Sustainable development is also known as sustainability, or eco-development. The term originated from the Brundtland Report (1987), which for the first time defined sustainability as to “meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” Sustainability needs sustained maintenance and commitment. It also needs long-term and mid-term planning. Most importantly, responsible leadership and a “Mother Nature First, Self Second” mindset for consumer behavior changes are necessary.
Diversity in eco-development starts from respect of differences.
As for human impact on biodiversity, China and its role in illicit wildlife trade may jump into many people’s mind. Where there is a market there is a supply chain. In my childhood I saw and visited those markets and restaurants in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau that sold wildlife and food products processed from them. Some wild animals and plants were dead and ready to be made into herbal medicines; others, in particular wild animals, were kept alive in cages and tanks. In many documentary films, including the recent Netflix documentary film “Seaspiracy (2021),” about wildlife trade, those seafood markets in Hong Kong and shark’s fins in Chinese culinary delicacies are a must-have scene. China is often perceived and projected as a bad actor in wildlife protection, at least in the English-speaking world.
As I wrote in my previous op-ed piece, this is the power of storytelling. I also watched some Chinese language documentary films on China’s efforts to protect wildlife. They are very encouraging and well-done. Will the English-speaking audience buy that?
As neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of “How Emotions Are Made (2017),” wrote: “People like to say that seeing is believing, but affective realism demonstrates that believing is seeing. The world often takes a backseat to your predictions. (It’s still in the car, so to speak, but is mostly a passenger.) And as you’re about to learn right now, this arrangement is not limited to vision.”
What we believe is a main determinant of what we want to see. Humanity has long believed that we can conquer all obstacles from inclement weather events to wildlife that we believe we can dominate, possess and even abuse. A study shows, the world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things on Earth, but since the dawn of civilization, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.
This is only a snippet of how humans-wildlife relation has been developed. The human-human relation is even more complex, partly because humans have emotions, language and memory. Like new technologies, emotions, language, and memory are double-edged swords. If we disrespect, and in some occasions even despise, differences between two individuals, nasty languages and hostile sentiments ensue. That’s how spiteful and fear-based thinking is formed and leave a mark in our memory. Domination is a way to demonstrate and confirm to the actor that she can conquer her fear.
The actors of protecting wildlife are humans. Not animals. Animals don’t negotiate with their enemies before they fight to the death for food source, habitats and mates. So, if the actors of protecting wildlife are humans, can these actors coexist and respect differences between one another?
If we can tell the difference of an apple from a pear, that’s only because an apple looks and tastes very differently from a pear. Recognizing differences allows us to cherish diversity and appreciate our individual uniqueness. And our fear-based thinking will likely to be reduced and our emotions and memory are happier because of our acceptance of kindness, gratitude and love.
If you believe me, China is like any nation on its learning curve about biodiversity protection. China is learning from its mistakes and making amends for the loss of biodiversity. Why don’t the Western countries embrace their values for transparency and accountability by welcoming China, instead of isolation, to constructive dialogues? Stoking fear only worsens tensions and slows progress on interest-based negotiation and collective impact. The basic rule of thumb in literary writing—“show, don’t tell”—may shed light on building a transparent and accountable international community. It is worrisome that the U.S. hit new low in global corruption index in 2020, according to Transparency International. How to rebuild trust in a human-to-human or country-to-country relationship? Show, don’t tell. When watching the U.S. is confronting the greatest strain to its fundamental cohesion since the Civil War, how would China not be (overly) assertive to its clampdown on tech firms and wealth inequality? Show, don’t tell. The comparison of responsible leadership between two huge developing countries, China and India, is evident, in terms of eradicating extreme poverty, curbing industrial pollution, and lower the cost of solar energy worldwide.
After all, as Bill Gates and other environmentalists from the developing countries have pointed out, rich countries have outsourced emissions-heavy manufacturing to poor ones. Desperate people do desperate things. Poor people are less likely to join wildlife trafficking if their livelihoods are stable and rewarding. Most importantly, if they receive education opportunities equal to what their counterparts receive in the rich countries and have incentives to live sustainably in their own countries, they will understand the importance of protecting their land, water, air, and wildlife biodiversity. Unfortunately, when you suffer from poverty and hunger, you have to compromise and even sacrifice yourself for unethical affairs. In this case, when China first started its economic reform between the 1980s and 2000s, the country was poverty-stricken, especially in remote rural areas where wildlife trafficking thrived. China produced a lot of goods and services for the rich countries at an affordable price, but also paid the hefty price for today’s deterioration of the environment including the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife. India is another example for this environmental sacrifice for economic growth. Respect the differences and examine the upstream as well as the downstream of the supply chain in wildlife trade.
Sustained leadership and cooperation may slow down the Sixth Mass Extinction.
Some scientists believe a sixth mass extinction of biodiversity has now begun. The previous five times in the long history of life on Earth were caused by massive volcanic eruptions, deep ice ages, meteorite impacts and clashing continents. A study suggests only 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat.
Scientific studies show four of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed as a result of human activity. They are: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, and altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen). Two of these, climate change and biosphere integrity, are what the scientists call “core boundaries.” In other words, human civilizations are facing unprecedented risks unless we respect the planetary boundaries and pivot to a safe operating space for humanity at a global level.
In the U.S. outdated policies are not the only problem to scale up sustainability efforts. The election cycle in the federal, state and local level creates uncertainty for long-term research and development. If you ask any civil servant, they’d tell you public policies are apolitical and meant to be taken effect for a very long time. They’d also tell you they are not politicians either. But from an outsider’s perspective, how sustainable is it for a sitting president to ban a number of environmental and trade policies and then have his successor revive some of them? The back-and-forth, back-and-forth do-and-undo policies are like child’s play. And it takes so much time and taxpayers’ dollars to go through the court system to “right the wrong” in a metaphorical way made by the previous administration. Not to mention that the polarization of lawmakers and political appointees not only runs deep in the legislative branch but also in the judicial branch. Trust building and restoration seems to be as urgent a need as fixing the biodiversity crisis on the Planet. Time will run out soon to rescue endangered species in current inhabitable ecosystems.
Responsible leadership is evident in China’s response to the Covid pandemic. Nationalistic public trust in the central government has never been higher after the US-China trade war kicked off and after the release of senior Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
When the world is keeping distance from China, it only makes China more determined to develop its own technological independence, business ecosystem and oversight mechanisms. Look at China’s space exploration. Had former Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia not further strengthened the US-China space isolation by rejecting China’s request for international partnership for a space station, would the history of China’s rapid development in space programs have been rewritten? Does the universe need another powerful space polluter?
If I were a fish in the sea or a bird in the sky, I would definitely endorse the scientific findings by human species suggesting the U.S. military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries. And the powerful exercises at sea harm marine mammals. Not to mention how much natural resources are exploited and destroyed to supply the increased demand of military buildup and space expeditions from the two world powers. Where is the human respect for planetary boundaries in space exploration for education and scientific research only?
Wild animals and plants don’t know borders. If they’re found in ecosystems in which they don’t belong, they would be considered as invasive species by humans. It’s a myth to me that humans can accept global trade, and that nature provides us with goods and services, yet humans can’t accept invasive species. Does that mean the goods and services provided by foreign natural resources are invasive?
The same issue comes with water management. Where there is water there are living things. Water also doesn’t know boundaries. Can you say clearly the school of fish swimming everywhere in the South China Sea is Chinese or the Philippines’ property? If the upstream of the Mekong River gets polluted, it would impact the flora and fauna downstream. How should we reduce humans-wildlife and human-human conflicts and turn differences into opportunities for sustained cooperation?
For a very long time, I’ve been puzzled why the U.S. doesn’t impose American values on Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, Azerbaijan and North Korea, for instance, as forcefully as it has on China. In recent years, out of curiosity I tune into pro-Taiwan independence rhetoric. I notice that the so-called China Hands and top advisors about China affairs are likely to be Taiwan sympathizers and China dissidents. The biography of John Service in the McCarthy era sheds light on today’s anti-China sentiment in the post-truth politics. There is history to support and even amplify such beliefs that China is an untrustworthy global market player with big aggressive ambition. Do you see the words I use here? Untrustworthy, global, aggressive, and ambition. It takes a bad actor to know another bad actor.
The anti-communism sentiment of today’s Cuban immigrants and their descendants in Florida, who hold a grudge against a person or a group of people for generations, is similar. Their brains have been hardwired and even reinforced by fear. That fear is familiar to me but as an immigrant, I learn to free myself with forgiveness and worship my cultural heritage while respect others. China is not Cuba, nor the former Soviet Union. Respect differences and embrace diversity. The apple-pear analogy is applicable here. Even under the name of apple, there are many types of apples, aren’t there?
The isolation of China is no different from the isolation of North Korea (even though N.K. chooses to be isolated). The free world is living in fear all the time because no one knows what the isolated country’s next move will be. Transparency and accountability are the effective way to manage nature capital at the global level. And the free world needs to include diversity of governance, political values, beliefs and ideologies in order to reduce the risks of conflicts in all forms.
China is a huge country that also holds very different values from the U.S.-led Western values. Straddling two cultures, I find the expression “Western values” confusing. If the U.S. and its allies around the globe take pride in these values such as democracy, individualism, Christianity, capitalism and human rights, shouldn’t these values be labeled as universal values? Japan and South Korea are not Western countries. If the phrase “Western values” indicate its origin of the ancient Greeks and Romans, modern scholars and writers cannot find such idea as “Western values” in the thought of the ancient Greeks, the traditions of Roman law or New Testament moral ideals. In fact, the expression “Western values” does not appear in English until the middle of the 20th century. China embraces democracy and individualism that are not widely recognized by the world. The word “democracy” is derived from the Greek dēmokratia, which means “rule by the people.” China and the U.S. have different interpretations of the “will of the people,” don’t they?
The positive note is China is a nation that is willing to learn from other advanced countries. There are more translated works from foreign languages in Chinese language reading communities than the number of translated works from Chinese language in the U.S.-led English reading societies. Sustained US-China cooperation to protect wildlife will be as monumental to future generations as launching a spaceship to an unknown planet. The international community is facing a trust crisis. The clock is ticking.
Take a pause, and ask yourself: at this minute how many endangered species are on the brink of extinction? How many more coral reefs are dying out? How many whales and deep sea creatures can escape illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing?
Some silver linings in China’s efforts to protect biodiversity bring hopes.
Just days before COP15, China published its first White Paper on biodiversity, making biodiversity conservation a national strategy. The government-led long-term conservation mechanisms will be facilitated by enterprises with public participation [English | Chinese]. As China is transitioning to a data economy at a faster pace than that in the U.S., data transparency will make the global wildlife trade more difficult. A Chinese study shows public attitudes in China have shifted substantially to favor stricter regulations on the wildlife trade and a willingness to stop consuming wildlife.
China’s wildlife consumption ban was enacted in February 2020, soon after the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. Public awareness and support of wildlife conservation is for sure more noticeable and still on the rise compared to the grassroots momentum in my childhood. According to the White Paper, the Chinese authorities aim to provide ecological protection funding for Southeast Asia, Africa and elsewhere. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) is a good leader in combatting wildlife crime. If the US-China relation is serious about joint effort to protect wildlife, China will learn a lot from the FWS to improve governance and accountability, and vice versa.
Time is running against us for climate action and protecting endangered species. We should not isolate any country from international cooperation. The longer we keep distance from one another, the more fearful we become. The more fearful we become, the more threatening moves we will do to others to secure a false sense of security. The only solution is to make peace with your neighbors and your enemies. (Note: I believe “enemy” is a word for the animal world. In my world of inclusion, I follow what William Butler Yeats once said, “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.”) Protecting wildlife is also an art of making peace between human wants and the rights of nature. Wildlife doesn’t need human beings but human beings need to learn to coexist, but not dominate, wildlife. That’s the essence of sustainability.
“Protecting biodiversity is just as important and critical to the survival of mankind as stabilizing the climate. Species protection and climate are interdependent.“
—Klaus Töpfer, former executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (1998-2006)
(To be continued)
COP15 Series: A 450-Year Strategic Plan
COP15 Series: Behave And Act Responsibly To Be A BETTER HUMAN