ID :
10207
Tue, 06/17/2008 - 13:59
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/10207
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CHINESE MOTHER FIGHT AGAINST DESERT TO ACHIEF SON'S LAST WISH
TOKYO, June 17 (Kyodo) - Every spring, Yi Jiefang plants trees in China's Inner Mongolia in the hope of holding back the spreading deserts and sandstorms, because greening the area was the wish of her only beloved, but deceased, child.
Yi's son Yang Ruizhe died in a traffic accident in Tokyo in May 2000. The 22-year-old student at Chuo University was on a motorcycle heading to his part-time job after school when the accident occurred.
''I was at the nadir of sorrow for a long time,'' the 60-year-old Yi said in an interview in Tokyo. Her grief was so deep that she was not capable of doing anything -- until she called Yang's will to mind.
Several days before the accident, Yang told his mother, ''I want to go back to China after graduation to reforest the area,'' while watching TV footage showing dust swirling up in the air in a Chinese desert.
Freeing herself of much sorrow, Yi set up a nonprofit organization called Green Life in Tokyo in April 2003, with the support of Japanese friends.
Since then, she has actively traveled between Tokyo, Shanghai where Green Life's Chinese footing is located, and Tongliao of Inner Mongolia, to plant a total of more than 200,000 trees there along with volunteers from both Japan and China.
As she gains more and more support from such people as mothers who are sympathetic to her situation as well as those associated with Chuo University, Yi anticipates that reforestation work will be completed in an area of over 300 hectares by next spring.
Green Life aims to plant more than a million trees in Inner Mongolia and, to do so, rally support from a million people.
''I want to prove that if a mother acts, the world can change,'' she said.
''The land we are reforesting right now used to be grassland until about 50 years ago,'' she said. ''I want to recover green there little by little.''
A Shanghai native, Yi came to Japan in 1987 to study Japanese at Tokyo's Ochanomizu University and worked for a major Japanese travel agency. She invited her husband, a doctor, and their son four years later.
In sync with the expanding deserts in Mongolia as well as the northern Chinese region, so-called ''yellow dust'' increasingly develops. Seasonal winds carry the dust, some of which is believed to contain toxic substances, to the Korean Peninsula and parts of Japan in spring.
According to Buho Hoshino, an associate professor of environmental sciences at Rakuno Gakuen University in Japan's Hokkaido, researchers are turning their eyes to Inner Mongolia as a new location where yellow dust is produced.
''Inner Mongolia is suffering rapid desertification largely due to the shift from nomadic life to settled farming,'' he said, contacted by phone.
''In nomadic herding, animals move from one meadow to another, and stress on land is lessened,'' he said. ''But livestock eat grass by the root in fenced enclosures, damaging surface soil and accelerating desertification.''
Keiko Masuda, a professor of meteorology at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, also blames the encroaching desert on China's population growth, the resultant increase in cultivation and grazing, as well as aridification in general stemming from global warming.
At least 3,500 square kilometers of grassland in Inner Mongolia turn to desert every year and over 420,000 square km, or about 35.6 percent of the whole autonomous region, were already desert in 1999, according to Hoshino.
''The yellow dust phenomenon has thus strengthened, causing more and more damage to extensive areas,'' he said.
Some researchers are skeptical of the effects of tree planting, with some saying it will put further pressure on the land, which is already running out of water.
Masuda said, however, that tree planting will produce a significant effect if it gains cooperation from local residents in China, and also if trees are planted on lands that are becoming arid, rather than those that have already become so.
''After Japanese teams leave, local residents can keep an eye on the trees and help them grow,'' she said. ''Without such support, the trees are often left unattended, or uninformed residents sometimes cut down the branches as fuel resource.''
In this regard, Yi's project has successfully involved local people in her tree planting campaign.
Green Life has a contract with the local government in which the group is granted 700 hectares of land, but will provide the grown trees to local farmers in return decades later. Under the contract, locals are not allowed to cut down the trees for the next 20 years, and are required to plant five trees in case one is cut down.
Tongliao is an eastern Inner Mongolian city and is not yet totally arid.
Roughly 80 percent of the trees the group has planted have successfully spread roots, according to Yi.
Yasufumi Tanaka, director general of Green Life's Japan office, also said that the fact that Yi is backed by Japanese people facilitates her efforts to gather local support.
Like many mothers, she was worried about global warming and its impact on the environment, but had done little until she decided to act to fulfill her son's wish.
In China, she has become a well-known environmentalist and mother who has turned grief into energy for stemming the deserts, with media flocking to her for interviews.
However, Yi said, ''I'm not happy, because I lost my son, who was the most important thing in my life.''
''But I also want him to know that I was saved by his dream, and I'm living a life blessed with love and support from friends, working for children of the future,'' she added.
Yi's son Yang Ruizhe died in a traffic accident in Tokyo in May 2000. The 22-year-old student at Chuo University was on a motorcycle heading to his part-time job after school when the accident occurred.
''I was at the nadir of sorrow for a long time,'' the 60-year-old Yi said in an interview in Tokyo. Her grief was so deep that she was not capable of doing anything -- until she called Yang's will to mind.
Several days before the accident, Yang told his mother, ''I want to go back to China after graduation to reforest the area,'' while watching TV footage showing dust swirling up in the air in a Chinese desert.
Freeing herself of much sorrow, Yi set up a nonprofit organization called Green Life in Tokyo in April 2003, with the support of Japanese friends.
Since then, she has actively traveled between Tokyo, Shanghai where Green Life's Chinese footing is located, and Tongliao of Inner Mongolia, to plant a total of more than 200,000 trees there along with volunteers from both Japan and China.
As she gains more and more support from such people as mothers who are sympathetic to her situation as well as those associated with Chuo University, Yi anticipates that reforestation work will be completed in an area of over 300 hectares by next spring.
Green Life aims to plant more than a million trees in Inner Mongolia and, to do so, rally support from a million people.
''I want to prove that if a mother acts, the world can change,'' she said.
''The land we are reforesting right now used to be grassland until about 50 years ago,'' she said. ''I want to recover green there little by little.''
A Shanghai native, Yi came to Japan in 1987 to study Japanese at Tokyo's Ochanomizu University and worked for a major Japanese travel agency. She invited her husband, a doctor, and their son four years later.
In sync with the expanding deserts in Mongolia as well as the northern Chinese region, so-called ''yellow dust'' increasingly develops. Seasonal winds carry the dust, some of which is believed to contain toxic substances, to the Korean Peninsula and parts of Japan in spring.
According to Buho Hoshino, an associate professor of environmental sciences at Rakuno Gakuen University in Japan's Hokkaido, researchers are turning their eyes to Inner Mongolia as a new location where yellow dust is produced.
''Inner Mongolia is suffering rapid desertification largely due to the shift from nomadic life to settled farming,'' he said, contacted by phone.
''In nomadic herding, animals move from one meadow to another, and stress on land is lessened,'' he said. ''But livestock eat grass by the root in fenced enclosures, damaging surface soil and accelerating desertification.''
Keiko Masuda, a professor of meteorology at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, also blames the encroaching desert on China's population growth, the resultant increase in cultivation and grazing, as well as aridification in general stemming from global warming.
At least 3,500 square kilometers of grassland in Inner Mongolia turn to desert every year and over 420,000 square km, or about 35.6 percent of the whole autonomous region, were already desert in 1999, according to Hoshino.
''The yellow dust phenomenon has thus strengthened, causing more and more damage to extensive areas,'' he said.
Some researchers are skeptical of the effects of tree planting, with some saying it will put further pressure on the land, which is already running out of water.
Masuda said, however, that tree planting will produce a significant effect if it gains cooperation from local residents in China, and also if trees are planted on lands that are becoming arid, rather than those that have already become so.
''After Japanese teams leave, local residents can keep an eye on the trees and help them grow,'' she said. ''Without such support, the trees are often left unattended, or uninformed residents sometimes cut down the branches as fuel resource.''
In this regard, Yi's project has successfully involved local people in her tree planting campaign.
Green Life has a contract with the local government in which the group is granted 700 hectares of land, but will provide the grown trees to local farmers in return decades later. Under the contract, locals are not allowed to cut down the trees for the next 20 years, and are required to plant five trees in case one is cut down.
Tongliao is an eastern Inner Mongolian city and is not yet totally arid.
Roughly 80 percent of the trees the group has planted have successfully spread roots, according to Yi.
Yasufumi Tanaka, director general of Green Life's Japan office, also said that the fact that Yi is backed by Japanese people facilitates her efforts to gather local support.
Like many mothers, she was worried about global warming and its impact on the environment, but had done little until she decided to act to fulfill her son's wish.
In China, she has become a well-known environmentalist and mother who has turned grief into energy for stemming the deserts, with media flocking to her for interviews.
However, Yi said, ''I'm not happy, because I lost my son, who was the most important thing in my life.''
''But I also want him to know that I was saved by his dream, and I'm living a life blessed with love and support from friends, working for children of the future,'' she added.
