Fighter for clean water and air

By Gong Yidong | 2009-11-2 | NEWSPAPER EDITION

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Named as one of 100 Most Influential Persons of 2006 by Time magazine, Ma Jun has spared no efforts to raise public participation in environmental protection

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WHEN Ma Jun stood on the banks of the mighty but polluted Yangtze River in 1994, he had a vague idea that one day he would devote himself to a mission impossible: saving China's dying rivers.

Named as one of 100 Most Influential Persons of 2006 by Time magazine, Ma has spared no efforts to raise public participation in environmental protection. Backing him up is a brand-new information platform linking government, businesses and ordinary people.

Born in 1968, Ma often recalls the "good old days" of his childhood by the Jin'gouhe River, or Golden Hook River, a major source of water for Beijing residents. "The water glistened with swarms of fish," he remembers. There it was where Ma learned to swim with his friends.

On summer nights, Ma liked to go out to observe insects in the dim lamp light along the street. "Beijing was much smaller then, and surrounded by undeveloped farmland," he recalls.

But the Jin'gouhe River smelled foul by the late of 1970s when the country's economic reform and opening-up started.

"The water quality of the river was rated Category V, meaning not drinkable, by China's national standards," says Ma.

"Many rivers in Beijing have lost their functions, except as outlets for waste water discharged by factories or households. Some of them simply dry up, for good."

By the time Ma graduated from university in 1993 and went to work in media, his concerns were increased by visits to the Yangtze River, the most important lifeline for people living in the south of China. The river environment was deteriorating.

"The rushing waters reminded me of the poem by Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) describing a bountiful natural scene, but what I saw was rampant deforestation, soil erosion and damage to the environment. The locals said what they owned were just messy patches."

Nationwide, nearly all China's rivers and lakes were increasingly polluted.

Take Dongting Lake for example. Once the country's largest freshwater lake, Dongting Lake had dwindled substantially in volume and area. The Fenhe River in north China's Shanxi Province was threatening local people's health due to heavy industrial pollution.

In the face of water shortages, China's governments investigated different options, but engineering took the upper hand, culminating in the construction of reservoirs and large dams in southwest China and projects to divert river from south to north.

Ma, however, questioned their feasibility, as these measures failed to take into account ecological questions.

"The water issue concerns the formulation and implementation of public policy, and influences the public interest to a great extent. But it was restricted to professional circles and very few people had an idea of what it means."

In 1999 Ma turned his observations into a book titled "China's Water Crisis," which has been compared to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." It was China's first major book putting the environmental crisis under the microscope. It has been translated into English.

Ma analyzed problems with the seven basins in China and warned: "If the policy makers do not approach water treatment from the basics of environmental protection and sustainable development, many regions in China will be stricken by water crises in the near future."

Water crisis

He was right: More than 60 percent of China's fresh water is contaminated and the air in more than half of its major cities falls below the nation's modest air-quality standards.

Not content to point out problems as a journalist, Ma pursued his concerns about the water crisis. He had a stay at an international environmental consulting company and was a visiting scholar for a year at Yale University in Connecticut in the United States.

"I came to realize the power of the market in its disciplining role over company performance, which might be applied to environmental protection," he says.