Great green strides

It's not a concept normally associated with the mainland, a wild, green China whose conservation efforts could inspire other developing nations. We tend to think of a China whose breakneck economic development has poisoned rivers, polluted air and turned vast tracts of land into a moonscape. But, increasingly, a wild, green China is being revealed, and hailed internationally.

Among those spreading the word is Gavin Maxwell, producer and director of the BBC's six-part nature documentary series, Wild China, released last spring, shortly before the Beijing Olympics. He admitted that, before embarking on the landmark television project four years ago, his assumption was 'Quick, before it all goes', and to query if there was anything worth filming at all.

'My biggest surprise is how much is still there in China,' he said while in Hong Kong recently to address the local branch of the Royal Geographical Society. 'How many big mammals there are, how many key species and how much habitat is actually protected now.'

According to the most recent paper published by the State Council, nature reserves cover some 1.5 million square kilometres - 15 per cent - of China's land territory. A network of national nature reserves is 'effectively protecting' 85 per cent of land-based ecosystems, 85 per cent of wildlife species and 65 per cent of China's natural plant community, according to the same document.

Rare species featured in the Wild China series, called Beautiful China in the version shown on the mainland, include Tibet's tiny jumping spiders - the planet's highest permanent-dwelling predators - the giant panda, the golden snub-nosed monkey and the Tibetan antelope (chiru).

Mr Maxwell said Chinese students attending his lectures in London told him they had no idea there was such biodiversity in their country. 'That's been extraordinary, how secret China has been even to the Chinese,' he said.

The BBC and its CCTV production partners were given unprecedented access during 1,000 filming days across China. They were able to find and film key species and to achieve what they set out to do, Mr Maxwell said.

That was partly because they filmed in areas so remote, mountainous and inaccessible that wildlife had a natural protective barrier. But it was not the only reason. 'Some things in terms of conservation seem to be working well and research on the ground seems to be working well,' Mr Maxwell said.

He noted that a tenet of Chinese civilisation was the Taoist philosophy of harmony between man and nature.

'I think recently the Chinese government has tried to reinvigorate this concept and return to these values of harmony as a kind of metaphor for their renewed phase in terms of tackling environmental issues,' he said.

Mr Maxwell said the series, which has been sold to more than 100 countries, did talk about issues of deforestation, desertification of northern grasslands and pollution of rivers. But its primary focus was 'to celebrate what is still there rather than bemoan what's gone'.

He is optimistic that China has the political clout, resources and manpower to act on conservation. 'If they decide 'we're going to do something about our environment and do it for the better', I feel China is one of the few places that could actually implement that.'

Daniel Taylor, president of the US-based non-profit organisation Future Generations, has worked with mainland conservation for decades, starting with Tibet.

In the 1980s he met the autonomous region's then party secretary, Hu Jintao , now China's president, over an idea to preserve the area around Mt Everest. This followed Dr Taylor's personal 25-year Himalayan odyssey to discover the scientific truth behind the legendary 'abominable snowman', or yeti, which he found in 1983 to be the Asiatic black bear - and in need of protection.

He said Mr Hu heard the argument for conservation: 'He is sufficiently enlightened and enough of an opportunist to know a good idea when he sees it. Let's give him praise. He saw that there was a new way to do conservation. He took the idea that was presented to him. And he said, 'let's do it even better and bigger'.'

The outcome was the creation of the Qomolangma (Mt Everest) National Nature Preserve, which is the size of Taiwan, plus other preserves that together now protect more than 40 per cent of Tibet.

'What is truly exciting is to watch how the Tibetan environment has rebounded when people start to respond to it as partners and as stewards, which the Tibetan people have done in the past 20 years,' Dr Taylor said.

He estimates that deforestation in Tibet is down by more than 80 per cent and the forests 'are coming back very nicely'. He attributed this to ecological protection by the government in partnership with the people, without any wardens.

'Across Tibet today every species of wildlife population has its population on the increase with, as yet not fully documented, musk deer, Tibetan antelope, the Asiatic bear, snow leopard, wild ass, black-necked crane, Tibetan wolf, Tibetan fox. All the predators are coming back because the ungulate [hoofed animal] population number is up.

'This is China we're talking about. And you're seeing a regeneration of a whole ecosystem in the context of some of the most difficult habitat on the planet', he said, referring to oxygen-starved, arid, cold Tibet, ravaged by five centuries of human population growth and domestic grazing.

Dr Taylor said that, for an ecosystem to flourish, people should be engaged as part of the solution, not the problem. 'We myopically saw conservation as saving pandas without realising that it was saving people. Yes, let's please protect the panda; we all want the panda to be protected. But the agenda is a lot bigger.' He said it involved changing people's appetites and behaviour.

'China, wonderfully, is leading the world in this understanding,' Dr Taylor said, adding that Mr Hu had 'a phenomenal opportunity' to reshape the global conservation dialogue.

In 2007, with official blessing, Future Generations China and Beijing Forestry University jointly launched the Green Long March, China's 'largest youth conservation awareness movement'. So far, more than 5,000 students and young environmentalists have marched through 26 provinces and 22 nature preserves, and visited 700 communities, spreading awareness of conservation and sharing environmental best practices. Organisers estimate they have spread their message to more than 20 million people across the nation.

The Green Long March focuses on finding successes across China where the people and government are doing something right, Dr Taylor said. 'The most critical resource of all is the energy of the people,' he said. 'If you can show that they're making progress, then you can encourage them to do more.'

He said Hong Kong-based sponsors of the march - among them Swire, Goldman Sachs, the Zeshan Foundation, Li & Fung and Adrian H.C. Fu - played a key role in raising awareness on the mainland about the need for long-term thinking to create lasting prosperity.

WWF China's country representative Dermot O'Gorman, who is based in Beijing, said the importance China attached to the environment had risen markedly in the past few years as the State Council placed greater emphasis on environmental targets to be met.

'The speed of change to really protect the environment has been perhaps faster than many people would have anticipated,' he said. 'Perception has yet to catch up with some of the rapid changes that are happening in China in terms of protecting the environment.'

He said that the most common image, particularly of eastern China, was of industrialisation that caused pollution and damage to the natural environment. 'But I think there are still a lot of wilderness areas where there are conservation efforts under way that continue to try and protect these areas for the future.'

Academic training for conservation professionals was now 'top quality', and universities were producing well qualified, experienced graduates and postgraduates, Mr O'Gorman said. 'In Beijing, they are equal to any other country in terms of their experience and management of very complex environmental issues and technical understanding of what's going on in China and the rest of the world. 'Of course, the level of experience and the abilities varies across the country.' He said that WWF had worked over the past two decades at the provincial level to ensure that officials had the skills to put into action conservation measures on the ground.

There had been huge forest planting efforts across China. 'We've also seen China adopt new international mechanisms to preserve forests. There are more than 900,000 hectares of Forest Stewardship Council-certified forest, which is the most in Asia.' Forested nature reserves now covered 71 per cent of the giant panda population and more than half its habitat, he said. Domestic tourists were increasingly interested in interacting with nature, Mr O'Gorman observed. Though some of that 'may not be what the west would see as ecotourism', visitor numbers to scenic areas in Yunnan , Sichuan , Qinghai and Tibet were on the rise. 'More and more Chinese want to go and see the places that they see on television and in photographs.'

Mr O'Gorman said his organisation had started an education programme in the 1990s that got the environment into the mainland school curriculum: 'Now 200 million students receive environmental education as part of their normal schooling system in primary and junior secondary.' Many innovative environmental ideas were coming out of China, he said.

'Other developing countries can learn much from China's experience and also from some of the solutions that China is putting in place, with such a large population and a real pressure cooker of a problem.'

He foresaw opportunities for China to link up with the US and Europe to promote sustainable development and tackle environmental problems at a regional or global level.

China's position was unique, he said. Because of the financial reserves it had built up over the past decade, it could invest not only in environmental protection but in promoting positive opportunities that arose from it.