Asia Society - Giant Pandas

Last week saw a couple of interesting publications online that I wanted to share here. They are quite contrasting but are linked by their ties to environmental issues in China, which as readers of this blog will know, is a subject that I specialise in covering here in Asia.

The first is from the Asia Society who did an interview with me about the current state of Giant Panda populations in the wild in China. I really like collaborating with the Asia Society as they are very much dedicated to covering environmental issues and highlighting under-reported stories in the region. You can also view the 7-part Multimedia series on China’s Wetlands here that I produced with them and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting at the end of 2011.

Foreign Policy Magazine - The Smog That Ate Beijing

The second publication online was with Foreign Policy Magazine who published a series of images on the subject matter of Beijing air pollution, titled The Smog that Ate Beijing. At the end of last week I published a post with some extra images from this shoot and also some thoughts into how I made the images. That post was titled ‘Behind the Smog That Ate Beijing’ and you can view that here.

Happy browsing!

As fireworks begin to erupt around me here in Beijing, I just wanted to write a quick note to wish you all a fantastic year of the dragon!

If you are lucky enough to be in an urban area in China this evening, you will be treated to a unique fireworks display like no other you will ever see.

Here in Beijing, the sky erupts at midnight, exploding in a kaleidoscopic array of colours across the city welcoming the new year.

Wherever you may be, have a great evening and enjoy the show. 龙年快乐!

A view of air pollution over the CCTV building in Beijing, China. Wednesday January 18th 2012

I got a call on Wednesday from Foreign Policy magazine asking me to do a quick 1 day assignment. The brief? To travel around Beijing and capture the dense layer of smog that was sitting on top of the city. Beijingers and visitors will be all too familiar with this ‘fog’ which regularly descends upon the city. The story was published yesterday online and has become one of the most popular stories on the FP site (view here). I thought I would include here on the blog, a few shots that didn’t make the final cut and explain some of the challenges in photographing air pollution.

Tourists on Coal Hill in central Beijing. Wednesday January 18th 2012

The first challenge was making sure that I was able to get a representative picture of Beijing in the space of around 6 hours. This was an unplanned assignment, as FP editors had been closely watching the BeijingAir feed on Twitter, waiting for it to hit “hazardous” levels. This meant that logistically, I had to plan the day in the space of a few minutes before grabbing my cameras and heading out the door. Making sure that I was able to get to as many of Beijing’s distinctive landmarks as possible, I decided that given the time that I had I would aim for Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the CBD area of Guomao and the Olympic stadium.

The sun burns though the smog in central Beijing. Wednesday January 18th 2012

The next challenge comes from actually getting images that convey the sense of pollution and haze. If you are shooting with a wide-angle lens at ground level, it’s actually difficult to effectively show the effect of the haze. I quickly decided that to get shots with some impact, I would have to find some way to change this. I decided I needed some elevation.

The CBD area of Beijing is similar to most other business districts, lots of hi rise office buildings. I knew that if I wanted to get a sense of being in the smog, I needed to get up into these office buildings to shoot. I was a little hesitant at first, as I expected any request I made to photograph from the buildings to be denied. Surprisingly though, the couple of offices that I tried happily let me in to shoot for a couple of minutes.

A view of air pollution over the Guomao (CBD) area in Beijing, China. Wednesday January 18th 2012

From the CBD, I headed to ‘Coal Hill’ which is located north of the Forbidden City. It’s arguably the best place in Beijing to get a view of the Forbidden City and on a good day, you can see half way across the city. I knew that I wanted to try and capture some of old Beijing, to contrast my shots from the CBD and Bird’s Nest. Getting the elevation from being on top of the hill was again, key to getting the shots.

Air pollution obscures the view of the Olympic stadium, the 'Bird's Nest', central Beijing, China. Wednesday January 18th 2012

All in all, I was pleased with the results from this shoot, considering the time restrictions and number of locations. I hope these images help convey the severity of air pollution in Beijing. It’s a very serious issue and one which affecting the health of every person in Beijing and in many other cities throughout China.

First up is an interview that I did for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting recently, talking about my project from last summer on ‘China’s Fragile Forests’, looking at the current threats to China’s Forests. I hope it gives you some insights into my project and how I approached it. Stay tuned for more updates on this project in the new year!

NASA MODIS Rapid Response Team

If you were unfortunate enough to visit the east of China last week, you will have run into what was a very noticeable haze that descended on this part of the country. Residents and regular visitors knew all to well that this was the return of the dreaded vast swathes of air pollution that still hit this region of China. Levels were consistently over 300 on the AQI Index in Beijing last week, which according to the ‘AirNow‘ website… “”Hazardous” AQI greater than 300. This would trigger a health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected.”

The above image was released today by NASA’s MODIS Rapid Response Team and shows clearly a huge wave of pollution lingering in the east, amazingly stretching all the way from Beijing, through central China and down to the west of Shanghai. Incredible. According to NASA….

“Skies over eastern China remained hazy on October 18, 2011. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite took this picture the same day.

Over China’s coastal plain south of Beijing, haze forms a giant, nearly opaque arc that terminates over Bo Hai. Although agricultural fires probably play a role in the formation of the haze, it more likely results from urban and industrial pollution in this densely populated area.”

If you are concerned about the level of pollution during your visit to China, especially in Beijing, you may want to check out the air pollution monitor on Twitter which provides hourly updates in the capital.

For further reading, check out The Globe & Mail’s Mark MacKinnon and his recent report on what it’s like living with air pollution. Think China’s Air is Breathable? Think Again. 

British Council Talk

Last week I visited two Chinese cities, Shenyang and Chongqing, for the British Council as part of their Smart Talk series. We had a great turnout in both cities, with over 500 people turning out altogether.

One of the highlights for me as a photographer is to connect with my audience and be able to talk about my motivations and reasoning for carrying out my work. I feel many photographers often close themselves off and retreat from interaction with their audience. I embrace it. I feel it’s part of my responsibility to communicate  these issues further though dialogue. These environmental issues are vitally important for us all to understand.

I recorded the second of the talks, at Chongqing University’s Film school, so that you can listen in. I broke the audio up into different parts, so that you can dive straight into the part that interests you the most, or just pick and choose which you listen to.

I have also uploaded the presentation (above) so that you can scroll through and follow what I was showing on-screen to those in attendance.

Intro

Deserts

Wetlands

Forests

Biodiversity

Conclusions

Q&A

If you have any questions, or follow-up thoughts from the presentation, feel free to post them below!

Chongqing University | Shenyang University

Asia Society - China Green

This week the Asia Society and I launched a new collaborative project which brings together 4(!) brand new multimedia pieces, focusing on my Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on issues surrounding the disspaearance of China’s wetlands.

As regular readers here will know, this is is a project that I began last year and have continued to develop, this time with the assistance of the Asia Society.

I am excited to launch this new portal as it brings together all 7 multimedia pieces from across China, giving viewers a new in-depth look at the country’s wetlands.

You can dip in and view one or two pieces, or go for the full experience and watch all seven. Either way, I very much hope you enjoy the pieces and they help you to understand some of the complex issues which are affecting and threatening the country’s waterways.

If you have any questions at all about the production, please feel free to ask them blow in the comments section.

New Archive - Click to Visit

I’m excited to announce here on my blog the launch of my new Archive, which will be home to many of my images, created over the past 5 years whilst working in China.

I hope that site can act as a resource for those looking for unique and illustrative imagery focusing on Asia, China and environmental issues.

All the images within the archive are thoroughly captioned and keyworded to assist you in locating exactly the images you need.

I will be constantly updating this archive in the coming months with new work and existing stories. Please take a moment to have a look around and recommend the archive to anyone whom you know who may be interested in imagery from Asia.

Happy browsing!

A young boy sporting a cowboy hat, looks out onto one of the many lakes that make up the Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve in northern Sichuan.

China’s Fragile Forests – Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting – Post 3

“Is it always like this?” I ask one of the park wardens, as I weave my way through the hundreds of tourists, all shuffling to get into the regimented lines funneling them into the park’s gates. “Well, this is peak season. There could be up to 10,000 people going into the park today,” he replies. This is the definition of mass tourism and it is taking place before me on a warm July morning in the mountains of northern Sichuan, at the gates of one of the country’s most famous tourist destinations, the Jiuzhaigou National Park.

Nestled high in the remote mountains of northern Sichuan, the Jiuzhaigou National Park is a spectacular area composed a series of valleys, containing a myriad of breathtaking turquoise lakes, rivers and waterfalls. They are surrounded by temperate broad-leaf forests that are home to the giant panda, red panda and golden monkey, among many other species. Its topography has been shaped over millennia by tectonic activity and glacial erosion which has created an entrancing visual setting.

It is this unique setting that has caused the rise in popularity of this park since the early 1990s, when it was awarded Unesco World Heritage status. Since then, visitor numbers have increased year by year. In 2007, it was estimated that 2.5 million people visited the Jiuzhaigou Park.

As tourists enter, they are bused between popular locations within the boundaries of the protected area. They regularly stop to jump off the buses, take pictures and then immediately return to their transportation to continue to the next spot. Their movements are tightly restricted to boardwalks which result in surprisingly little direct impact to the local ecosystems. The relatively small 720 sq. km. of valleys that make up the park, are arguably the best protected in the whole of China.

The challenges lie in the immediate vicinity to the park which accommodates the thousands of tourists who descend each day. The majority reside in hotels that line the streets of the small village of Pengfeng, just outside the park. At times, this small village seems to be at bursting point as noisy buses hurtle constantly along the narrow mountain roads and the throngs of tourists shuttle between their hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops and ultimately the park entrance.

This is a small part of China’s “Western Development Strategy” which was introduced in 1999 and formally started in 2000 by the country’s State Council. The aim of the strategy is to help the underdeveloped western provinces of the country catch up with the more prosperous ones in the East. This race to catch up has caused concerns among the environmental community as rushed developments compromise local ecosystems, especially the remaining forested regions of the southwest of China.

“At stake are some of the most valuable scenic sites and endemic flora and fauna in China together with critical hydrological services affecting the supplies of the Yangtze River, flood and erosion control and prevention of landslides,” according to a study by the EU-China Biodiversity Program.

Up until 1998, when China’s nationwide logging restrictions came into effect, many of the region’s forests were still being severely depleted. “In 1997, I travelled to Jiuzhaigou,” said Lu Chunming of the United Nations Development Program. “At that time you could see many farmers cutting trees. They floated them down the river. There were so many that the river was full. When I asked why they were doing this, the farmers said because the ban was coming, they were cutting down as many trees as possible.” Attitudes towards the environment, especially towards the region’s forests, have been hard to change in the minds of those who see them as more of a resource than an area to protect.

The relationship between the people of the region and the forests continues to be a fragile one, as the west of China continues rapid developments trying to catch up with the progress of the east of the country.

Small inroads are being made, led by a new eco-tourism program that is in its early stages of development at Jiuzhaigou. Small groups of tourists are taken into one of Jiuzhaigou’s off-limit valleys to experience the area in its natural form. This one valley alone contains 40 percent of China’s total plant species, reenforcing the fact that this region is one of the country’s and world’s biodiversity hotspots.

“I believe we are responsible for educating the people that come here. It is a challenge because the level of awareness of a lot of these people is quite low. They don’t fully understand the importance of the ecosystem,” said Kieran Fitzgerald, referring to the “mass” tourists. Fitzgerald is an advisor who works for the park, helping to promote the fledgling eco-tours. “I think it’s one of the responsibilities of a national park to educate visitors on the environment, the importance of the environment and just to give them a sense of appreciation.”

With up to 10,000 visitors each day, it’s a huge challenge for the park, especially as the vast majority of visitors seem to opt for the mass tourism experience rather than the eco-tours. However, if only a small percentage of the “mass” visitors can be reached, perhaps over time, attitudes can be changed. “My main hope is that we can continue to develop tourism here sustainably. Sustainability is the only option and sustainable development is the only option. That’s why eco-tourism is so important,” said Fitzgerald.

The worry is that environmental education might not be the priority at Jiuzhaigou. With each visitor paying approximately 300 RMB ($46) per ticket, annual revenues from ticket sales alone are about $90 million. This is a well-oiled revenue generating machine and is obviously a key part of the Western Development Strategy and Sichuan Province’s continued economic development.

For the sake of the region’s ecosystems, it can only be hoped that environmental awareness, education and protection can become equal priorities in the area’s future development. If not, then a huge opportunity will have been missed to inform and educate the public about protecting these vital and precious ecosystems in the southwest of the country.

Giant Panda

A quick post for the weekend of one of my favourite images from the last week of shooting in Chengdu, Sichuan. As you can probably guess, this image is of a Giant Panda, taken at the Chengdu Panda Base in Sichuan Province. I was at the base this past week photographing the Pandas and interviewing scientists and staff as part of the next chapter in my ‘China’s Fragile Forests’ Series for the Pulitzer Center. The post will be coming soon, so please stay tuned. If you’ve missed my other posts and images from this new project, why not check them out over on the excellent Pulitzer site here.

Have a great weekend!