China’s Environmental Consciousness
The Ditch in the Temporary Housing Camp
Each day, I lament at the fact that everywhere I turn, I see trash. Litter fills rain gutters in the Refugee Camp. The people throw wrappers and other consumer packaging on the ground as they walk around. And my biggest pet peeve, the incredible amount of spitting that goes on, both inside and outside buildings. Today, I even saw a 6-year old kid pooping in a field. If you speak with most Chinese, they’ll respond that this is how their society works, and these habits are very hard to change. So today, I really started to question whether this perspective is true. Surely, if given the a fully-informed choice of living in a sustainable way, versus living in environmental degradation, they would choose sustainability, right?
I spent the day speaking with one of the most effective community organizers that I’ve met in China so far. Her name is Wang Lin, and she’s the local representative of Beijing Green Gross, an NGO dedicated to developing a “new countryside” in China, one that systematically changes the way it interacts with its environment. Currently, Beijing Green Cross is helping design earthquake-resistant housing in three communities in Sichuan, using all local materials, and with some of these houses, they’re building with cement bricks, which are bricks that do not require coal-fired baking, and therefore uses less energy to produce. Green Cross handles most of the architectural design and training of builders, while these houses are primarily financed by local farmers themselves. Through our conversations, what became apparent was the difficulty in changing behavior. For example, on the outside, rural farmers really seem to appreciate any kind of resources Green Cross can provide, but problems arose when Green Cross’s designs did not match with local preferences. Farmers hated the gray-colored bricks, and wanted red bricks, which are coal-fired.
I asked Wang Ling how she went about convincing villagers to change their preferences. First, she had to demonstrate that she was in the community for the long-haul. She never took any food from community members, came to the villages several times a week, and never promised things that she could not deliver. She also contacted local village leaders and worked with them closely on how to redesign their community. As for convincing local residents, it took a lot of town hall meetings. At first, town hall meetings were loud, disorganized, and argumentative, but after months of meetings and discussions, the residents began accepting the designs that Green Cross produced and conducting meetings in a more courteous fashion.
A walk through the village with Wang Ling demonstrated how well-known she is in the community. She knew the names of nearly every village and neighborhood leader in all the sites, and was close enough to the community where she could just walk into any home and be welcomed by its residents. She continues to refuse dinner invitations, citing that villagers have enough to worry about and that she should not add the burden of another mouth to feed for any of them. In Sichuan, Green Cross’s first and foremost concern is to help residents build sustainable buildings to live in. Then, the real work of educating residents on reducing littering, using organic farming methods, storing methane gas for energy use, and recycling water, will begin. She predicts that each of these behavioral changes will require the same time and effort to overcome as the cement brick hurdle. But I think she has developed a very solid base of social capital within the community to push forward. This leads me to think that any kind of true behavioral change on the environment will require good organizers on the ground, rather than blowhorn methods from the government, which have not worked here for decades.
Written by Lin Yang · Filed Under All Blogs
Lin Yang is currently a second year MPP candidate at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Prior to Harvard, he spent six months at Tsinghua University in Beijing, conducting research on China's shortage of water resources. He also taught high school mathematics for two years in the Mississippi Delta as part of Teach for America.
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