Leaping for the future
- Source: Global Times
- [08:50 August 03 2010]
- Comments
The cover of When A Billion Chinese Jump. Photos: Courtesy of Jonathan Watts
The author's time in China as the Asia environmental correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian has resulted in his covering of the country's most crucial environmental concerns and meeting the people who really influence outcomes.
One of the more heart-rending moments in the book describes Watts joining an international team of experts who were undertaking a mission to find the baijitun, a type of river dolphin which formerly inhabited the Yangtze River.
Sightings of the baijitun had dropped off in previous years to practically zero. With state-of-the-art equipment on board, the team set off hoping to find at least some indication of the animal's continued existence.
The ultimate failure of the mission and the subsequent changing of the baijitun's status to "functionally extinct" were painful moments for the author. "No story has left a bigger impression," he writes.
While the subject matter is somewhat heavy, When A Billion Chinese Jump still retains a hopeful tone. China really can alter the balance of global environmental problems, but, the book argues, it must stop blindly heading down the path of economic development while utterly neglecting natural habitats.
For, as is becoming painfully clear in industrial wastelands, areas populated by coal mines, and recycling dumps, the effects of neglect are profoundly affecting health, food and water security and contributing to climate change.
"I have felt close to despair at times, but that is even less helpful than dumb optimism," Watts said. "It helps that there are a lot of good people doing great work - at the grassroots, in science, in business and in government - to try to pull us back from the brink."
