so much firewood that forests are depleted. Moseley has used repeat photography to back his counterargument. He collected more than a thousand old photographs of northwest Yunnan spanning 100 years and commissioned new pictures to be taken at the same spots. The comparisons suggest forest cover around indigenous communities has been constant—and in many cases increased—as a result of sensible limits on wood gathering and tree felling. In contrast, government-backed programs of old-growth cutting, clearance for rubber plantations, and forest conversion to monoculture have taken a heavy toll. His conclusion is that “millennia of accumulated ecological knowledge among local people has a lot to tell us about how to manage for biodiversity in the future.” 29
    Chinese scholars recognize that indigenous groups have a better appreciation of “useless trees.” Botanists and forestry experts at the Kunming Institute of Botany see the worship of holy mountains and trees as a means by which locals promote sustainability. From a study of Yunnan, they conclude that minorities take better care of nature than majorities. 30
    Historical documents show that the province had a system of elected forest guardians and logging quotas as far back as the Qing dynasty. The epigraph at the start of this chapter was inscribed on a monument in Yunnan from 1714. It appeals for the preservation of forest ecosystems in terms that sound very similar to those used by green activists today. 31
Everyone understands that only healthy green forests and fertile soil can nurture ever-flowing springs. None doubts the significance of those fundamental elements of nature, such as soil, water, and fire. Yet, do we knowit is the root of trees and forest that bring us water? It is for our benefit and fortune.
     
    The mountains I saw in Yunnan were being stripped bare, but this time it was ice rather than forest cover that was disappearing. Glaciers were melting and retreating so fast that local monks blamed themselves for being insufficiently pious. 32 The forest and grasslands are also being overexploited for mushrooms. I had never imagined how huge this fungal industry was until I set out from Zhongdian to see another of the candidates that had fought the Shangri-La contest.
    Yading, a few hundred kilometers north across the border with Sichuan Province, was the most remote yet. After we left the resort areas, the clouds lifted, the forest thickened, and the
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Sleep Peacefully

NC Marshall

Perfect Ruin

Lauren DeStefano

The Hound of Ulster

Rosemary Sutcliff

Rocking Horse

Bonnie Bryant