South China Morning Post highlights Future Generations conservation efforts

The South China Morning Post is Hong Kong's premier English language newspaper.  Sarah Monks's article "Great Green Strides" lists several of the accomplishments that arose from Future Generations partnership with the Chinese government and universities.  The full article is available on SCMP.com (registration required), or you can read selected excerpts here:

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.