NOTE FROM JONAH: This is Part V of XII in The Million Tree Project, a video series documenting Shanghai Roots & Shoots efforts to combat desertification in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.

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“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”
THE MILLION TREE PROJECT CHAPTER INDEX
1. The Project
2. Desertification
3. The Volunteers
4. A Wall of Trees
5. Corporate Social Responsibility
6. A Volunteer’s Life
7. Life on the Desert’s Edge
8. A Local’s Life
9. Education
10. Working Together
11. The Man Who Planted Trees
12. A Better Future

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Shanghai Roots & Shoots’ Million Tree Project, which began in 2007, aims to raise community awareness of the Earth’s precious environment while focusing on steps individuals can take to lessen their negative impact on the natural world. The project gives individuals and organizations an opportunity to fight global warming by planting oxygen-producing trees in Inner Mongolia, China. It also encompasses true capacity building as the local population is intimately involved with, and benefits from, every step of planting, maintaining and monitoring the trees.

The Million Tree Project is designed to improve both ecological and humanitarian conditions of Kulun Qi, Tongliao municipality, lnner Mongolia, We chose this project site because the area suffers severely from desertification and its consequential sandstorms. These sandstorms strike Inner Mongolia and its surrounding areas each spring, destroying local homes and forcing many people to flee their native land.

The Goal: Shanghai Roots & Shoots aims to plant one million trees in the Inner Mongolian desert by 2014. We have a long-term Memorandum of Understanding in place with the Forestry Bureau of Kunlun Qi to reach this goal, and have secured land for one million trees (planting an average of 1500 trees per hectare). As of April 2010, we have planted 400,000 trees.

Learn how you can help at mtpchina.org

NOTE FROM JONAH: This is Part IV of XII in “The Million Tree Project” a video series documenting Shanghai Roots & Shoots efforts to combat desertification in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.

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“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”
THE MILLION TREE PROJECT CHAPTER INDEX
1. The Project
2. Desertification
3. The Volunteers
4. A Wall of Trees
5. Corporate Social Responsibility
6. A Volunteer’s Life
7. Life on the Desert’s Edge
8. A Local’s Life
9. Education
10. Working Together
11. The Man Who Planted Trees
12. A Better Future

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Shanghai Roots & Shoots’ Million Tree Project, which began in 2007, aims to raise community awareness of the Earth’s precious environment while focusing on steps individuals can take to lessen their negative impact on the natural world. The project gives individuals and organizations an opportunity to fight global warming by planting oxygen-producing trees in Inner Mongolia, China. It also encompasses true capacity building as the local population is intimately involved with, and benefits from, every step of planting, maintaining and monitoring the trees.

The Million Tree Project is designed to improve both ecological and humanitarian conditions of Kulun Qi, Tongliao municipality, lnner Mongolia, We chose this project site because the area suffers severely from desertification and its consequential sandstorms. These sandstorms strike Inner Mongolia and its surrounding areas each spring, destroying local homes and forcing many people to flee their native land.

The Goal: Shanghai Roots & Shoots aims to plant one million trees in the Inner Mongolian desert by 2014. We have a long-term Memorandum of Understanding in place with the Forestry Bureau of Kunlun Qi to reach this goal, and have secured land for one million trees (planting an average of 1500 trees per hectare). As of April 2010, we have planted 400,000 trees.

Learn how you can help at mtpchina.org

NOTE FROM JONAH: This is Part III of XII in “The Million Tree Project” a video series documenting Shanghai Roots & Shoots efforts to combat desertification in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.

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“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”
THE MILLION TREE PROJECT CHAPTER INDEX
1. The Project
2. Desertification
3. The Volunteers
4. A Wall of Trees
5. Corporate Social Responsibility
6. A Volunteer’s Life
7. Life on the Desert’s Edge
8. A Local’s Life
9. Education
10. Working Together
11. The Man Who Planted Trees
12. A Better Future

---

Shanghai Roots & Shoots’ Million Tree Project, which began in 2007, aims to raise community awareness of the Earth’s precious environment while focusing on steps individuals can take to lessen their negative impact on the natural world. The project gives individuals and organizations an opportunity to fight global warming by planting oxygen-producing trees in Inner Mongolia, China. It also encompasses true capacity building as the local population is intimately involved with, and benefits from, every step of planting, maintaining and monitoring the trees.

The Million Tree Project is designed to improve both ecological and humanitarian conditions of Kulun Qi, Tongliao municipality, lnner Mongolia, We chose this project site because the area suffers severely from desertification and its consequential sandstorms. These sandstorms strike Inner Mongolia and its surrounding areas each spring, destroying local homes and forcing many people to flee their native land.

The Goal: Shanghai Roots & Shoots aims to plant one million trees in the Inner Mongolian desert by 2014. We have a long-term Memorandum of Understanding in place with the Forestry Bureau of Kunlun Qi to reach this goal, and have secured land for one million trees (planting an average of 1500 trees per hectare). As of April 2010, we have planted 400,000 trees.

Learn how you can help at mtpchina.org

NOTE FROM JONAH: This is Part II of XII in “The Million Tree Project” a video series documenting Shanghai Roots & Shoots efforts to combat desertification in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.

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“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”
THE MILLION TREE PROJECT CHAPTER INDEX
1. The Project
2. Desertification
3. The Volunteers
4. A Wall of Trees
5. Corporate Social Responsibility
6. A Volunteer’s Life
7. Life on the Desert’s Edge
8. A Local’s Life
9. Education
10. Working Together
11. The Man Who Planted Trees
12. A Better Future

---

Shanghai Roots & Shoots’ Million Tree Project, which began in 2007, aims to raise community awareness of the Earth’s precious environment while focusing on steps individuals can take to lessen their negative impact on the natural world. The project gives individuals and organizations an opportunity to fight global warming by planting oxygen-producing trees in Inner Mongolia, China. It also encompasses true capacity building as the local population is intimately involved with, and benefits from, every step of planting, maintaining and monitoring the trees.

The Million Tree Project is designed to improve both ecological and humanitarian conditions of Kulun Qi, Tongliao municipality, lnner Mongolia, We chose this project site because the area suffers severely from desertification and its consequential sandstorms. These sandstorms strike Inner Mongolia and its surrounding areas each spring, destroying local homes and forcing many people to flee their native land.

The Goal: Shanghai Roots & Shoots aims to plant one million trees in the Inner Mongolian desert by 2014. We have a long-term Memorandum of Understanding in place with the Forestry Bureau of Kunlun Qi to reach this goal, and have secured land for one million trees (planting an average of 1500 trees per hectare). As of April 2010, we have planted 400,000 trees.

Learn how you can help at mtpchina.org

NOTE FROM JONAH: This is Part I of XII in “The Million Tree Project,” a video series documenting Shanghai Roots & Shoots efforts to combat desertification in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.

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“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”
THE MILLION TREE PROJECT CHAPTER INDEX
1. The Project
2. Desertification
3. The Volunteers
4. A Wall of Trees
5. Corporate Social Responsibility
6. A Volunteer’s Life
7. Life on the Desert’s Edge
8. A Local’s Life
9. Education
10. Working Together
11. The Man Who Planted Trees
12. A Better Future

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Creating a twelve part video series is actually quite difficult — given how the videos would be aired. These videos will be aired on a Dragon TV, a Hong Kong based television station, on Saturdays and Sundays for a six week period. The videos were all supposed to be around two minutes; however, we have to assume the each viewer has not seen the preceding episode. This means the videos had to function both individually and as a sequential series.

To do this we started by making a 30 second trailer, which would begin each episode and hopefully get viewers caught to speed. The next 1.5-2 minutes would be unique content about some unqiue aspect of this project. Coming up with twelve themes was a bit challenging, but in the end, proved no problem.

To begin the series, we started with the project itself.

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Shanghai Roots & Shoots’ Million Tree Project, which began in 2007, aims to raise community awareness of the Earth’s precious environment while focusing on steps individuals can take to lessen their negative impact on the natural world. The project gives individuals and organizations an opportunity to fight global warming by planting oxygen-producing trees in Inner Mongolia, China. It also encompasses true capacity building as the local population is intimately involved with, and benefits from, every step of planting, maintaining and monitoring the trees.

The Million Tree Project is designed to improve both ecological and humanitarian conditions of Kulun Qi, Tongliao municipality, lnner Mongolia, We chose this project site because the area suffers severely from desertification and its consequential sandstorms. These sandstorms strike Inner Mongolia and its surrounding areas each spring, destroying local homes and forcing many people to flee their native land.

The Goal: Shanghai Roots & Shoots aims to plant one million trees in the Inner Mongolian desert by 2014. We have a long-term Memorandum of Understanding in place with the Forestry Bureau of Kunlun Qi to reach this goal, and have secured land for one million trees (planting an average of 1500 trees per hectare). As of April 2010, we have planted 400,000 trees.

Learn how you can help at mtpchina.org

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One year after an intense drinking match with some (far rougher than I) Inner Mongolian farmers I found myself staring at a desert I had photographed for China Daily.

This time, free from the shackles of the propaganda machine, I was sent to create twelve short videos documenting the work of Shanghai Roots & Shoots program combating desertification known as The Million Tree Project.

This was the first assignment I’d had in a very long, where I had to shoot the same thing twice in a year. This used to happen when I worked at the Tahoe Daily Tribune — events would repeat themselves, in what is often referred to as “calendar journalism.” While I used to hate this in my days at Lake Tahoe — this repeat of an assignment was different.

It was different because it gave me a chance to evaluate my progress as a visual journalist over the course of one year. A shoot in the same country, same location, same subjects with the same output.

Last year I created a single 4 minute video that combined some interviews with some still photographs. This year, in a similar timeframe — I created twelve, two-minute videos.

And like last year, I saw sprawling deserts, wind whipped children and farmers who’se lives have been taken over by the desert. However, unlike last year — this year I came with a new perspective on how to create stories. And unlike last year, this year I had a small budget which meant being able to hire more people to help. After having just finished up the hutong project, and the underground city project I grabbed friend and colleague Kit GIllet and we packed our kit (pun intended) and took off for Kulun Qi, Inner Mongolia.

While last year’s kit included a Canon 5D Mark II and a tripod, this year’s kit required a little more effort to carry. This year, I brought with me: a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, a Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM, Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM, Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM, Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, Canon Extender EF 2X II, Rode VideoMic: On Camera Directional Video Condenser Microphone, Zoom H1 Handycam Audio Recorder, Kessler Krane Pocket Dolly v2.0, Traveler Size, (2x) Manfrotto 190Cx Carbon Fibre Q90 4-section Tripod, and a custom rig made built from a Jag35 DSLR Adapter, a (2x) 12″ carbon fibre Ikan Rods, D-Focus Follow Focus, aGini Customized Shoulder Rig, Ikan Cheese plate & Rod Adapter, Genus Lens Gear and Shoot35 Lens Gear, Monitor-X and Loupe Kit Viewfinders and my always trusty Blackrapids RS DR-2 Slim Double Strap and Blackrapids RS-7 R-Strap.

This gear actually all fits into one F-Stop Satori pack and one F-Stop Tilopa pack. These are both part of F-Stop’s mountain series packs which I now use in conjuction with some hard shell Pelican cases for holding glass and “dangerous” rods under the plane.

The bags are similar, but the Satori is slightly bigger. The Satori is a 58 Liter (3,500 Cubic Inches) bag that allows me to carry varying amounts of camera gear, clothes, water/food, tripods and a slider. The bag looks and feels more like a hiking bag than a camera bag. This is good for a number of reasons. First, you can hike with it or walk around a desert, city or anywhere else for a long period of time without having an acquiredly shaped bag screwing up your back. Second, its kind of nice to not look like your carrying $20,000+ in your bag as you travel (obviously, strapping a lot of gear to the outside won’t help you here). Pending what I’m doing I’ll take the bag off while I’m actually shooting, but its certainly possible to shoot while carrying all of this (see above photo of me at an Inner Mongolian school).

The word “varying” above is truly possible with this bag. F-Stop bag’s contain what they call an ICU, or Internal Camera Unit. This is a separate bag with backloading access from the main bag. The ICU’s come in four different sizes and allow you to adjust how much camera gear you need vs. traveling and living gear. The ICU itself doesn’t add too much weight to your setup and a provides amazing flexibility, per assignment.

You can imagine this is a lot of gear to keep track of and cart around; however, the more my career progresses I’m quickly learning, this actually isn’t that much gear for a single assignment. Having more bodies around to help carry it, certainly helps — but often a sad reality is — the more gear you have, the more options you have. Of course, this job could have been done with a 5DMII and tripod, but the difference between last year’s film and this years is infinitely different.

Reforstation, Desertification and Roots & Shoots

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”

Over the next two weeks I’ll post one video a day, documenting Roots & Shoots efforts to combat desertification in Inner Mongolia. If you are unfamiliar with Roots & Shoots’ Million Tree Project, I encourage you to check out their web site and get involved. All it takes is a couple minutes and you can actually have an impact regardless of where you are in the world.

Shanghai Roots & Shoots’ Million Tree Project, which began in 2007, aims to raise community awareness of the Earth’s precious environment while focusing on steps individuals can take to lessen their negative impact on the natural world. The project gives individuals and organizations an opportunity to fight global warming by planting oxygen-producing trees in Inner Mongolia, China. It also encompasses true capacity building as the local population is intimately involved with, and benefits from, every step of planting, maintaining and monitoring the trees.

The Million Tree Project is designed to improve both ecological and humanitarian conditions of Kulun Qi, Tongliao municipality, lnner Mongolia, We chose this project site because the area suffers severely from desertification and its consequential sandstorms. These sandstorms strike Inner Mongolia and its surrounding areas each spring, destroying local homes and forcing many people to flee their native land.

The Goal: Shanghai Roots & Shoots aims to plant one million trees in the Inner Mongolian desert by 2014. We have a long-term Memorandum of Understanding in place with the Forestry Bureau of Kunlun Qi to reach this goal, and have secured land for one million trees (planting an average of 1500 trees per hectare). As of April 2010, we have planted 400,000 trees.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”
THE MILLION TREE PROJECT CHAPTER INDEX
1. The Project
2. Desertification
3. The Volunteers
4. A Wall of Trees
5. Corporate Social Responsibility
6. A Volunteer’s Life
7. Life on the Desert’s Edge
8. A Local’s Life
9. Education
10. Working Together
11. The Man Who Planted Trees
12. A Better Future

Check back here over the next two weeks for these twelve videos and learn how you can help stop desertification at mtpchina.org.

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As we near to the middle of 2011, I wanted to pause the photo blog and share with you some images from recent trips from the Year of the Rabbit. While some of these images have been published, most of this footage hasn’t quite made it to its final resting home. Ergo, this is a bit of a teaser of what’s to come. Some of these images you may have already seen from the recent project The Fate of Old Beijing: The Vanishing Hutongs. Other clips come from works in progress from India, the Philippines, Beijing and Inner Mongolia. Other parts are snippets of video from Nepal and Tibet that still haven’t found a home.

Music for this microproject has been graciously released by a fantastic Beijing based band of Mongolian heritage called Hanggai. Hanggai is a great example of a band blending traditional and modern sounds and instrument to create a very unique sound. While my images this year are largely concentrating on cultural issues of modernization in the developing world, Hanggai’s ethno-blend fit well in mind. The track “Gobi Road” comes from their new album “He Who Travels Far.” I absolutely love both this album and their first. You can purchase the album here.

未来看着会很好玩 ~ Wèi Lái Kàn Zhe Huì Hěn Hǎo Wán.

I’m currently in production of 18 different videos – with client’s geographical locations ranging from Beijing to London to New York. So to say the least, I’m busy. While this isn’t a new thing for those of you that know me, I can tell you balancing 18 video projects whose languages go from English to Chinese, to Hindi to Mongolian, to French to Tagalog is not the easiest thing in the world (just imagine trying to get everyone’s name spelled right). While some of these projects are independent, others I have the hutong production gang back together for a series of environmental films from Inner Mongolia, again working with journalist Kit Gillet and the tremendously helpful translator Ami Li.

I’m grounding myself in Beijing for a good bit to wrap up these unfinished projects; however, I’m still taking still photo assignments as they role in every week. This blog will wrap up the India travel photography series soon and then head toward the Philippines before heading to the deserts of Inner Mongolian. As normal, assignments from China will be intermixed with my normal visual, social and journalistic bantar.

Big things are planned for this summer – so stay tuned – and in the meantime, please enjoy some new images and Hanggai’s music.

Cheers,

Jonah

This is part III of A busy month behind the camera: Planes, trains, automobiles, donkeys, police cars and tuktuks, a travel log that details the month of April where I traveled through Xi’an (central China), Shanghai (East China) and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China (far North China).

This post brings you to Inner Mongolia for an article on desertification with China Daily reporter Daniel Chinoy, who I’ve worked with on a couple assignments now. In this part of China, degraded grasslands, nearby deserts and strong wings across what used to be rolling green hills, are some of the causes which create an effect called desertification. Sands are growing at such an alarming rate — they are making the land unfarmable and unlivable. Roughly 28 percent of China is now classified as desert. That’s an area of about 2.6 million square kilometers, or about seven times the size of Germany.

We followed Shanghai Roots & Shoots, Jane Goodall’s NGO, in a tree planting program. Trees help create a stable top soil which can stop the sands from spreading. The NGO’s “Million Tree Project” aims at both actual tree planting and adult and child education.

The most interesting part of the trip came when we decided to walk aimlessly into the dessert — in attempt to see for ourselves the spreading desert. The photo below is a 360 degree, 11 photo (242 megapixel) stitch of a high point I found in the desert. Click here or on the photo for a larger version. This is a bit confusing. The mound on the left side of the photo is the same mound on the right. However, the perspective on the right mound is facing South, while the perspective of the left mound is facing North. This enormous area was once completely covered with grass. Farmers lived here for thousands of years in a sustainable way. Now, you can see — this land is hardly farmable. However, if you look to the right hand side of the photo you can see five small silhouettes of people. These are Mongolian farmers.

Lessons from getting into a drinking
match with Mongolian farmers

I saw these farmers in the distance — and we decided to approach them to find out what they were doing out in the middle of nowhere. Turns out, this was their land. Growing up, their families farmed this land. They had herds of sheep and cattle that used to graze here. Coincidently, when we found them — they were also planting trees in attempt to gain their land back. These farmers were doing this independently under no government organization, program or NGO. They were sustenance farmers — only farming to live. Now, they are planting trees to live. However, the effects of tree planting are not quick. Ecologists with us said it might take over a decade to see the effects of their efforts.

The woman at the top of this post was one of these farmers. We spent the afternoon with the farmers watching them plant trees in sand. Since we had walked hours to get into the desert, the farmers offered us a ride back on their donkey cart, which than turned into an offer to come back to their house for some drinks. While debating if we should take up their offer of Mongolian hospitality, freelance photojournalist Sean Gallagher who was with us said with his most polite British accent, “well, we could go and have just one … it might be rude to say no.” These were Sean’s famous last sober words.

45 minutes later, we are in a stone house sitting at a table with 5 Mongols backed with pictures of Mao and Genghis Khan being taught how to pronounce the Mongolian word for “bottoms up.” Possibly spelled “Эрүүл мэндийн төлөө” and pronounced “Hundter,” this is not a friendly word like “cheers.” This word is for starting and finishing whatever is in your glass; it is far from a casual drinking idiom. In Chinese they say Gan bei 干杯 (“dry the cup”) and in English we might say “bottoms up.”

While this might not be a big deal if you were drinking beer, it is a big deal when you are drinking unlabeled, homemade Baijiu 白酒 served in a former vinegar bottle that would be filled up instantly if it were not full. If you’ve never had Baijiu, it tastes a little like gasoline mixed with Jägermeister and grappa. It is by far the most popular alcoholic drink in China and is pretty much everywhere in some form or another. If the above description didn’t make you want to throw up, drinking it surely will. Sean’s polite gesture to have one drink turned into about 10-15 from what we can all remember. Although this experience was very painful the next day, we did get some great stories out of the Mongolians about life in the desert today — and how different it was from their days growing up here.

The two lessons to take away from this hangover are:
1) Sometimes to get your story — you have to drink local booze and hope you don’t go blind.
2) No American or Englishman will ever out drink a Mongolian farmer.

Vanishing Grasslands: China’s Growing Sands

In four days in Inner Mongolia I took about 700 pictures and recorded about 20 GB worth of video. About 6 photos will be used next week in China Daily and a mixed media project will go to chinadaily.com.cn. You can see an early preview of the video here now as well as an extended edit of photos. This is a good example to show how much work we produce versus how much work is actually published. You can tell which photos I like or thought were the best by which ones appear in the video below. If your in China, and not using a VPN, the YouTube video won’t show up below. You can see the Quicktime version here).

I’ve just donated this media (photos and video) to Roots & Shoots. The video is also being turned into a 30 second spot ad for Roots & Shoots for television and iTouch media. So look out — you might be seeing a mini-version in Chinese cabs soon.