World watches China conservation battle as rare green peacock wins first round

In a rare win for environmental activists, a local court in southwestern China has halted work on a US$500,000 dam project which threatens to push the endangered green peacock into extinction. The bird is China’s only native peafowl and is rarer than the giant panda, with only an estimated 500 left in the wild after decades of excessive hunting, loss of habitat, pesticide poisoning and deforestation. It has taken years of conservation work to bring the panda population to its 2018 estimate of more than 1,800 animals in the wild. Kunming Intermediate People’s Court, in Yunnan province, ordered an immediate suspension of works at the Jiasa River level one dam, pending further environmental assessment, according to online news portal Caixin. Young voices in China’s environmental wilderness struggle to be heard The 3.6 billion yuan (US$506 million) hydropower project was begun in 2016 by a subsidiary of China’s leading dam builder, the state-owned Power Construction, but has been on hold for the past two years due to a court action filed by the country’s oldest environmental NGO, Friends of Nature. The court ruled on March 20 the company could neither restrict water flows nor cut down trees in the planned inundation area – believed to be the green peacock’s last remaining habitat – until a post-construction assessment is carried out. A final decision on the project, which sits on the upper stream of the Red River in central Yunnan’s Shuangbai county, will be made by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Beijing-based Friends of Nature and other Chinese environmental NGOs welcomed the decision, but said the legal win was not the end of their three-year battle but “a new starting point” in their defence of the green peacock. “The ruling means the Jiasa River level one hydropower station, which has posed an enormous threat to China’s biggest and most integrated habitat of green peacocks, is suspended rather than permanently cancelled,” Friends of Nature said in a statement on social media platform WeChat. “The defensive war for the green peacock … has yet to achieve a final victory,” it said. In a public letter, four environmental NGOs in China urged the environment ministry to cancel the project. “A post-construction environmental assessment could hardly evaluate the potential impacts made by the project, and irreversible damage to the green peacock and other protected species is unlikely to be repaired,” it said. “Unless the project is relocated, or measures to prevent harm to the ecosystem are significantly adjusted, the grave impact made by the construction on the habitat of the green peacock would never be erased.” The court decision has implications for China’s massive infrastructure projects in other countries – part of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative – which have attracted intensity scrutiny and suspicion from local communities. “The way in which the case plays out will be watched, not just in China but around the world, in terms of how Chinese authorities and companies are taking seriously threats to biodiversity in the construction of hydropower dams and other energy and infrastructure projects,” said Maureen Harris, Southeast Asia programme director with International Rivers, a California-based NGO. China’s environmental record will be under the international spotlight in October, when government representatives from around the world are due to gather in Kunming and agree a 10-year plan to save declining species and natural ecosystems. It will be the first time China has hosted a major biodiversity summit, and is seen as part of Beijing’s push for greater global influence in a range of areas. “[This] reflects the Chinese government’s willingness to play a more important role in biodiversity protection globally,” said Pan Wenjing, forest and oceans manager for Greenpeace East Asia. Red faces over copycat green report on China dredging project According to a UN report in May, the world’s biodiversity is in crisis, with one million plant and animal species on the verge of extinction – more than at any other period in human history, and threatening “the foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide”. As one of the 17 mega-biodiversity countries in the world, according to the United Nations, China has stepped up its efforts to preserve biodiversity in recent years. The ivory trade and processing activities have been illegal since 2018 and commercial logging of natural forests is banned nationwide. China has also banned commercial fishing on the Yangtse, Asia’s longest river. And, in the wake of the deadly coronavirus outbreak – first reported at a wet market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December – Beijing last month announced a permanent ban on the trade and consumption of wildlife. But there have been challenges on how to implement the legislation, especially as local governments struggle to balance economic growth and environmental gains. “The central government needs to have a clearer stand with more mandatory, practical and accessible measures,” Pan said. Lights off around the globe for Earth Hour amid coronavirus restrictions Beijing could also introduce mandatory measures that could effectively regulate Chinese companies’ practices overseas, she said, “for example, a stricter and more transparent environmental influence assessment process, which would ensure higher environmental standards and listening to local communities’ voices”. Chinese companies have faced a growing backlash in a number of countries for failing to protect the environment. In Indonesia, activists have vowed to keep fighting a China-funded and constructed dam project in North Sumatra which they say threatens the tropical rainforest habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, the world’s rarest great ape. And in Africa, experts in Guinea warned last year that a China-built dam would kill up to 1,500 chimpanzees if plans to inundate a nearby national park went ahead. Sign up now and get a 10% discount (original price US$400) off the China AI Report 2020 by SCMP Research. 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