Concrete megacities are not an obvious place to look for green citizens nor for green living and green tech innovations.
Yet a new survey shows that, in China, the urban elite is most likely to get environmental goals and act upon them.
And that seems to be the norm in other countries as well.
Researchers asked more than six thousand people living in various Chinese urban centres ranging from small country towns to Beijing and Shanghai.
They asked about six “green” activities like recycling, and found that people in larger cities were most likely to engage in them – the bigger the city, the greater the engagement. City-dwellers tend to be better educated and suffer more pollution, so may be more aware of the issues involved, says Liu.
Respondents with jobs, especially managerial ones, did more than the unemployed, which reflects China’s reliance on powerful institutions to solve its problems, where many environmental actions come from the top.
Organisations provide time for employees to do ‘green’ actions like planting trees and reforesting barren areas.
The survey shows urbanites are more eco-aware, but does that make them greener?
The survey does not assess the effects of the respondents’ actions down stream.
And we must point out also that it did not fully reach into deep traditional rural areas, where people may have more sustainable lifestyles.
Nonetheless, it adds to a growing body of evidence that urban infrastructure encourages green behaviour.
The Ordos plateau in north central China isn’t any more a bucolic backdrop.
Still there are shepherds there who can remember the grass being tall enough to hide a horse. This is no longer true. It is now so short and sparse that in places even a scurrying rabbit has no cover.
To try and halt this loss of habitat, the government has paid farmers and shepherds to move to the district capital, Ordos City. Some 435,000 of the region’s inhabitants – almost half the total – have left as a result.
What the Chinese government has realised is that these people will do less environmental damage living at high density in a city than when they’re spread out across the countryside…
Urbanization is a good thing as it turns out and the easiest way to manage large scale environmental impacts.
Even reclamation of devastated ecosystems is best done when people are out of the way in the large urban centres.
The romantic view of a bucolic back to nature and the land lifestyle is dead wrong.
To my hippie-yuppie friends – Sorry to break this news to you – stay put in the London and New york and Shanghai…
Because this has been proven time and time again.
Yours,
Pano
This has been the experience of the inhabitants of the Loess plateau too.
This most ancient home of the Han peoples is now in the process of reclamation and reforestation by having the natural inhabitants relocated to the very big regional cities and centres….
And this reclamation of the Loess plateau must be seen to be believed…
An area the size of France that had been completely devastated without a blade of grass or a tree, let alone any water, and with cracked soil on the way to desertification, is now on the mend.
Sustained efforts over the last fifteen years and a healthy dose of government cash and subsidies for reforesting along with making the ecosystem revitalization, the main business seems to have done the trick.
Really a miracle is taking place there now…
