My apologize in the delay in the India photo series — busy as a bee back in Beijing. However, before commencing again in Rajasthan I wanted to give a public awareness announcement tonight is the World Wildlife Foundation’s Earth Hour. What does this mean? It means everyone should turn off their lights in a glorious global blackout to promote environmental awareness of our massive energy consumption. For the event I’ll be helping WWF shooting the massive blackout in Beijing. We did a test run last night, which gave me access to some high ground in Beijing’s CBD, which can be a bit difficult to access.
If you were unaware, one of my most common things I say is “If only I had a helicopter right now.” While no commercial or private helicopters exist in China yet, I’m still always looking for a high point to shoot from. To demonstrate the black out in Beijing’s Central Business District I put out the wild idea of getting on top of the roof of the China World Trade Center. When I asked, the response that came back was — “we’ll see.=,” with the typical tonality you would expect to actually mean “no.” So, I made this small very technical diagram and sent it to along with my request:
Lucky for me, the WTC actually granted me access to the massive structures in the city of 22 million people. While the real earth hour is tonight, I got to check it out and do some testing last night.
So although this was a practice, the World Trade Center cut off power (almost completely) to the main tower to help setup the shot and their systems for the actual event tonight. I’m hoping to get similar shots to the above (shot with a 24mm prime) – however, with the rest of the city blacked out along with the massive trade center tower. While I can only be in one place at once, to help out – we’ve positioned photographer Gabriel Clermont at the Water cube and Bird’s Nest to show other iconic spots of Beijing.
Beijing usually doesn’t feel like a big city to me. In fact, if you stay in the old cart of the city you won’t ever see a skyscrapper. However, from on top of these buildings its a little easier to see that Beijing is in fact — one big F-ing city.
Above, you can see the iconic CCTV television building (or as I like to refer to them as – “the legs”) from above at night. If you look behind “the legs” the sprawl hits the infinite mark of the depth of field.
While I stood on top of the building last night trying not to freeze my a*s off, it was hard not to look around and actually be overwhelmed by the energy used on a nightly basis — just to light the environment of 22 million people. Photographically this makes things fairly difficult to show darkness. The light pollution which I’ve seen as far away as Hebei province, is extremely strong within the city center. Strong enough to light up the sky.
With the advise of Jane Goodall earlier this year, I’ve been trying to not take elevators as a method to save energy. In this scenario, the 50 odd floors with the enormous camera bags warented it – but this is my small goal this year. No more four story elevators.
So while everyone should shut down their tweet decks (although there is an Earth Hour Twitter application which will turn your Twitter profile black for the hour), living room lights and televisions for an hour at 8:30 pm, in the meantime we can get a perspective of light in China’s capital city. Here is the release from WWF on Earth Hour:
What is Earth Hour?
It is the biggest environmental awareness campaign ever seen!
When is it?
Earth Hour takes place once every year. On the last Saturday of March.
What’s the aim?
To raise environmental awareness and get us doing small things in our daily lives that together can have huge impacts.
What does it involve?
Simply turning off your lights for 1 hour. Earth’s hour.
How useful is this?
Earth Hour is a highly “visible” symbolic act.
One that millions of people can easily join in with. And one that allows you to have fun while sending out a serious message to our politicians and governments, that says: “I care about my planet!”
Beyond the Hour
Earth Hour 2011 will go beyond the hour and beyond climate change, marking a moment where every individual, government and business can make their commitment to environmentally sustainable action for the forthcoming year. Homes, offices, government buildings and iconic landmarks will go dark to acknowledge the actions of people from all corners of the globe that go beyond the hour.
People say to me so often, “Jane how can you be so peaceful when everywhere around you people want books signed, people are asking these questions and yet you seem peaceful,” and I always answer that it is the peace of the forest that I carry inside. — Dr. Jane Goodall
Recently, Jane Goodall gave me a kiss … to clarify, this was the type of kiss your grandmother gives you on the cheek.
Ok, fair enough, you say, but why were you with Jane Goodall?
By empower young populations with knowledge and passion, Goodall’s presence in China has helped fuel other NGO’s to begin to operate.
Goodall’s message of peace has inspired young young and old generations throughout the country. There are now over 600 individual Roots & Shoots groups in China working to improve social and environmental conditions. The groups strive to create better conditions for animal populations, the environment and the human community.
This was my third time working with Shanghai Roots & Shoots. Earlier this year I created a video documenting their work in Inner Mongolia fighting desertification and more recently in Anhui Province, where the NGO is helping to diminish poverty through education. As always, this NGO has their metaphorical sh*t together. The entire weekend with Dr. Goodall was orchestrated to a T, allowing as many people to meet Dr. Jane as possible. I point this out, because its actually quite rare. Many NGO’s are chasing their tales in trying to stay organized (which given the Chinese social, environmental and political environment is not always easy).
Following Dr. Jane around was actually exhausting — her schedule being completely full form sun up to sun down. Speech after speech, award after award, meet — greet — repeat. While this isn’t the most exciting thing to photograph, what is exciting was to see Dr. Jane’s energy (at age 76) and the public’s reaction to her presence. In between the hand shakes and banquets, I did get a lot of time to have “small chat” with Jane. Riding around in a mini van together all weekend.
After meeting her I was truly impressed by her ethics and character. She was truly inspirational in her hope and consistent effort to make a better and sustainable world. I’ve met lots of other celebrities — however, you don’t often get a chance to meet a celebrity like Goodall. She is a celebrity for different reasons than most. She’s not an athlete, an actress or a rich heir to a hotel company. In fact — she is really just famous for being a good person (and a smart one). From a pure ethical and intellectual merit, Dr. Jane is known around the globe.’
This is all great, but it still doesn’t explain why she kissed you, you say?
Beyond being inspirational and motivational, Dr. Goodall is also just about the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet. We also shared a lot in common. In had never occurred to me until I met her, this lady is probably not so much a “city person.” This is the type of person who can spend weeks in the wilderness observing animals. A woman who has probably spent more of her life outdoors than inside.
Although I live in a quaint city full 20 million people, I would also not describe me as a “city person.” I too, like to hike, camp and have a good adventure in the outdoors. Although, I can guarantee that she likes monkeys more than I do. Nonetheless, we just got along.
It was a real pleasure hanging out with Dr. Jane for 3 days and on my way back to Beijing, she thanked me and gave me a hug and kiss. C’est la fin.
Please take a moment to go visit the Asia Society China Green site here and the Asia Society’s main site here. There are tons of great videos, photos and reports from around China and Asia.
Also, two great stories by China Daily reporter Erik Neilson on Goodall’s visit here and here.
Below are some stills from the weekend with Dr. Jane. The images show a variety of events from inside the Shanghai Expo to the historic Bund area. You are looking at students, volunteers, parents and the general public reacting to Jane’s speeches and presence.
Note from Jonah: This is the continuation of a photo series from the Great Himalayan Mountain Range. The photos document a journey by car, foot, boat, plane and elephant from Tibet to Nepal.
From Lhasa to the edge of the Himalayan, growth and vegetation on the Tibetan landscape is almost non existent. If you remember back to the Tibetan Cloudscape post, there are very little trees throughout the Tibetan plateau.
The lack of vegetation comes in large part from logging and deforestation which contributes to desertification and other natural disasters such as excessive flooding and major erosion problems which can lead to deadly landslides. Poor land use from the time of the cultural revolution to modern times have played a large role in the degradation of Tibet’s grassland’s as well. After the recent landslide in Gansu province, information came out that they had even anticipated these effects:
A 2006 report by Lanzhou University warned of the dangers presented by the destruction of the forests around Zhouqu for mining and agriculture, causing soil erosion and destabilising hillsides.
“The hills have become highly unstable and easily subject to natural disaster of landslides and mudslides,” the report said. “The situation is the result of deforestation, exploitative mining activities, construction of hydroelectric power plants and other development activities.”
While in Shigatse a sand storm swept though the town. With no growth on the forest floor outside of the town, an ocean of sand took over the town with no notice. Some fled indoors, others took their donkeys and ran, while others stood with squinting eyes and held their ground.
I’ve seen major areas being taken over by deserts in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, but for some reason in Tibet, it seemed strange to see the sands infiltrate towns. In part this was strange because Tibet is so much further South than Inner Mongolia — especially on the Nepalese border. It visually connected a problem that stretches for an entire nation in my mind.
Currently, about 28 percent of China is covered by desert. While desertification is a global problem, deserts are growing faster in China than anywhere else in the world. Each year in China, the desert grows around 900 square miles a year — which is around the size of Rhode Island.
Although their are major efforts going on to combat the problem, the Chinese continue logging within Tibet. Although I’ve not seen it, there was a film made by Tibetans which was smuggled out of the country without the help of foreigners called Cutting Down Tibet which secretly documents current operations. It looks and sounds very interesting.
So — why cut down all the trees? There are many reasons, including mass production of furniture and mass consumption and production of paper. However a more interesting reason to cut down so many trees and create so many sandy towns is China’s massive chop stick production. According to Green Peace China:
In addition to the forty-five billions pairs of disposable chopsticks used each year in China, another eighteen billion pairs are exported. Disposable chopsticks are made, obviously, from wood (in most cases from birch or poplar, but in some cases from expensive bamboo). Greenpeace China estimates that to create that many disposable chopsticks per year, a hundred acres of trees need to be chopped down every twenty-four hours. That means that every day there is a forest the size of a hundred U.S. football fields chopped down … to make chopsticks. If you want to think of it in terms of individual trees instead of land mass, it’s between sixteen and twenty-five million trees per year.
Shigatse: After the Storm
At an elevation of 3900 meters, Shigatse is Tibet’s second largest city after Lhasa. It is the traditional capital of the Tsang Province and home to the Tashilhunpo Monastery. This was one of my favorite monasteries in Tibet. It gives visitors a lot of room to explore, unlike the monasteries in Lhasa where you pretty much get guided around.
Monks, students and visitors were friendly here and the monastery itself is kind of like a small city, with a labyrinth of walls, cobblestone paths and stupas everywhere. The spaciousness of this monastery as well as the seemingly larger monk population made this monastery seem much more authentic.
Also very cool and nontouristy is the Tashilhunpo Kora, a path around the outside of the temple that gives you views of the town and into the monestery. A kora is:
Kora is both a type of pilgrimage and a type of meditation in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Kora is performed by making a walking circumambulation around a temple, stupa, or other sacred site.
Monks and pilgrims pray while spinning prayer wheels on the path that takes about an hour to walk. From above, looking into the monastery you can see monks singing, playing instruments and praying.
Also, worth a visit is the old city which is very mid-evil feeling. Something like walking into a different time with people milking their cows in the cobblestone streets outside of their houses. There was also not many soldiers around like in Lhasa.
Road Trip on the Himalayan Shelf: If you’re just joining now, here’s what you’ve missed:
Here is Daniel Chinoy’s story running in today’s China Daily on Desertification. Click on the thumbnailed pages for high res PDFs of the article. If you are in China and can’t see the YouTube video below, click here for the Quicktime version. If you missed the early post on this shoot, click here for some anecdotal notes on lessons learned from drinking with Mongolian farmers.
Villagers turn to trees as the last hope in holding back spreading desert. Daniel Chinoy reports from Inner Mongolia.
For generations, residents in Gaotou have earned their living by herding livestock on Inner Mongolia’s sweeping grasslands. Today, all that stands between rolling sand dunes and this small collection of brick houses, dirt roads and dusty fields are a few rows of poplar saplings that villagers like Yirugeletu (who, like many Mongolians, uses only one name) are working desperately to expand.
A tough, hard-drinking man with a thin moustache, Yirugeletu says the trees are Gaotou’s last line of defense against the desert, helping block the wind and anchor the soil.
“If the desert keeps expanding, we won’t be able to protect our fields,” explained the 32-year-old farmer. “If we don’t plant trees, the wind will blow the desert in.” That would make it impossible to grow the soybeans and maize that so many villagers in the autonomous region rely on, he said. Gaotou’s problems are hardly unique. According to a 2004 government survey – the most recent available – about 28 percent of China is classified as desert. That is about 2.6 million square kilometers, more than seven times the size of Germany.
Much of that desert is new, created only in the last two or three decades, as China’s rapid development sapped the region of its trees, grass and water.
The consequences have been severe. The advancing desert has forced farmers to work harder in the fields and spend more money to grow the crops they need to survive, said Liu Zhimin, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ institute for applied ecology in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province. Millions of people have had to flee their land, with many ending up as migrant workers in major cities.
“Desertification increases poverty,” said Liu. “It makes the land resources needed for raising animals and farming scarce, and consequently lowers farmers’ incomes.”
The Development Research Center of the State Council estimated in 2008 that desertification costs China about 54 billion yuan ($8 billion) in lost economic activity each year – a figure that some experts believe actually understates the problem.
Desertification also contributes to the enormous sandstorms that engulf parts of China every spring. The State Forestry Administration counted 12 this year across North China.
In response, many towns across China have, like Gaotou, turned to tree planting to protect their land. In 1978, the central government launched a massive campaign to subsidize tree and grass planting along the border of the Gobi desert, from Inner Mongolia to Gansu province, Qinghai province, the Ningxia Hui autonomous region and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Since 2000, the government has increased its investment in tree planting and expanded efforts to emphasize conservation, reduce over-grazing and over-cultivation, and encourage more careful use of water, according to Liu Tuo, director general of the National Bureau to Combat Desertification under the State Forestry Administration.
As a result, over the last decade, an estimated 10,000 square kilometers of grass and trees have been planted annually, he said.
Though these efforts have all helped to significantly slow the desert’s growth, experts say that it remains unclear whether the now enormous belts of trees along the edge of the desert – dubbed the “great green wall” – will be able to stop the desert from growing in the long term.
Getting it right
When done correctly, scientists agree there are clear benefits to planting trees. One of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) actively promoting tree planting is Shanghai-based Roots and Shoots, which manages a program called the Million Tree Project in Gaotou and several other small villages nearby.
“The planting of trees cool the ground in summer, help channel what water there is back into the ground, create habitats for birds to land and drop seeds, provide some cover for crops from the high heat in summer and stabilize the dunes,” said Robin Rose, a professor at Oregon State University and the program’s science adviser.
“We started the project with the concept that, if we come out here and work with the local farmers in this region, which lies right on the cusp of desertified land, then we can help stop the desert from expanding and help farmers reclaim the land that’s been taken over by the desert,” added project coordinator Alex Pulichino.
One of the most basic challenges, though, is choosing what to plant and where, something that has frequently been an issue in China’s tree planting efforts.
Daotian, a village of about 300 people two hours south of Gaotou, is near a reservoir and already has significantly more trees. However, most of the trees here were planted 20 years ago during a previous campaign and little thought was given to selecting the right species or location. Consequently, despite the more hospitable land, many of them are dying or have grown poorly because they need more water than is available.
To correct this, the county forestry bureau recently decided to cut down most of the trees and plant new ones. As part of this project, the Roots and Shoots volunteers planted about 500 poplars in Daotian this spring.
The poplar is native to Inner Mongolia and does not require much water to survive, making it particularly appropriate for the arid climate in places like Gaotou and Diaotian, said Sun Litao, forestry manager for Roots and Shoots.
“Initially, they planted the wrong kind of tree and it didn’t grow well. It didn’t fit the local ecosystem,” he said.
Daotian’s experience is not uncommon, experts say, and the planting of trees in places where they are unlikely to survive or will grow poorly remains a major problem. Often it is exacerbated by farmers who plant as many trees as possible to get the subsidies the government offers to support afforestation projects, regardless of whether they help fight the desert or not.
“China’s implementation of large-scale afforestation throughout arid and semi-arid regions has ignored differences in topography, climate and hydrology, all of which can affect tree survival,” wrote Cao Shixiong, a professor at China Agriculture University, in a 2008 article for the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
For its part, the State Forestry Administration acknowledges that this remains an issue, although Liu Tuo contends that it happens much less frequently than it used to. “We want to make sure the vegetation types are appropriate for where they are planted,” he said.
Farmers often also do not know how to take care of the trees after they have been planted – something that goes beyond simply watering and pruning them properly.
The trees play a complex role in the ecosystem, and understanding when to plant and what to plant near them is a key part of what makes planting trees an effective tool. Forestry manager Sun said he spends most of the year in Inner Mongolia to provide this kind of training to the farmers, which experts say is crucial to fighting desertification.
“We need to do capacity building in a very integrated way, with land management and integrated ecosystem management,” said Andrea De Angelis, the United Nations Development Program’s advisor on climate in Beijing. “We should ask people to plant trees and, in parallel, endow them with the skills to manage the trees.”
(CLICK ON PHOTO FOR LARGE PANORAMA)
Too much to bear
However, even planting the right trees in the right places in the right way can only do so much, especially given how difficult it is to control the complicated social, economic and environmental forces that can turn grassland to desert in just a matter of years.
Perhaps the most fundamental issue is population. With 1.3 billion people to feed, China’s farmers and herders have a strong incentive to over-plant and over-graze. Today, an estimated 90 percent of China’s grassland is considered degraded.
“It’s very easy to breed too many animals because of incentives from the market, but clearing too much land for farming and overgrazing can easily cause the land to degrade and eventually become desert,” said Li Wenjun, a professor of environmental science at Peking University.
In the wake of de-collectivization in 1978, villagers in Gaotou began breeding more livestock to sell to a rapidly growing market than they ever had before. At one point, most households, including Yirugeletu’s, were each tending to flocks of about 300 sheep and 80 cows.
The market brought other pressures, too. With the end of the commune system, families were suddenly reliant on their herds for new expenses that had previously been covered by the government, including medical bills, school fees, water, fertilizer and feed.
“The cost of living increased for the herders, so they raised more livestock,” said Hu Jingping, director of the Inner Mongolia Grassland Area Cooperation and Sustainable Development Research Center. “But the grasslands didn’t get any bigger.”
As a result, more livestock was grazing on smaller plots of grass than ever before, and sometime between 10 and 15 years ago, Gaotou simply ran out of grass. Without any cover, most of the topsoil was quickly blown away by the wind, leaving nothing but sand in its place.
“The sheep ate all the grass. When it was gone, the desert came,” said Yirugeletu.
Greater wealth, increased consumption of everything from plastics to washing machines, and rapid urbanization, including the settling down of once-nomadic populations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, have all exacerbated the problem by intensifying water use and lowering regional water tables.
“People’s standard of living has increased, and with that increase their ability to affect nature has increased, too,” said Hu Yuegao, director of the China Center for Management and Prevention of Desertification and a professor at China Agricultural University.
Global warming is also an important factor. “Once we have more CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere globally, the surface temperature is going to increase. In certain areas this can cause increased evaporation, which can exacerbate drought and desertification,” said De Angelis.
In some cases higher temperatures also cause ice and glaciers to melt more quickly, leading to flash floods. These can further erode the land around the rivers and streams that provide places like Inner Mongolia with what limited water they have, he added.
“China has not yet found a comprehensive answer to desertification,” said Hu Yuegao. “This is a problem that all of society created and will require all of society to fix, including government, businesses and ordinary people.”
In the meantime, for many the only option is to continue to put their faith in trees.
Wang Hua, one of Daotian’s wealthier farmers, has spent 20,000 yuan – a substantial portion of his savings – on new saplings to plant around his fields in addition to the trees donated by Roots and Shoots.
“These trees will protect us from the wind and the sand,” said the 52-year-old as he gestured hopefully at rows of recently planted poplars along his fields. “Because of them, I’m not worried about the desert.”
