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Home Resources News In the News Chinese Water School Project Works for a Living Yangtze, Bonn Conference March 31-April 2
Chinese Water School Project Works for a Living Yangtze, Bonn Conference March 31-April 2
Written by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization   
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 19:15
A project to save China’s river Yangtze is just one initiative that will go on show as part of the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to be held in Bonn, Germany, from 31 March to 2 April.

The project is part of an exhibition of 25 ESD projects from across the world which will be housed within the conference venue. Water School for a Living Yangtze is part of the International Water School Program sponsored by Austria’s Swarovski company and involves children and communities in restoring the ecological integrity of China’s most famous river in a sustainable way.

Covering an area of 1.8 million square kilometres the Yangtze River Basin is a life source for much of China’s population, as well as many rare and endemic species such as the giant panda, black-necked crane and the snow leopard.

Population pressure and rapid economic development have rapidly turned the river into a depository for 60 per cent of the country’s pollution, making it the single largest source of pollution in the Pacific Ocean, according to Shangri-la Institute for Sustainable Communities (SISC), a Chinese non-governmental organization.

Primary school student Sun Yao in southwest China’s Sichuan Province has lived alongside Baicao River, a tributary of the Yangtze, all his life. The Baicao River provides drinking water to the 6,600 inhabitants of Piankou Town, Beichuan County, which was among the most severely damaged during the May 2008 Wenchuan earthquake that claimed more than 80,000 lives.

In the 1980s, it was “so clear that you could see to the bottom”, recalls Zeng Wenjun, a town resident in his forties. “The Qingbo (Clean Water) fish exclusive to the river was unmatchable in taste, but it is now regrettably extinct.”

Sun Yao and classmates became concerned about the foul-smelling “rubbish mountains” along the 10-km river, piles of polyfoams, cupboard cups, food scraps, medical needles and tubes, and plastic bags. They joined the project, which is supervised by the SISC with the Chinese Ministry of Education and UNESCO as partners, in the Spring of 2008.

Children at Piankou Central Primary School began to monitor water quality and preliminary tests showed it had already been severely polluted. Based on further investigations in and around Piankou Town, Sun and his classmates put forward a proposal to re-arrange the 15 dustbins along the two major streets “in a more scientific way” and establish a rubbish disposal system.

To their great surprise, the town government approved their proposal, and a sewage treatment plant based on the scientific principles of a biological wetland is also under discussion. The students also sent out questionnaires to the communities of Piankou, and 89 per cent of the respondents said it was necessary to treat the river pollution.

“The value of this project lies in its integrated model that involves the communities over a broad spectrum, instead of a technical solution targeting a minor issue. We encourage the process of learning by doing, so that a tangible change in mindsets and behaviour will impact the policy-making of government, which promotes wider public participation in long-term environmental protection,” says Dorjie, SISC programme coordinator.

In 2009, the project which has involved more than 50,000 students from 27 middle and primary schools in Sichuan and adjacent provinces, will expand to China’s capital Beijing, a city notorious for its scarcity of water and a similar project is planned for China’s second longest river, the Yellow River.

Five years into the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, for which UNESCO is the lead agency, the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development aims to highlight the relevance of ESD to all of education; promote international exchange on ESD, especially between countries of the North and the South; carry out a stock-taking of the implementation of the UN Decade, and develop strategies for the way ahead. It is organized by UNESCO and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in cooperation with the German Commission for UNESCO.