Planet Drum Dispatches
Bioregional Asia Tour: Reports by Peter Berg
(August 2001)
Index of Articles
Bioregionalism Finds
Eager Audiences In Japan
China's Epic Conflict of Capacities
Big Horizon Mongolia
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Note: Click on thumbnail photos for larger image.
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Planet Drum Foundation concluded a three week, five city tour of Japan
on May 30th titled "Bioregionalism: Proactive Approaches to Sharing
the Earth." Peter Berg and Judy Goldhaft presented over a dozen
talks, map-making workshops, and performances of Water Web in Osaka,
Kyoto, Yokohama, Tokyo, and Aomori to crowds as large as 700 as well as
small community groups.
College stops included Kyoto Seika, Meiji Gakuin, Aoyama Gakuin, Tokyo
University, and Aomori University. Bioregional ideas have been accepted at
surprisingly high levels in this country. Local government officials
attended presentations in sub-tropical Osaka and two community workshops
in far northern Aomori (where a local television station will broadcast
extensive coverage). The central Japanese government environment agency is
preparing a "white paper" on bioregionalism. Global
Environmental Culture, a non-profit organization in Osaka, has published a
book entitled "Bioregionalism" with essays by Peter Berg, Yuichi
Inouye and Kimiharu To, and notable Tokyo magazines BioCity and Treeshade
will publish interviews with Berg.
Most interesting to Planet Drummers was the development of watershed
networking by local groups that is occurring in places as different as
metropolitan Tokyo and Aomori Prefecture's outlying small towns.
Independent organizations are springing up to oppose dams, release rivers
and streams from their cement prisons, and restore wild habitat. Awareness
of the need for urban sustainability is rising with renewable energy posed
as an alternative to nuclear power, "zero" garbage policies to
benefit recycling, and bicycles to reduce both global warming and
automobile traffic.
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(More Japan Photos at
bottom of page)
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Yuichi Inouye's environmental studies class, Kyoto Seika University.
Peter Berg presentation to Japan Design Society, Osaka.
Abandoned bicycles picked up at train stations, Kyoto.
Peter's talk to student body, Kyoto Seika University.
Judy Goldhaft performing "Water Web" at urban environment panel,
Osaka.
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A regrettably familiar scenario is playing out on an ominous scale in
China. It is a struggle between frenzied industrial capacity building, and
the ecological carrying capacity that is necessary to support a future
society. To dismiss the significance of this nation's present conflict by
saying that the same thing is happening everywhere would be likening a
candle flame to a forest fire.
China has achieved an extremely large amount of industrialization in
just fifty years. It isn't necessary to quote statistics. Look in your
clothes closet, investigate the hidden components in electronic
appliances, or just empty your pockets and most likely some Chinese
manufactured products will appear. They are everywhere.
The cost of this momentous surge has been enormous environmental damage
at home. Boats leaving Shanghai's city center dock to begin a trip up the
Yangtze River are shrouded in eye-burning, throat-scratching,
nose-stuffing smog. The only water actually visible is directly beneath
the ship's rail. The striking new multistory needle-shaped communications
building that pierces a large shining sphere midway to the top dubbed
"The Pearl of the Orient" lying just across the river in Pudong
can barely be seen through the haze blanket.
Surely the air must clear up further down the river. But it doesn't.
All afternoon, steadily through the night, and through the next day and
night, a gray curtain shrouds unbroken shorelines of smudged smokestacks,
noisy power plants, rusty container freight booms, drain pipes spewing
discolored liquid, squat factories, coal piles, and grimy rail yards. For
more than a hundred miles the principal variation in air pollution from
one of China's largest industrial cities is its odor. There are distinct
bands of stench that reflect burnt cardboard, coal smoke, braised metal,
wood smoke, diesel fuel, or baked minerals.
Although it is poisonous to life forms in general and especially
injurious for human beings, air pollution as bad as this can eventually be
reduced or practically eliminated if there is a will to do so.
Unfortunately, further travel several hundred more miles up the Yangtze
provides overwhelming evidence that China is following a completely
opposite path. The grotesque Three Gorges Dam Project (3GDP) when it is
initially completed in 2003 will throttle the river for over a thousand
miles upstream and drown an inimitable part of Chinese cultural history
along with a long-recognized part of the world's natural heritage. The
renowned and inspiring canyons of Three Gorges will be submerged by a
wall-to-wall lake. Imagine turning the Grand Canyon into a landfill and
topping it off with garbage. It is an equivalent loss, and the ecological
impact will be even greater.
The 3GDP is a guiding symbol for what some feel will be the upcoming
Chinese Century. "The fight of man with the [sic] nature for water
resources" proclaims the inscription on a new monument above the dam
construction site. It could just as well read "for everything."
The 21st Century will be a head-whipping era of accelerated urbanization
in previously countryside-based China. Erection of new buildings is so
feverish that no daytime cityscape is without the sight of several
construction cranes. A dozen could be spotted in one quick glance even
through the polluted air of Shanghai. Night time city views are never
without dozens of small brilliant white beads from welding torches
pricking the darkness.
There are dreary large black and white signs everywhere along the
Yangtze banks proclaiming "135 meters" (for the reservoir's
depth in 2003) or "175 meters" (for the ultimate drowning in
2009). If the same brutal honesty prevailed in cities, there would be
billboards proclaiming "135 million tons of garbage," and
"175 thousand pounds of air and water pollution." Much of the
rural population is slated to be moved off of the land (where more than
half now live) to cram new buildings by the hundreds of millions. If this
grim fantasy is realized, there should also be billboards listing dried up
rivers, mowed down forests, ruined farm land, and sewage tainted seas (80%
of China's human waste is dumped into rivers and ocean bays).
This isn't solely an outsider's view. Resident critics bravely express
similar and even more fatalistic outcomes. A particularly direct comment
was, "China is like the Titanic. The current regime believes it is
invulnerable and is about to hit an iceberg." What will be the first
cracking point? Ecologically informed urban observers point to strains on
water supplies. Beijing's rivers are already exhausted from a five to ten
times jump in population (depending on how it's counted) and a huge
increase in industry over the last half-century. Drinkable water is
sharply limited nation-wide and can only become more scarce. Lack of water
is a planet-wide problem that may be felt most deeply here.
The 3GDP's mission is to control flooding on the Yangtze, provide
irrigation, and supply one-tenth of the total electrical power for China's
one and a quarter billion people. The largest dam ever built also has the
greatest potential for problems: unprecedented water pressure from the
world's most vast reservoir, severe silt build-up from the perpetually
brown Yangtze, and vulnerability to geological events. There is a sharp
division of engineering opinions about the dam and ensuing hydrological
phenomena. Catastrophic failure shouldn't be ruled out. Even without it,
the damage that will eventually be done by uprooting over a million people
and flooding their cities and farms, submerging nine-tenths of the known
ancient artifacts of the Yangtze Valley, and many other negative
repercussions of 3GDP can stir fateful doubts about the government.
Is there any possibility for a positive outcome? The present regime
deems itself "communism with Chinese characteristics." One
Chinese characteristic is to believe that rulers prevail through the
Mandate of Heaven, which is unsuspectingly taken away from or bestowed on
different groups. The turnover is usually preceded by a natural disaster
such as famines or floods. The massive amount of overbuilding and
technological/industrial capacity building currently underway symbolized
by Three Gorges Dam may inadvertently cause such a calamity. Suppose
people begin to feel that the Mandate of Heaven has been withdrawn from
the Red Dynasty, and it no longer balances the needs of The Middle
Kingdom. The debts to ecological capacity must ultimately be met, and may
come due faster than we could hope.
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Peter on the Bund, Shanghai. [Notice thick smog.]
Judy at Three Gorges Dam construction site.
Peter at Three Gorges Dam construction site.
Stowing front oar, Yangtze River.
Peter speaking at Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
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We were feeling exalted.
Enkhtuvshin had spotted an ovoo, a conical pile of stones created by
passersby who add one on each turn walking around the circle at the base
and praying. They are usually sited at some powerful natural spot and this
was the exact top of a ridge where large valleys could be seen on both
sides. He poured a little vodka into a cup, said a lamaist/shamanist
prayer, and sprinkled it on the heap. Then Jarga, Judy, he and I each
drank a full cup of vodka, picked up three stones, and separately circled
the pile three times intent on our own thoughts. It was a venerable ovoo,
at least ten feet high with sticks inserted at the top that pointed upward
another few feet like teepee poles with slender blue silk banners
streaming in the wind. The outside of the pile included a dozen upright
vodka and beer bottles, a pair of crutches, some empty food tins, and
other personal offerings. My imagination cut through to the center of the
pile to find more ancient artifacts: bells, beads, pieces of clothing,
leather flasks.... We had more vodka. I thought of all the isolated
travelers who had passed through with this monument as their point of
intersection and companionship with other people. I raised my head and
sang some of the words of Jim Koller's poem "Wind: fragments for a
beginning" to Michael Tierra's melody.
Enkhtuvshin resumed driving and laughingly recalled, "Some
Russians once asked me during a ride 'Where is the next ovoo?' They were
hoping for another drink." Toward the horizon we saw the forms of
horses running on the hillside. It was the encampment of a herding family
catching yearlings to add to a string of about a dozen. Two bare-chested
riders with lassos at the end of poles chased a particularly elusive white
and brown horse while a father, mother, son, and daughters sat on the
grass around a sacrificial tray of cookies and candies. They bowed and
voiced agreement while a lamaist priest-shaman read sutras. We stopped and
still carrying the comradery of the ovoo, walked toward them slowly and
respectfully. The father welcomed us to sit down, told us it was White Dog
Day and auspicious for catching horses, and immediately offered mare's
milk tea. When the priest stopped he took a snuff bottle from inside a
worn jacket and offered a sniff of the spicy-smelling contents. On
journeys I carry candies for children and tossed one across the small
circle for the boy. Jarga grabbed my arm forcefully, and said in a low but
urgent tone, "Don't ever do that again! Do you think he's a dog? You
only throw things to dogs. And never give anything with your left
hand." I was grateful to get the lesson at the beginning of our visit
to Mongolia. Otherwise, it was a pleasant, semi-formal meeting with
conversation ranging from the number of horses to the recent change of
regimes from communist to democratic (although the communists actually won
the last election). After chasing it for most of our visit, the oldest son
finally caught the elusive horse, and grabbing its mane jumped on for a
first ride. He was thrown within seconds, but after punching the small
horse hard in the ribs, jumped on again and rode away. We added some
sausage, pickled vegetables and beer to their lunch of sheep cheese, bread
and vodka. After an hour the father said it was time to go and kissed me
on one cheek. "The other cheek is for when you return. But don't look
for us here, we'll probably be grazing up on the mountainside."
We left and began driving toward the horizon again. There is a sense of
undoubted freedom and self-confidence about seeing the horizon miles away
on all sides. Things take form at the edge of vision and come toward you
at the same time as you advance closer to them. Everyone is on the same
ground. The horizon is more than the edge of a bowl. It is the slit of the
world's eyelids. When a figure appears between land and sky, the slit
opens and you focus on what can seem to be the whole planet. The horizon
persists everywhere in Mongolia. The capital city of Ulan Bator presides
over a nation as large as California and contains nearly half of the
country's population of just over two million, but it is spacious with low
buildings and open areas between them. With a national park actually
inside the city limits, the horizon can still be seen in many parts of
Ulan Bator by simply standing on the sidewalk.
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Jarga, Enkhtuvshin and Peter at ovoo.
Ovoo (note crutches).
Visiting herder family with yearlings, Mongolia.
Priest reciting sutras in circle with herder family.
Nature stewards' family outside ger, Mongolia.
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Peter speaking at urban environment panel, Osaka.
Global Environmental Culture reception, Osaka.
Urban environment panel, Osaka.
Judy and Peter at Osaka Castle.
Workshop, Aomori Prefecture.
Workshop, Aomori Prefecture.
Peter leading Aomori Prefecture workshop.
Judy, Shin and Peter in mountains, Aomori Prefecture.
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