Mar. 29, 2024
Dongping Yang: After sixteen years, he won

 

Source: Southern Weekend
Date:January13, 2010
Reporter:Haining He
 
 
He has been in charge of the earliest NGO (non-governmental organization) of environment protection in China. More than ten thousand people served within. In the last sixteen years, he finally beat the way in the environmental protection.
 
Sixteen years ago, Yang Dongping, with several of his friends like Liang Congjie, set up the first environmental NGO in China, called ”Friends of Nature”. Now, sixteen years past, Yang is nearly his sixties and became the director-general of this NGO. “Friends of Nature” has grown up into a huge  non-governmental force, which has ten-thousand, accumulated members, more than three- thousand active members and close to 30 group members.. Furthermore, the member from the organization has generated  more than ten NGOs.
 
Additionally, “Friends of Nature” led by Yang received many awards both home and abroad; such as Asia Environmental Award, Earth Award, Giant Panda Award, Green People Award and Magasaysay award which is regarded as Asian Nobel Award.
 
Yang Dongping’ s contribution cannot be ignored. As a professor of Beijing Institute of Technology, he has been named as one of the fifty public intellectuals by Southern People weekly and he is paying attention on the public environmental issue. At the first day of the new year, he wrote in his blog to describe the  closing Copenhagen Climate Conference: Man won, but the Earth failed.
 
He notices life details for environmental protection. “Friends of Nature” shared the slogan: Come from your heart, show your effort. Environmental protection is not only an advocating for others but also a restriction of our own. Yang said to the journalist,” We highly recommend a healthy low carbon lifestyle and resist any kind of high consumption. So we suggest giving up private car and saving our water.
 
In the 1990s, Yang Dongping began to appeal: “ We do not want to see China following the old path of developed countries, pollute first, protect later.” However, Chinese citizens at that time have a weak awareness of environmental protection and thought environment is something related to sanitation and tree planting. In the meantime, the media had few reports about environmental issues. 
 
In his impression that the press start to keep a full attention to environmental protection was at the end of 1990s’. “1998 the Yangtze River flooding, 2000 Sandstorm in Beijing, everyone could feel the shake under his feet.” He recalled. Nowadays, according to the assessment of public environmental awareness, many people have realized the importance of climate change and ecological diversity.
 
The Green Paper Book edited by him becomes series achievement of Environmental Research and is highly concerned by the field. In the March of 2009, “Friends of Nature” released Yang Dongping’s works China’s Environment Green Book of 2009. He pointed out at the news press: energy-saving and emission-reducing would still under huge pressure.
 
Yang Dongping, who is the same age as People’s Republic of China, reminds a Chairman Mao’s words: “China should make major contribution to the whole human society.” Although this is only a word on the social transform level, he thought that it also applied to the environmental issues: “China ought to have higher ambition.”
 
 

Translator: Miao Qing

Proofreader: Yue Lin

 






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