Dilemma By the Nu River

The paved road ends just south of the Tibetan border. A few kilometers upriver by foot later is a small mountain village. At the edge of the village is a one-room shed where four students and one teacher called it their school.

Poverty is clearly written on everywre. The children were dirty-faced, their clothes torn and badly fit. Two of them wore no shoes. On days when they can make it to school, their muddy bare feet have walked up to two hours on the mountain path.

It is a typical school by the Nu River canyon in the southwestern province of Yunnan, China. More than thirteen ethnic minorities live in the area, some cannot speak or understand Mandarin Chinese. Out of some twelve hundred schools in the provincial state of Nu River, more than half resemble this: one teacher and a handful of students. Over sixty percent, or nearly twenty-thousand and growing number of residents of the area live below the national poverty line of just over one hundred dollars per person per year. As with all the poverty-ladened areas, the Nu River region lacks the basic infrastructure for clean drinking water, reliable electricity, and residents have difficult access to basic medical care.

It is not a place for the faint of heart. The towering mountains were so steep that those patchy paddy fields where locals have to harvest from look like they were hanging in the sky. Their thatch houses perch high into the clouds. As picturesque as it might seems, low corp yield and the challenge of irrigating on steep slopes put stress on the ecosystem. Flooding and mudslide become more frequent as results of the population growth in addition to improper policies such as attempts to connect all villages by road. Such policies defined by the provincial authority who seldom come to visit the area serve mostly to showcase their achievement for further promotion. As the constant rebuilding from natural disasters tap further into the meager funding for public facilities, there is no wonder the local government is trying to advocate a change to the farming-central way of life.

The question is where to turn to.

In contrast to locals' poor living standard, the Nu River area is exceptionally rich in natural resources, mainly hydroelectric and mining. It boosts nearly half of all the hydroelectric potential in the whole province and holds some of the world-class precious metal mining beds including zinc, lead, gold, etc. In addition, the upper Nu River watershed, part of the Three-Parallel Rivers world heritage site with breathtaking snow-capped mountains and biodiversity found nowhere else on earth has great potential for becoming a tourist hot-spot.

For the local government, the key, and possibly the only question on their minds is how to turn the riches in resources into riches in economical sense. Among the answers, developing hydropower is the first one on the list. If according to the current plan, thirteen mega dams will be built on the mainstream of the Nu River by 2030, generating billions of dollars of income each year. The construction process will also stimulate local businesses from building materials to transportation to retail with increasing job opportunities.

But the development of the Nu River has met strong resistance from the public, notably some young but passionate and steadfast non-governmental organizations determined to preserve one of the last few free-flowing rivers in China. Residents who have to be displaced from the area soon realize they will not be the ones benefiting from these projects, but rather, the contractors and energy companies.

In addition to the inevitable damage to the ecosystem to this unique region, which contains more than half of animal species in China and uncountable number of plant species remain to be studied, the geological instability of the area made it a hazard for building high dams and reservoirs. Environmental assessment is fundamental, but so far missing piece in the Nu River development plan.

The dilemma by the Nu River extends to nearly everywhere in current day China where the urge to develop economically at all cost is battling with the consciousness of public and future interests. The future, I believe, lies in whether and when the general public and policy makers begin to question the ideology that the world is put here exclusively for our human use. As one species, we are far less developed compared with other Earth inhabitants in terms of years survived. Whether we can come out as the ultimate survivor without depleting our ecological capital depends on if we can evolve the unique gift we possess––our mind.

The children recite after their teacher in raspy but cheery voice. Their eyes shine with pure naiveness that might someday includes wisdom that the mighty Nu River possesses. Some one hundred kilometers down the river, bulldozers and dump trucks work hard at the unauthorized construction site. The race is on.