Born in SA 40 years ago, it could help cement China’s place at the head of a new conservation world order offering new hope for the global environment.
The 11th World Wilderness Congress is due to take place in China in October 2019 and the organising team was in Port Elizabeth on Monday to explain its vision of helping Beijing’s transition to a resilient new “eco-civilisation”.
The World Wilderness Congress was started in 1977 around a campfire by legendary South African conservationist Dr Ian Player after a proposal by his great friend, ranger Magqubu Ntombela.
Player also started the Wilderness Foundation – now based in the Bay, where the seventh edition of the congress took place in 2001.
Speaking at the foundation’s offices at the Tramways Building on Monday, Vance Martin, who heads the Wild 11 organising team, said Beijing was eager to embrace the conservation message.
“Over a period of 30 years, they have lifted 400 million people out of poverty into the middle class and in so doing they have become a major player on the world stage.
“But their achievement has come at a terrible environmental price, and they know it.”
Environmental problems including soaring air pollution and contamination of water supplies are undermining China’s economic growth, eroding its international standing and creating internal instability with protesters increasingly rallying around eco-issues.
President Xi Jinping recognised these problems and was receptive to “solutions from the global south which avoid conservation colonialism and highlight collaboration and inclusivity”, Martin said.
As bad as China’s environmental problems were, it was significant that Xi had committed his country to the Paris Accord to tackle climate change, while President Donald Trump last year announced that the US was withdrawing from it, he said.
“Just as the US is abdicating its environmental responsibility, China is emerging to possibly lead a new environmental world order and a new opportunity for the protection of biodiversity and wilderness.”
Martin and his team are partnering on Wild 11 with the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, which has a worldwide circulation of three million, and the China Institute for Strategy Management, a think tank of the ruling party.
China ranks in the top five countries globally for the highest number of wild species and Beijing has already officially adopted the strategy of ecocivilisation as the way to address its environmental ills.
But the emphasis so far was on renewable energy, living simply and “harmony between humans and nature” and the hope was to introduce wilderness as another key pillar of the strategy, Martin said.
While unfurling its new green approach, China is also planning the $8-trillion (R113trillion) Belt and Road project aimed at building new infrastructure to link Asia, Europe and Africa along the length of the old Silk Road trade route.
The plan has been called the “riskiest in history” and the corridor would cut through 1,700 critical biodiversity hotspots. The hope was the outcomes of Wild 11 would be applied to this project in a positive way, Martin said.
Wild Foundation communications and development vicepresident Amy Lewis said the planet was facing unprecedented degradation and solutions had to be rolled out at scale.
For that reason alone, the role of China with 1.4-billion people – one-fifth of the global population – and the second largest economy was key.
“China’s not a monolith. They realise they have to make changes and they’ve asked for help. We hope to show them what is right and is best.”