Budding greens: A new generation of climate-change activists

Environmental groups in China

Budding greens

A new generation of climate-change activists

Jul 15th 2010 | BEIJING | From The Economist print edition

CHINA’S environment, most obviously the air in its cities, has been deteriorating roughly at the same dizzy pace that its industry has been expanding. Now some young activists, notably in university environmental clubs, are campaigning to raise awareness of pollution. In the process, they are among the first of their generation to dabble with political participation.

The China Youth Climate Action Network, formed in Beijing in August 2007, began as a group of seven organisations which shared a desire to tackle global warming. This week it co-hosted a big summit on youth, energy and climate change at the United Nations pavilion in the Shanghai World Expo. “China has 400m young people and they need to make their voices heard, to express their views on climate change,” says Zhao Xiangyu, a board member.

The group’s main project is to encourage energy efficiency at 52 Chinese universities. It does so through surveys, on-campus training and producing a guide book on responding to climate change. Its goal, since inception, has been to get a 20% cut in greenhouse-gas emissions at the universities by 2012. Evidence of progress, so far, has been mixed.

This is not for want of enthusiasm. Students at Peking University have set up a Clean Development Mechanism club, named after a part of the Kyoto protocol. With some funding from the World Wide Fund for Nature, it recently ran a project to interview and train “low-carbon leaders” around the country. “Our parents, their generation, are not aware of these issues,” says Fan Jie, a member of the club. “So it is our generation who should take action.”

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