Back home...

I'm back. I had an amazing trip. There are so many things I'd like to talk about right now that I can't talk about anything. Impressions, experiences - and a couple of fine articles about China. Oh, and Al Gore's new movie.

But since I've been home, I've been single-mindedly trying to get my book finished. I'm nearly there. I'm going to take advantage of this latent obsessive/compulsive impulse and see how much I can get done. Sleep? Bah! Who needs it?

More soon.

On Vacation

I'll be gone until May 25 or thereabouts. I'll try to post from the road but it's dubious - the Great Firewall doesn't like Blogger. But if I have time, I'll email someone on this side of the pond to post for me...

"In about 30 years, the forest will be gone"

Photograph by L.X. Gollin

After the positive news reported below, this story in the NY Times feels like a punch in the gut:

For as long as anyone can remember, Anyie Apoui and his people have lived among the majestic trees and churning rivers in an untouched corner of Borneo, catching fish and wild game, cultivating rice and making do without roads. But all that is about to change.

The Indonesian government has signed a deal with China that will level much of the remaining tropical forests in an area so vital it is sometimes called the lungs of Southeast Asia.

For China, the deal is a double bounty: the wood from the forest will provide flooring and furniture for its ever-expanding middle class, and in its place will grow vast plantations for palm oil, an increasingly popular ingredient in detergents, soaps and lipstick.

The forest-to-palm-oil deal, one of an array of projects that China said it would develop in Indonesia as part of a $7 billion investment spree last year, illustrates the increasingly symbiotic relationship between China's need for a wide variety of raw materials, and its Asian neighbors' readiness to provide them, often at enormous environmental cost.

Since this article is about to disappear behind the NYT's subscription wall, I'll quote at length:

From Indonesia to Malaysia to Myanmar, many of the once plentiful forests of Southeast Asia are already gone, stripped legally or illegally, including in the low-lying lands here in Kalimantan, on the Indonesian side of Borneo. Only about half of Borneo's original forests remain.

Those forests that do remain, like the magnificent stands here in Mr. Anyie's part of the highlands, are ever pressed, ever prized and ever more valuable, particularly as China's economy continues its surge.

Over all, Indonesia says it expects China to invest $30 billion in the next decade, a big infusion of capital that contrasts with the declining investment by American companies here and in the region.

Much of that Chinese investment is aimed at the extractive industries and infrastructure like refineries, railroads and toll roads to help speed the flow of Indonesia's plentiful coal, oil, gas, timber and palm oil to China's ports.

In one of the latest deals, on April 19, Indonesia announced that China had placed a $1 billion rush order for a million cubic yards of a prized reddish-brown hardwood, called merbau, to be used in construction of its sports facilities for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Merbau wood, mostly prevalent in Papua's virgin forests, has been illegally logged and shipped to China since the late 1990's, stripping large swathes of forest in the Indonesian province on the western side of the island of New Guinea.

The decision to award a $1 billion concession to China will "increase the deforestation of Papua," a place of extraordinary biodiversity, said Elfian Effendy, executive director of Greenomics, an Indonesian environmental watchdog. "It's not sustainable."

The plan for palm oil plantations on Borneo was signed during a visit by the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to Beijing last July.

Under pressure from environmental groups, the Indonesian environment and forestry ministries have come out against the plan. The coordinating minister for economic affairs, who goes by the single name Boediono, said in April that he was still weighing the pros and cons of executing the entire plan...

...Indonesia's environmentalists, and some economists, say chopping down as much as 4.4 million acres of the last straight-stemmed, slow-growing towering dipterocarp trees on Borneo would gravely threaten this region's rare ecosystem for plants, animals and people.

Maps for the project have aroused fears that it would encroach into the forest in Kayan Mentarang National Park, where the intoxicating mix of high altitude and equatorial humidity breeds an exceptional diversity of species, second only to Papua's, biologists say.

The area is the source of 14 of the 20 major rivers on Borneo, and the destruction of the forests would threaten water supplies to coastal towns, said Stuart Chapman, a director at the World Wildlife Fund in Indonesia...

...A three-day stay at a research station deep inside the forest told what is at stake for the ecosystem, first documented by Charles Darwin's colleague, Alfred Russel Wallace, in an account in the late 1850's called "The Malay Archipelago."

Wild mango trees, tropical oaks, pale-trunked myrtles, sago palms, rattan trees and pandanas with shiny leaves like long prongs crowded the hills that rise almost vertically above the river.

Exceedingly tall and elegant dipterocarps towered over all, their green canopies filtering shards of occasional sunlight. Underfoot, tiny dew-encrusted green mosses, still damp in the afternoon, clung to rocks, and miniature versions of African violets poked their mauve flowers just above the ground.

Wildlife abounds, said Stephan Wulffraat, 39, a Dutch conservation biologist and the director of the research station run by the World Wildlife Fund. The forest is home to seven species of leaf monkeys, he said, and at high noon, a crashing sound high in the trees announced a group's arrival. A red-coated deer made a fleeting appearance and dashed off.

On the gloomy forest floor, Mr. Wulffraat, who fends off leeches by tucking his pant legs into knee-length football socks, has set more than a dozen camera traps to photograph wild creatures too shy to appear.

Three years ago, an animal the size of a large cat with a bushy tail with a reddish fur sauntered by the camera. Mr. Wulffraat, a seven-year veteran of the forest, said that the animal resembled a civet, but he added that he and other experts believed that it was an entirely new species.

The discovery of a species of mammal like a civet is unusual, but dozens of new species of trees, mosses and herbs, butterflies, frogs, fresh water prawns and snakes have all been found since the station opened in 1991, he said. "This field station has more frogs and snake species around than in all of Europe," Mr. Wulffraat said.

I was alerted to this story by a good friend of mine who did her dissertation work in this part of Borneo. She writes:

I talked to Pak (Mr.) Anye, the village spokesman featured in the article, countless times over the course of my stay there. He said to me - I don't know who to believe any more. Everybody says they are on our side: WWF, miners, loggers, the government. Maybe we should just bring back head hunting and respond to outsider threats that way...

I have to hope it's not too late to stop this. Certainly Chinese environmentalists understand better than most the impact of these sorts of development projects. Maybe they can help.

Green Snippets

Some interesting environmental news related to China.

First, activist Yu Xiaogang, founder of the environmental group, Green Watershed, is one of this year's recipients of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, which he accepted at a ceremony in San Francisco. It is one of the continuing paradoxes of modern China, where political competition is relentlessly stifled, that an environmental activist who organizes local communities that are impacted by the seemingly endless hydroelectric projects on China's rivers is able to do work which directly empowers people to participate in decisions that affect their lives. Go read the interview with Yu at Grist Magazine. Here's an excerpt:

Q: I understand that the watershed project inspired many local residents to speak publicly about their experiences. How did you encourage them to break their tradition of silence?

A: For about six years, we have had several kinds of workshops in Lashi Lake, and all of them are very participatory. So the local people have practiced this approach, and gradually they know that they can speak for their own interests, and change their lives themselves. For instance, one of the local people participated in a United Nations hydropower meeting in Beijing, where he could freely dialogue with hydropower CEOs and the decision-makers in the Chinese central government. He could talk with these leaders to protect his interests and his community's interests.

Q: What kind of opposition did you encounter as you developed the project?

A: There were many challenges -- there are still many rumors about me, about my organization, about the management of the project. There are some rumors that the organization is illegal, and that any people who participate in it should be careful. Many people think I have a secret agenda.

Any activity that involves organizing people outside of the CCP's auspices involves a certain degree of risk. Kudos and congratulations to Yu Xiaogang. China's future depends on people like him.

Several British papers have reported on a Green city to be built near Shanghai. The most comprehensive article is in the Independent:

Soaring demand for energy and heavy dependence on coal, China is often depicted as the world's environmental bogeyman. Yet Dongtan, a ground-breaking eco-city to be built near Shanghai, is already setting new standards in sustainable urban planning and inspiring decision-makers worldwide - including London's mayor, Ken Livingstone.

Dongtan will be built just 3km from a bird sanctuary whose varied residents include the endangered black-faced spoonbill (just one thousand of these large, white wading birds are estimated to remain in the wild). And its location, in protected wetlands on Chongming Island at the mouth of the Yangtze river, doesn't exactly sound like a good starting point for an environmentally sustainable city with a population of half a million.

But Dongtan's designers insist that it's a blueprint for how cities could support, rather than destroy, the environment. For its two major goals are to generate zero carbon emissions and cut average energy demands by two thirds via a unique city layout, energy infrastructure and building design.

"Two years ago we were approached to assess the likely ecological impact of developing a city in an area adjacent to protected wetland," says Alejandro Gutierrez, design leader for Dongtan at Arup Urban Design, London. "Our belief was that there was a wonderful opportunity to build a new city that, through its design and construction, would also address a broader range of concerns, such as air quality, and energy demand."...

...Dongtan will be built on an island that has grown over the past 100 years from silt dumped by the Yangtze. The Chinese government has consistently reclaimed land from the marshlands around it, but the plan is that Dongtan will be the area's last piece of development - so further silt deposits will simply increase the available natural habitat for the birds.

Well, the proximity of the bird sanctuary does give one pause. But the plans for Dongtan sound pretty impressive:

The city itself is being designed around a series of village-style neighbourhoods to make it pedestrian- rather than car-friendly. The alignment of streets will capitalise on the microclimates created by urban development, and the width and aspect of buildings will optimise the benefits of shade and direct sun to ensure efficient energy use. An integrated mix of residential, commercial and industrial areas - common in the West but unusual in China - will ensure people walk to most places they need to reach.

Technology to both generate and save energy will be integrated into buildings and all modes of transport. The emphasis is on making eco-living the norm, rather than trumpeting Dongtan's green credentials with bold - and, potentially, intimidating - statements.

"We don't want to replicate a European city in China, or create an alienating futuristic environment," says urban designer Braulio Morera, who is also working on the Arup team. "We want to reinterpret a Chinese city - and Chinese urban lifestyle - for the 21st century. Bicycles, for example, will be a major feature, as will boats, but the bikes will be powered by renewables, and the boats by hydrogen."

Dongtan's developers are also commited to returning agricultural land around the city to its original wetland state. This will create a buffer zone between the city and the marshes that will cut down the spread of pollutants to areas where the black-faced spoonbills congregate. Farmland around the city will grow food for the residents.

The project has implications far beyond China. For better or worse, cities are the future homes for most of humanity. A project like Dongtan could provide a blueprint for sustainable development around the world. It's a model we desperately need.