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| Tian Jun has been helping him and other farmers make the change. Christina Larson |
To save rivers, she helps farmers
Chinese environmental activist Tian Jun found that in order to clean up Chengdu's rivers, she needed to look upstream.
from the April 30, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
At the time, Tian was working as a journalist. There was little precedent for environmental cleanup in China, but through her work she learned about international discussions on the environment, including the 1992 United Nations' "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro, which made "sustainable development" a global buzzword.
In the early 1990s, Tian began to lobby the city government to clean up the rivers. She helped convince local authorities that a cleaner environment would improve the city's image with foreign investors and tourists, and they hired her to establish a fledgling conservation office. In the next decade, she says the city spent about 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion), on river cleanup.
Today many factories have moved outside Chengdu city limits. Local air and water quality have improved. The rivers are no
longer brown. The United Nations Environment Program in 2000 recognized Chengdu at a conference on “Learning From Best Practices.”
The city has even built parkland and planted cherry trees along sections of the rivers.
Tian worries about the potential for backsliding if public attention doesn’t remain focused on these issues. In 2003, she
founded an environmental nonprofit, Chengdu Urban Rivers Association and began to work with local university students on a
“Get More Green” outreach campaign.
“If we don’t have good environmental education after we improve the rivers,” she says, “our progress could disappear.”
Fertilizer overuse hurts rivers
Recently, Tian has turned her attention to another problem. Tests revealed that 60 percent of the remaining pollution in the
rivers, which are still not fit for drinking or swimming, comes from the heavy usage of fertilizers and pesticides on farmland
upstream.
Three years ago, Tian began to visit farmers in the surrounding countryside. Her purpose was to gather information. “I knew nothing would change if I just said, ‘Do this.’ I had to figure out what they needed, so we could work together.”
Gao’s situation was typical. His family is Buddhist, so he tries to respect natural balance. “I would rather not put all those
chemicals in the ground,” he says, “but I must make a living somehow.” He also had a more worldly complaint: He knew he was
being overcharged by the fertilizer vendor, who sold him adulterated goods, and by the businessman who bought his crops to
sell to supermarkets at high margins.
“But what choice did I have?” Gao wondered. Many farmers had similar frustrations.
Tian designed a program to address many concerns at once, with financial support from city ministries and the World Wildlife
Fund China. The farmers needed some kind of fertilizer to keep their yields relatively high, so she equipped them to make
their own. They also needed a way to reach customers, so she connected them directly with a small network of health-conscious
consumers in Chengdu. They needed information and support, which her group provides on its regular visits.
This time, Tian asks, “Is there anything else you need?”
“Not now,” Gao replies. “I’ll let you know if I find any problems.”
“Please do, Uncle Gao.” (They are not related, but everyone calls him “Uncle Gao.”)
Tian hopes to eventually expand the program, with further financial support from the government and international nongovernmental
organizations.
Better methods help certification
This is not the only sustainable-agriculture project in China. Outside Beijing, a husband and wife in 2002 started their own
organic farm, “Lovely Green Cow,” and sell produce directly to a health-conscious Beijing restaurant. In Yunnan Province,
a Chinese nonprofit, Global Environmental Institute, operates a similar biofertilizer program. The central environment ministry
has also established its own Organic Food Development Center.
Observers wonder to what extent such programs can grow, and how they may one day affect consumers in China and abroad. According
to the World Trade Organization, China is the world’s largest food exporter.
“The Chinese government understands it needs to shift to higher-value and safer goods,” says Linden Ellis of the China Environment
Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. However, she adds, there is often a gap between intentions and implementation.
“China has trouble with myriad health and safety certifications, and food safety and organics are a subset of that,” says Mike Taylor, a professor at the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University in Washington.
However, he thinks the situation can be improved if new incentives are introduced. For example, he believes the US Food and Drug Administration should enact “more stringent requirements on importers to work directly with their suppliers to ensure product safety.”
In a country where regulatory enforcement is weak, the crux of Tian’s philosophy is finding common interests. She is starting small, but her philosophy is scalable.
For his part, Gao hopes to one day open an organic and Buddhist restaurant for villagers and day-trippers from Chengdu. “So many people leave the countryside for the city,” he says. “There should be ways to bring people back to the countryside.”
Tian smiled. She knew he was talking about someone in particular. His son left the village to find work many years ago, but
says he may return home if business is good.
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