[The content of this article is compiled from the speech of Dr. Zhou Jinfeng, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, at the "Seminar on Identification and Assessment of Ecological Environment Damage and Theory and Technology of High-quality Development in Northeast China", which is the sixth part of the speech series and the 254th lecture of the Zhou Dao Ecological Civilization Series]
The northeast is an important grain producing area on the mainland, which is known to everyone. In fact, the northeast is also an important bearing area of continental biodiversity, in addition to the oriental white stork, red-crowned crane, which are well-known birds that we are familiar with, there are many large numbers of organisms that we may not be familiar with and do not understand, some of which are critically endangered, all relying on the vast land and natural ecological environment of the northeast to nurture.
Soil and water on the one hand nurture biodiversity on the other. There is a kind of small swallow in Beijing called Beijing Swift, our China Green Development Society Bird Watching Working Committee, they did a special research on Beijing swifts, gave them a ring record, analyzed where Beijing's little swallows will go in autumn and winter, what are the migration routes. The results are very shocking! These little swallows fly west from Beijing to the Mediterranean, turn around and fly south to South Africa, where they spend the winter, and fly all the way back from South Africa to Beijing the following year. What an amazing migration journey. But now Beijing has also changed a lot, as we mentioned earlier, there are very few bugs now, and the number of swifts in Beijing is now much lower than when I was a child. There is also the story of Ya Shayan in Yuanshi County, Hebei. During the epidemic in 2020, Yuanshi County in Hebei Province was to renovate the Huaihe River. How to fix it? Stone piles should be built on the riverbank, lawns, green trees and boulevards should be built on the river, and an ecological project that combines flood control and safety and culture and entertainment in the river should be built. But soon volunteers told us that the river remediation required the removal of the earthen cliffs on the riverbank, which are breeding grounds for the cliff swift.
Like the Beijing swift, the Yasa swallow is also a migratory bird, and it will come here in April and May every year to nest, lay eggs, and breed offspring, because nesting in this place, close to the water source, the steep terrain is not easy to go up, it is very safe. In addition, there is grass and vegetation along the river, and there are many insects, which is convenient for foraging and feeding offspring. Once the river is rehabilitated, their habitat is destroyed. At that time, we risked being isolated, went to the field to investigate, communicated with the relevant departments of the local government, invited scientists to put forward constructive suggestions, and finally adjusted the plan, planned the habitat of Yasha Yan as Ya Shayan Island, and also set up a protection sign, which was preserved to the greatest extent and became a local ecological scene. From April to June, thousands of swiftlets fly up and down around the river, which is very beautiful and spectacular, and the swiftlets are also experts in pest control, which can help reduce pests in the surrounding crops, fruits and vegetables.
Spraying, river hardening, artificial greening... This is the usual way of operation in industrial civilization, because it can increase production, facilitate management, and be uniform, but these practices bring a lot of pesticide residues, pollute soil and food, and destroy biodiversity. The same is true for the construction of wetland parks I mentioned earlier, the water quality measurement standards of industrial civilization, etc. I am resolutely opposed to the treatment of rivers and lakes in the style of industrial civilization, what needs to be treated is that our domestic sewage and production sewage should not be discharged into natural rivers and lakes, do not do things that harm nature, and the treatment of pollution sources, which is the key. It is not necessary to change the natural state of the water through various treatments. Projects and projects that respect nature are ecological projects that meet the requirements of biodiversity conservation and are appropriate considerations for high-quality development.
Priority ecological projects should take biodiversity as a measure and avoid greater ecological damage caused by human changes to nature. Darwin said that survival of the fittest, human adaptation to nature, including the construction of ecological civilization advocated by us today, and the need to take biodiversity as the core consideration of ecological environment damage, are all in the need to respect and adapt to the current natural situation to achieve sustainable survival and development of human beings.
This year, we had an environmental public interest lawsuit against Shanghai Xinghualou mooncakes for excessive packaging, which ended in failure. Everyone can see that in recent years, with the improvement of people's living standards, all kinds of luxury packaging and excessive packaging of mooncakes have also risen. When I was a child, I ate mooncakes, 5 mooncakes wrapped in a piece of paper, very fragrant, but now I eat mooncakes, 6 mooncakes are finished, various packaging boxes and bags, a bunch of garbage. Behind these large quantities of packaging is the large consumption of natural resources and the continuous damage to the natural environment, including the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, plastic waste pollution and so on. Although the mooncake packaging of the defendant manufacturer has clearly exceeded the national standard, the case has not been won in the end. It is worth mentioning that after the prosecution of the case, the state soon introduced new and stricter mooncake packaging standards.
We have done many such environmental public interest litigations, with some victories and failures, such as the destruction of ancient villages, which is the first case to use the concept of human environment to protect cultural relics; For example, in the ConocoPhillips oil spill case, scientific forces were organized to study the continuous environmental damage caused by the oil spill that year, and a public interest lawsuit was filed from the perspective of environmental damage compensation, as well as the pangolin illegal poaching and sales case, how to scientifically identify the ecological value of a pangolin? There is also a case of protection of the native habitat of the five-leaf maple, which is also the first preventive environmental public interest lawsuit in mainland China. Almost every case involves the appraisal and assessment of ecological damage, which is also an aspect that is prone to widespread controversy, and is related to the trial and judgment of the case.
We hope to work with you to promote the formation of a methodology, set up relevant standards, and serve as a reference for the identification and assessment of ecological environmental damage, and do this more fairly, scientifically and ecologically civilized. We have published 37 standards and hope to work with you to develop more standards in the future. We have also jointly established a dual carbon fund with the China Society of Technical Economics, the Chinese Association for Standardization, the China Energy Conservation Association, and the Resources and Environment Research Branch of the China Institute of Standardization, which specializes in carbon issues, carbon standards, the environmental cost of carbon, and the carbon impact involved. In addition, we continue to promote green development and biodiversity conservation through low-carbon workshops, ecological civilization stations, community reserves and other systems. China Green Development Association is a platform, biodiversity is half of us, green is our other half. We've done a lot of things, a lot of new experiments. This is our duty, and we are willing to be like Don Quixote, even if we are beaten to pieces, but still insist on fighting.
It is a great honor to express some of my own views and opinions through today's conference platform, and thank you for your patience and listening, thank you again for the invitation, and hope to cooperate with you through the platform of conference and discussion, learn from each other, and promote the related work of ecological civilization and biodiversity! Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
(Note: The above content is based on the recording of the meeting and has not been verified by the spokesperson.) )
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#Swift##Overpacking##Northeast##Ecological governance##生物多样性#