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Nature Conservancy's goals in China
Todd Mundt: But first, Nature Conservancy senior advisor Ed Norton has just returned from China where he has been having a look at what could become the worlds largest national park. Twenty times bigger than Yosemite National Park, the Three Rivers Project is an effort that involves the Nature Conservancy and the Chinese government, as well as other participants.
TM: Ed Norton joins me from NPR in Washington with a first-hand report. What did you see there?
Ed Norton: Todd, this is a spectacularly beautiful area. If you look on the map, the area of this park, the Yunnan Great Rivers Project. It's in northwest Yunnan Province, tucked up in the corner where China, Tibet, Burma or Myanmar, come together. It's the area where the four great rivers of Asia- the Irrawaddy, the Mekong, the Nu (Salween), and the Yangtze plunge off the Tibetan plateau, run north and south into China and then, respectively into Burma, southeast Asia in the case of the Mekong, and the Yangtze on eastward into the central part of China and then to the sea. So it's an area of four great rivers and five high mountain ranges, basically mountain ranges up to 20,000 feet. It's one of the biodiversity hotspots of the world, the epicenter of rhododendron and Azaleas naturally wild growing. Plants, animals, 15 of China's ethnic minorities live in this area- Tibetan people, ethnic minorities from southeast Asia. So it's an area that is really marked by its natural and cultural richness and diversity. It's really spectacularly beautiful, one of the great places in the world I've ever been.
TM: I see on the map. It fascinating, I think, to see these rivers running parallel to each other especially as close as they are, at least on the small map I have. You don't often see that, usually the rivers come together.
EN: That is, without overusing the word, unique. There is really no place like this in the world. You're right, the map that you have is accurate. These four great rivers are within about 80 kilometers of each other, separated, as I said before, by these high mountain ranges. So it really is unique. And in fact that is one of the basis of this area being nominated as a world heritage site, this unique earth form or geology, if you will, of four great rivers and these 5 high mountain ranges, which are really the foothills, if you will, of the Himalayas sort of the bow ways of the Himalayas that are being pushed up by India colliding with Asia and it's that very unique geology that creates this marvelous hotspot of biodiversity.
TM: Would ecologists call this area pristine? You say there are people who live there
EN: There are people who have lived there. And, in fact, in our project area there are over 3 million people living there, so in that sense it's very different from Yellowstone or Yosemite. And these people have lived there for thousands of years, both on a permanent basis and on a seasonal basis, lived there and used this area. So that's a very important factor in developing the plans for both how the natural and cultural resources in this project area will be protected.
TM: What is the origin of this project?
EN: The project actually has its origins in a Thai - Bangkok - real estate developer having an interest in developing a ski resort on one of the highest peaks in the region. And the Thai real estate developer brought a American consultant over who took one look at this area and said, "This is not a ski resort, this is a national park. You ought to talk to the Nature Conservancy." And the Thai developer brought the Nature Conservancy over there to take look at it. And then, of course, the Thai economy and the rest of the Asian financial crisis caused the Thai developer to really drop out of this. In the meantime, the Nature Conservancy and the Chinese government started talking. The Chinese government expressed an interest in having the advice of Nature Conservancy in creating a system, if you will, of protected areas, nature reserves, national parks in the area as really kind of a core protected area and that's how the project got started.
TM: And I don't want to, again, overuse the word unique, but it seems a unique situation in that you have managed to get this land just before development begins. In a lot of places you end up having to try to erase development as try to develop parkland area.
EN: Well, I think that you're right. This is really a critical time. The northwest Yunnan province is an area of high interest to the central government in China and also to the provincial government. As you know, last year there were very, very severe floods in the lower reaches of the Yangtze and other major rivers in China. And in response to that, the central government in China last October imposed a very severe ban on all commercial logging in the upper reaches of these rivers. Now, commercial logging was a very important economic activity so now government at all levels - central, provincial, and local government- is really looking for alternatives how people can live in this region. This is one of the poorest areas of China and it is an area, as I indicated, with a large number - 16 - of china's ethnic minorities and so it's an area for a number of reasons the Chinese government is very interested in developing a plan for it's long term both economic future and protection of there national resources and the Chinese see those two as marching in lockstep; those two goals of economic development and natural and cultural resource protection as really marching in lockstep with each other
TM: Now in this country when we talk about those two marching together there's a lot of suspicion on the part of many people that it's just cover for economic development to take place and a lot of land to be ruined. Is there that concern in China? That, after all, this country is developing quickly these people do need jobs, the country does need to grow. Is there a concern that those imperatives might surpass the imperatives of preserving this land?
EN: Yes, there is acute to that issue, exactly as you phrase it on the part of Chinese scientific community and also on the part of the government. People in the government are well aware of the potential conflict and certainly people in the Chinese scientific community are aware of that potential conflict.
TM: How do you envision this plan developing? Is it a Nature Conservancy plan in China? Is it a Chinese plan in which the Nature Conservancy taking a role?
EN: That's a very important question and the answer to it is that this is a Chinese project that the Nature Conservancy is playing an advisory role. It is a Chinese project all the way. It's their country. They invited Nature Conservancy to participate in this proas an advisor. We have, I think a very interesting arrangement in order to carry out this planning project We have a memorandum of agreement and then a more detailed operating agreement. and in order to carryout this planning process and to implement it and to we have established what we call the Joint project office I am a deputy director of that project with a Chinese counterpart reporting to a Chinese director the major areas of activity have both American and Chinese of, in effect, equal stature equal role as counterparts and that's the way we're managing the project.
TM: You have experience with Grand Canyon Trust and dealing with a monument that is extremely popular, is environmentally a sensitive area, and yet is an area where millions of people want to go to see the beauty. It seems to me and you have a country with billions of people eventually , and you have a lot of people who will want to visit this area to see the beauty, but you'll also want to preserve the beauty at the same time.
EN: In our discussions with the Chinese and in our planning, we have often cited the issue that we face in our national parks in the United States of loving our parks to death. Tourism to the Yunnan Great Rivers Project area is already occurring. There is tremendous interest both domestically in China and internationally in this area. And all those problems of how you manage tourism and how you develop for tourism confront us in this project. Uncontrolled, unmanaged tourism is just as much an extractive industry with the potential to damage the resources you are trying to protect as commercial logging or mining or hydroelectric development, all of those. It's a question of how you do it provide a certain experience for people who are coming there of and still protect the resource that you are setting aside or protecting in order for people to enjoy.
TM: So, let me understand here, are you saying is there's a possibility that some of this area might be used by logging interest?
EN: No, I think that for a couple of reasons that the areas of high biodiversity, high scenic value in this area are in fact going to be off limits to commercial logging in the future. First of all, the reason for that is China is well aware of the downstream consequences of that, as we saw last summer with the terrible floods Yangtze River Valley So they're very very serious about watershed protection element of the commercial logging ban. Secondly, in this project area, there are nine existing nature reserves and two proposed nature reserves. I think both the Chinese government and the Chinese scientific communities is very serious about protecting those areas for the reasons that why people all over the world are concerned high biodiversity. That scientific knowledge is really taken very seriously in China by both the government and the scientific community
TM: Ed Norton, thanks so much for talking to us.
EN: Thank you, pleasure to be here.
TM: Ed Norton is a senior advisor to the Nature Conservancy and he has been spending a lot of his time in China working on the Yunnan Three Rivers Project.
[Other guests on this program were Vicky Ranney and Ravi Batra]
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Nature Conservancy's goals in China
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