Fighting for life: China’s eco gains in focus in countdown to COP15
- Kunming used to be home to one of the country’s most polluted lakes
- Much has changed in recent decades as people have sought a better balance between the economy and the environment
Lin Shiyong has seen the changes for himself.
As the 51-year-old fishes from a river near the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, several egrets wade in the shallows searching for fish.
The birdlife and the environmental efforts are a sharp contrast to just a decade ago when the lake was one of the most polluted in the country.
“The water in Dianchi was green and it was stinking 10 years ago, but now it’s much better,” Lin said. “There are different kinds of birds on the trees in the morning. The population of aquatic animals in the river has also increased.”
The conference’s theme is “building a shared future for all life on Earth” and the gathering is expected to lay the foundations for a new global framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
CBD executive secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema said the benefits of ecological restoration projects were apparent in the city.
“[Kunming is a] well-covered, shaded city with trees and flowers,” Mrema said.
“You can walk any time of the day. The sun will not burn you directly because of the shade of the trees.
“We can see the fruits of freely, local ecological restoration projects in China.”
It is a long way from the 1990s, when the water quality of Dian Lake was in the lowest level of China’s five-tier water safety standard, meaning it is unfit for agriculture or industrial use.
In the next two decades, local authorities went on the environmental offensive, spending more than 50 billion yuan (US$7.7 billion) to improve water quality. In 2018, the lake’s status was upgraded to the second-lowest level, meaning it was lightly polluted but could still be used for ordinary industrial purposes.
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Illegal construction turns lush green hillside at China’s Dianchi Lake into “concrete mountain”
The rehabilitation of the lake is just one of a number of conservation efforts throughout the country.
In 1998, the Yangtze River region suffered one of the worst floods in history, a disaster the central government blamed on environmental degradation caused by excessive logging.
In response, China introduced a national forest protection programme that year, banning logging in more than 100 million hectares of forest.
In 2000, it launched the Grain for Green Programme, the largest reforestation programme in the world, to limit grazing and restore grasslands. And last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping committed the country to adding 6 billion cubic metres of forest by 2030 as compared with 2005 levels.
Today, roughly 18 per cent of China’s land area is covered by nature reserves, above the 17 per cent targets set at the last UN Biodiversity Conference held in Aichi, Japan, in 2010, according to a white paper on China’s biodiversity conservation efforts released on Friday.
The country’s population of wild animals is also growing.
Now under a new concept of “ecological red lines”, China aims to protect at least 25 per cent of its land area.
Mrema said the theme of COP15 was “ecological civilisation”, the need to align “the relationship between economic development and environmental conservation”.
“China will play that leadership role to demonstrate globally by showing the actions it has taken,” she said.
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Thousands of fish killed by water pollution in Chinese lake
For conservationists, the core of the idea is the unity of humans and nature.
“The objectives of the convention of biodiversity are to safeguard species, genes in their ecosystems, provide ecosystem services to people and to maintain a healthy planet,” said Harvey Locke, a conservationist and the chairman of an International Union for Conservation of Nature task force.
“I really hope China explains the eco-civilisation vision for its domestic policy to other people, because the core of the idea is we need to move to be thinking about living within the laws of nature instead of pretending that we are above the laws of nature.”
Locke said he could still remember the serious doubts 30 years ago about whether pandas could survive in the wild in China.
“It was a very big question. Now, they are living in the wild,” he said.
He added the story of the panda should be the story of the next 10 years for the world – to focus on the problem and build back the system.
“That’s the kind of thing we need to do for nature everywhere in the world.”
