“It’s a pity to waste these greenhouses,” said the farmer. “Why can’t wecontinue farming until the bulldozers arrive?”
Having lived in the village for 64 years, Liu said he is reluctant to move outand totally cut off his bonds with the land.
“Does the government really need so much land to construct a railwaystation?” he asked.
“We are sacrificing agriculture, the most important thing, for transportationfacilities. What are we going to eat if all the farm lands are taken?
“If I could choose, I’d rather continue farming than getting all that money,”
he added.
June 8, 2010
Green NGO drives change at grass roots
How citizen groups are helping to clean up the countryside.
Li Jing reports from Henan.
When Tian Guirong first read Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 book that iscredited with helping to launch the environmental movement, it changed her life.
She was so inspired by the American naturalist’s courage to speak out about thehuman impact on ecology (Carson was harshly criticized at the time for her claimspesticides caused pollution), she knew she could make a real difference.
“I could not help but cry when I learned the author was fighting breast cancer whenshe wrote the book,” said the 58-year-old businesswoman from Xinxiang, Henan province.
“It forced me to ask myself, ‘Why don’t I do something to help save the environment'?”
In the years following Silent Spring, she has done just that and even founded China’sfirst “green” non-government organization (NGO) run solely by farmers.
Since its establishment in 2002, Xinxiang Environmental Protection Volunteershas collected more than 70 tons of waste batteries, a serious risk to the ecology in thecountryside, and led a pollution survey involving farmers across the whole drainage area ofthe Yellow River.
Although she finished her just studies after completing only primary education, bythe late 1990s Tian was a successful battery dealer in Xinxiang, having worked her way upfrom a saleswoman at a small township company a decade earlier.
It was not until she took a trip to the nation’s capital in 1999 did she become aware ofthe need for greater environmental protection.
“I read in a magazine I picked up in Beijing that the discharge from a leaking batterycan pollute up to 600,000 liters of water and, if buried, can sterilize 1 square meter offarmland,” said Tian. “I was shocked. I really didn’t know the business I was in could bepotentially harmful to the environment. After I came back from Beijing, I immediatelystarted to collect all the used batteries at my stall in the department store.”
She discovered that getting others as enthusiastic about environmental protection wasnot so easy, however.
Although the Friends of Nature - China’s first environmental NGO - was foundedin 1994, understanding on the green issue was still limited among the majority of theChinese public, and even less so in Xinxiang, a second-tier city in northern Henan.
Much to the confusion of her family, Tian invested her own savings to begin a batterycollecting campaign, as well as printed leaflets and organized public activities to spread theenvironmental message. In 2001, she also launched greentian.org, a website to gather anddisseminate information on green issues.
“I didn’t have much education but I tried to improve my knowledge as much aspossible. Luckily, the Xinxiang environmental protection bureau offered a lot of help,”
said the eco-activist. “I began to borrow books from the bureau, including Silent Spring,and I was also the first farmer to ever subscribe to China Environment News, an officialpublication of the State ministry.”
Films also offered more inspiration for Tian, including the Oscar-winning ErinBrockovich, the true-life tale of an unemployed single mother who exposed a series ofindustrial poisonings in the United States and helped to bring a powerful company tojustice.
“Even with Chinese subtitles, I still had to watch the video three times to fullyunderstand it. The story gave me the courage to do something similar,” she said.
Targeting polluters
Raised in a village called Fanling, Tian said she has many beautiful memories from herchildhood.
“The village is at the foot of Taihang mountain and a tributary of the Yellow Riverruns through it,” she said. “The scenery used to be really good and, some winters, wildgeese would stay at a nearby lake.”
As more factories moved into the area over the last two decades, the water in thevillage stream has turned black, while large numbers of villagers now suffer from illnessescaused by pollution, such as cancer, she said.
After meeting with staff from China’s leading environmental NGOs in 2001, shedecided to set up her own in Henan.
“There were already some environmental NGOs at that time but mostly based in bigcities like Beijing and Shanghai. I felt the rural areas also needed such organizations,” saidTian.
Twelve months later, Xinxiang Environmental Protection Volunteers was ready foraction. Its first target: river pollution in Henan.
Starting out with just a dozen volunteers, the group began its pollution survey inXinxiang in 2003, creating a comprehensive “pollution map”. Two years later, the projectwas expanded along the Yellow River.
The group now boasts more than 3,000 members, including farmers, students, andworkers.
Every year, the self-funded volunteers spent several months on inspections of pollutingfactories. They took pictures of discharges from plants, collected water near sewage inflowpoints, tested them and sent the results to local environmental protection bureaus.
“We have helped close more than 100 polluting factories,” said Tian proudly. “I havebecome a common enemy of these enterprises.”
The name Tian Guirong is now notorious in Xinxiang and neighboring counties.
Whenever a factory is reported for illegal discharging of pollutants, many people in theregion automatically believe she was the one who turned them in.