20 years of progress on environment in China: former Greenpeace China and WWF China head reflects on gains and the challenges still ahead
- When Lo Sze-ping first went to China to talk about the environment, he ‘felt like Don Quixote tilting at windmills’. He reviews two decades of green milestones
- In that time China has changed from one of the biggest contributors to environmental degradation into the foremost producer of renewable energy technologies
When Hong Kong native Lo Sze-ping went to mainland China in 2000 to help Greenpeace set up its first branch there, in Beijing, he found the concept of non-governmental organisations helping to conserve the environment was not taken seriously.
“I felt like Don Quixote tilting at windmills,” recalls Lo, the former CEO of Greenpeace China and outgoing CEO of WWF China. His first idea for a campaign at Greenpeace China was given short shrift even by the liberal Chinese media.
Lo, now 47, was concerned because the agro-giant Monsanto had applied for patents for genetically engineered soybeans which, if granted, brought the possibility that farmers might one day have to pay royalties to cultivate them. Chinese farmers have grown the beans for thousands of years without having to worry about patents.
“This was an outrageous act of biopiracy and genetic resources appropriation,” Lo says. “I told an investigative reporter from the liberal Southern Weekly [newspaper] about this case; he said such issues were only problems for rich nations.”
China’s first local environmental protection organisation, Friends of Nature, was established in 1993. Three years later, WWF’s first office there was set up in Beijing.
Lo visited the late Liang Congjie, founder of Friends of Nature, and Jim Harkness, former WWF China director, when he first arrived in the Chinese capital. “I sought their advice on what roles Greenpeace could play in China,” he says.
