Zhao Shidong
"Conserving China's Forest"
Monday, January 26, 2004, 04:00 PM
BIOGRAPHY
As a senior forest scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr. Zhao Shidong has led the effort to modernize Chinese forest management, experimenting with and applying many of the concepts developed by his close colleague Jerry Franklin. Both Shidong and Franklin were among the first forest scientists in their countries to recognize the unique biological characteristics of old-growth forests.
Dr. Shidong is currently the Chair of the East Asia and Pacific Regional Network of International Long-term Ecological Research, which is pursuing an unprecedented level of collaborative exchange between science and industry in the Pacific Rim. In 1987, Zhao spent time at the Andrews Forest in western Oregon where he was exposed to Ecosystem Management. Chinese forestry had previously been characterized by clearcutting, and slash and burn forestry techniques, but Zhao has been instrumental in implementing ecological forest practices in China. In 1991, the Ministry of Forestry (analogous to the U.S. Forest Service) eliminated the practice of clearcutting. In turn, Zhao has worked to provide ecological alternatives that sustain China's forests, and his visit now offers an opportunity for Oregonians to learn from Zhao's experience.
LECTURE SUMMARY
Dr. Zhao Shidong's talk ranged from basic information about China and its environment to a broad overview of agroforestry research and policy, much of it conceived and carried out by Zhao himself.
Zhao was introduced by his colleague, Dr. Jerry Franklin, Professor of Forestry at University of Washington, who briefly described the ground-breaking work at the Andrews Experimental Forest by OSU and USFS researchers. These studies, spear-headed by Dr. Franklin, established the value of old-growth forests beyond simply their fiber content: their biotic integrity and complexity, their provisioning of clean water, wildlife, and recreation. These attributes of old-growth forests seem so obvious now, but this line of thinking was ridiculed twenty or thirty years ago. It was at the Andrews Experimental Forest that Zhao Shidong discovered much of the 'ecosystem management' approach that he has implemented in China over the past twenty years, with little fanfare or credit. Dr. Franklin's last words by way of introducing Zhao encapsulated our visitor's career: "You can accomplish so much if you don't care about who gets the credit."
Throughout his talk, and in his meetings with various groups in Portland, Zhao maintained that enlightened policy-makers, China's ability to make sweeping decisions quickly through a centralized government, and good timing made it possible for ideas from scientists like to him to be implemented in rapid order.
Zhao began by introducing the audience to China and its forests. China is approximately the same size at the US, but with five times as many people, a slower population growth rate, about half of our relative forest cover, and a 7000-year history of resource use. This last point is crucial to understanding forest conditions in China. Zhao's own research documents a long history of forest clearance, spreading from the Yellow River concentrically north, east and south from the 11th century onward. China's biota is diverse (a quarter of the world's ferns! two fifth's of the world's conifers!) because its climate ranges from tropical to alpine, wet to dry on an east-west gradient, and its topography rises from below sea level to Mount Everest, with half the country occupied by high mountains and plateaus, forty percent by hills and lower mountains and just a little over a tenth by plains suitable for agriculture.
Some trends over the last 25 years: an annual GDP increase of 9 percent, and an increase in protected areas from virtually zero in 1980 to 16 percent of the country today. (This appears to confirm the observation throughout the world that economic development supports conservation, whereas people in poverty can't afford protected areas.)
Forests in China covered 8 percent of the county in 1949, and have doubled to over 16 percent. Seventy percent of these forests are natural and thirty percent are plantations. Nearly all this forest is in eastern China. Zhao took the audience quickly through an array of statistics about forest production in China, but it boils down to this: there are very few forest resources for a country of 1.3 billion, only a fifth of the forest harvest goes to timber production, imports supply a fifth of the country's timber consumption, and a history of forest degradation has to be overcome.
In the face of these challenges, China has taken an aggressive strategy to reverse these trends, though reforestation, recognizing the ecosystem functions and public benefits of forests, and by setting goals in a leap-frog fashion (i.e., attempting to reach year 2100 goals by 2050). For example, by 2010 China expects its own forest production to meet consumption, and expects forest cover to grow from 16 to 20 percent (of a potential biophysical maximum of 26 percent).
Zhao outlined six national programs currently underway for forest conservation and sustainable development.
1. The National Forest Protection Program will protect 94 million hectacres of natural forests, reduce forest resource consumption 61 million cubic meters per year, increase forest cover to 21 percent, and find alternative work for 740,000 forest workers. The program will cost $11 billion US.
2. The Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program will replace crops with forests on slopes greater than 25 degrees, converting 146 million hectacres of cropland to forests, and creating 173 million hectacres of plantations, through new legislation, public awareness, and compensation to farmers.
3. The Three-north Shelterbelt, begun in 1978, and will create 7.56 million acres of plantations in 590 counties, restore 2 million hectacres of forest, and The Yangtze River Shelterbelt Program, begun in 2001, will plant over 5 million hectacres of plantations and restore 6 million hectacres of natural forest. The overall budget for these projects is $3.7 billion US.
4. The Sandification Control Program for Beijing and Tianjin will plant over 7.6 million hectacres of forest and restore 10.3 million hectacres of forest and grassland at a cost of $1.2 billion US. As an example, Zhao showed a slide depicting a checkerboard of hand-made 1-meter-square straw windbreaks (to slow wind speed and allow seedlings to geminate on sand-dunes). This checkerboard is 385-km-long by 2-km-wide!
5. The Wildlife Conservation and Natural Reserves Development Program is a fifty-year endeavor to protect key endangered animals through a national reserve network and by increasing and improving conservation facilities.
6. The Forest Industrial Base Development Program will plant over 13 million hectacres of fast-growing plantation forests to meet 40% of China's needs for wood.
The goals for these programs were generated to a large extent because policy-makers in China sought out the advice of forest and agricultural scientists. Much of this science is now generated by the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network or CERN.
Modeled in part on the United States' Long Term Ecological Network, and launched by Zhao Shidong in 1988, CERN comprises 36 stations, five sub-centers, and a synthesis research center. CERN's core mission is to perform research, monitoring, demonstration (Zhao emphasized the importance of the latter for gaining community support) and to promote international cooperation. The need for CERN and China's national forest conservation programs truly hit home after the floods of 1998, when China's policy makers saw just how important forests were to ecosystem stability.
The remaining part of Zhao's talk was a photo tour (he is an accomplished photographer and a tireless traveller) through the diversity of China's landscapes, from tropical forests where "elephants without visas" are re-entering restored Chinese forests, to high-elevation (16,000 feet) research stations to urban and even estuarine research stations. And much of this owing to one man who is reluctant to take much credit.
Zhao took several questions at the end of his talk, but his most revealing answer was to a colleague who asked him to recount his own experience in becoming "the man who would save China's forests." Zhao explained that his career had been a challenging one, as his family had been out of favor during the Cultural Revolution, and the only university options for him were at less prestigious forestry and agricultural schools. For a time, during the Cultural Revolution, he was relocated to factory and farm labor brigades, and he told of the morale being so low at his university that several academics jumped to their deaths from the campus' higher buildings. Then in 1983 he came to the University of Michigan for two years on an academic exchange program. Ever the wanderer, at the end of his stay, he bought a $600 month-long Greyhound bus ticket so he could see the United States. This was a huge challenge financially as his monthly salary at the time was $15. One of his stopping points was the Andrews Experimental Forest. As he said, "I didn't know my life would change when I walked into Jerry Franklin's office." Already familiar with ecosystem management principles from his time at University of Michigan, at the Andrews he saw long-term, large-scale ecosystem research in action. At that point he realized how important his chosen profession was and made up his mind to go back to China, bring what he learned with him, and "do my best." At that point everyone in the First Congregational Church had to be thinking "well done."
Some comments from audience members:
(Feel free to respond and we'll add yours to this list)
1. That was a great evening last night. I really enjoyed it. Incredible to compare China's active stance (and the results they appear to be getting) with our own "What can you do? The invisible hand will take care of everything" apathy and inaction.
One of the key things I heard coming through in his talk is the sense "we're all in this together". You can feel the power of China and the solidarity of people working together. That shared cultural history is really going to help them out.
Whereas here in the US we're all just separate individuals, pursuing our own interests. It's the old vision of "all against all - red in tooth and claw". Why should I sacrifice if the other guy is just going to get ahead?
Can you imagine a proposed policy where people on the east coast paid more in taxes to support environmental policies in another part of the country? Without that sense of a shared mission -and a vision of how GOOD the future could be- we will never budge an inch.
Screw it. I'm buying a Hummer! Or moving to China.
2. I, too, was amazed at the magnitude and speed and even comprehensiveness of the plans. What I never heard in the talk is why it is possible -namely that they have centralized command and control government and can decree things be done- no debate, no legal action, limited protests, etc.
3. I agree that the presentation by Zhao Shidong was inspiring. We continued to discuss it over the next two days. I was so impressed with his ability to educate all of us so effectively and succinctly about China and its environment, as well as his impishly self-effacing but bitingly apt comparisons of China with the U.S. His courage as reflected in his personal self-disclosure was equally inspiring. Clearly, one of the dilemmas we encounter is how to reconcile the communitarian goals and outcomes of centralized planning (especially when from an apparently thoughtful and sometimes benign dictatorial central authority) with the flexibility and freedom that seem to be so precious (and self-destructive) to U.S.-style democracy.