A basis for environmental ethics.

The Caohu 'ecological migration'

The region of Xinjiang ('New Frontier'), China's Far West, contains the majority of the planet's forests of huyang (Populus diversifolia): 360,000 hectares, or more than two-thirds. This tree is a miracle of nature, able to withstand the worst ecological conditions. It tolerates salt, which it gives off through its bark. It tolerates drought, with its roots that seek water almost 20 metres down; but it tolerates as well several months' flooding during the Tarim's high-water season in the summer months, for this interior river--which is as powerful as the Danube but peters out in the Lob Nor sands--has a current fed by the Karakorum, Pamir and Tianshan snow and ice melt in summer. This combination of high water and heat, which favours vegetation, has turned the banks of the Tarim into a corridor of life that stretches more than 2000 km across the desert. In its natural state the area is characterized by the primal huyang forest. Among the tree's extraordinary properties there is also the appearance of its foliage with its changing forms, which has given it its scientific name Populus diversifolia: a single tree can have on it leaves so different--some as wide as an aspen's, others narrower than a willow's--that at first you would think you were looking at two trees. Last but not least, the profile of the huyang, with its massive trunk, which is said to take a thousand years to grow, a thousand to die and yet another thousand to decompose once it has fallen, stamps its characteristic mark on the land both when it is alive--for example those incredible watery landscapes visible on the Tarim's middle reaches, recalling Louisiana bayous in the middle of the desert--and when it is dead and its tortured forms, like an army of skeletons, rise up among the dunes or yardangs, where the shifting riverbed has given way to desert. Hence its amazing ability to stabilize sand, which has given it the nickname yingxiong shu, 'the defender tree': it protects oases against the Taklamakan.

The huyang's ecosystem is so remarkable and so valuable both for human life and for biodiversity that in 1983 an area of nature reserve (ziran baohu qu) was created on the Tarim's middle reaches, taking in parts of Luntai and Korla municipalities and covering more than 5.8 million mu (3924 [km.sup.2]). According to the official literature (1) this creation was decided upon not only to 'protect positively' (jiji baohu) the species but also to 'restore the resources of the huyang forest' (huifu huyanglin ziyuan). In China this notion of 'resources' (ziyuan) has a high status. For instance it appears in the titles of many bodies that in the West would simply mention a scientific discipline; as an example, the 'Institute of Geography and Research into Resources' (Dili kexue yu ziyuan yanjiusuo) of the China Academy of Sciences. And when you mention 'resources' you naturally imply 'resources for human beings' and more specifically 'for the economy'. Thus there is a fundamental ambiguity in a policy of protecting nature that at the same time claims to be restoring a resource, since the first objective focuses on nature itself (for instance, preserving biodiversity) and the second centres on human beings' interests. (2) There can be a contradiction between these two objectives, which is evidenced by many controversies thrown up by the rise in ecological concerns since the 1960s; but it appears that China's environmental policy does not see the issue in that light. Here the central idea, repeated everywhere, is that protecting nature is achieved through developing the economy and society. (3) And this is not in the least unusual, since history shows that a certain degree of prosperity is needed for a society to acquire the distance to instigate an environmental policy; for below a certain threshold all that counts is day-to-day survival, with no consideration for ecological balance. In particular peasant poverty has always been the enemy of forest policies.

In the area in question the way of life of the locals--known as the 'Lob Nor folk' (Luobu ren)--depended on fishing, hunting and a subsistence polyculture with a strong pastoral element. Cut off by the desert, they lived without electricity, running water or telephone, in a situation of 'low cultural quality' (wenhua suzhi jiao di). (4) It seems that one day this situation did not fit in with the 'great development of the west' (Xibu da kaifa) (5) promoted by the central government. In a subtle twist of political thinking a link is also made between that situation and the drop in the quantity of water flowing down from the upper reaches of the Tarim, which was jeopardizing the huyang's whole ecosystem as well as irrigation opportunities using the river. And so part of the protected section was made a no-access area, and it was decided to move the inhabitants out. Thus it was that, 'for the mother river" (weile muqin he (6)), the Caohu people--758 households comprising 3420 individuals--were made ...