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Web-only Exclusives
November 30, 2000

From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War
A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix

From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead
Bad news for the Philippines - and some others

From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies
Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights?

AsiaweekTimeAsia NowAsiaweek

MARCH 10, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 9

The Eco-Warriors
Eight men and women who were fighting for the environment long before it became fashionable

Click below to read about these remarkable people:
Saving the mermaid's song | Conservationist Counsel | Japan's dioxin-buster | Subversive to patriot | Blue skies over Beijing | A nun with a mission | Hero in a suit | Explorer and savior


Kemal Jufri for Asiaweek
TANYA MARINKA ALWI
Saving the mermaid's song

Tanya Marinka Alwi's love affair with the environment began early. When she was a child, her nanny regaled her with stories about mermaids and other sea creatures. At night, as they listened to waves crashing against the rocks, the nanny told her: "It is music played by the mermaid." Alwi recalls going to the beach after school to pick up the garbage because, according to the nanny, "the mermaids won't play their music anymore if the sea is dirty."

Now 38, Alwi has made a career out of encouraging mermaids to make music. For the past 15 years, she has been working privately to protect ocean resources around her native Maluku province in Indonesia. Her father, the sultan of the Bandas (a small island chain in the south of the Malukus), was initially opposed to his daughter's work. "I sent you overseas for your schooling, but I don't see you making any significant progress in the way you are living," he told her. But Alwi was convinced that conservation was a sufficiently important "way of living."

Her decision to dedicate her life to the cause came when she was diving in the Banda Sea. She discovered that the coral reef had been damaged; fishermen, working on behalf of a group of businessmen, were bombing the reef as a quick way to harvest valuable decorative fish. "It brings us a good income," the fishermen told her.

Neither her father nor local government officials proved sympathetic to the plight of the reef, so Alwi flew directly to Jakarta to lobby the relevant ministers. Several months later, the fishing licenses of those responsible were revoked by the Department of Agriculture. Alwi had won Round One, but she also realized that there was a need to diversify the local economy. With international prices for nutmeg high, she encouraged locals to plant the spice: "The people needed income, so if I was going to be successful in stopping them from bombing the reef, they had to have an alternative way of making money."

After more than a decade of work, she has enjoyed some success. She has established the conservationist Banda Foundation and attracted big names to its board. She also managed to convince UNESCO to sponsor an international marine workshop in the Bandas. The scientists who attended recommended that the islands be nominated as an international heritage site.

Her father's position has helped her work. His connections mean that she has access to influential people who otherwise would not speak to her. "In this case I have to use my 'power,'" she says. Her constant lobbying in Jakarta has made her a familiar face in the corridors of government.

But she has had her share of difficulties and frustrations too. No matter who her father is, approaching corporate groups for sponsorship is always a thankless task. Many of her peers do not remain in the conservationist movement for long, but use their experience as a springboard to move into business. Relations with other NGOs have often been less than friendly; they are, she thinks, jealous of her success.

Still, she has no regrets about her career choice. What makes her most happy is that her father is no longer upset over her supposed lack of success. "Success is not always translated by financial convenience," she says. The burden of responsibility doesn't get any lighter, though. The past year's religious strife in the Malukus has given her a new line of work: fund-raising to help the victims. She says sadly of the situation: "Now you cannot go fishing on the same boat as people from the opposite religion." An activist's work, it seems, is never finished.

By Dewi Loveard/Jakarta


Rakesh Sahai for Asiaweek

MAHESH CHANDRA MEHTA
Conservationist Counsel

During one of his earliest environmental battles, New Delhi lawyer Mahesh Chandra Mehta presented a bottle of brackish water to an attorney representing five offending factories and asked him to drink the contents. The attorney refused. Mehta then turned to the panel of Supreme Court judges, waving the sample of dark, acid-laden liquid from a 40-meter-deep well in India's western desert state of Rajasthan. "This is the water thousands of villagers are drinking," Mehta told the bench. "Why can't he [the defense counsel] drink it?" Evidently seeing the point the activist-lawyer was trying to make, the judges ordered the five factories closed.

Since that court victory a decade ago, Mehta has won some 40 cases of environmental litigation, earning the epithet "Mr. Clean." The shelves of his makeshift office in New Delhi are overflowing with trophies and citations, including the prestigious 1997 Ramon Magsaysay award for public service and the 1993 United Nations Environmental Program Global 500 award. In the midst of the prizes, however, a single plaque stands out. It captures the essence of Mehta's ecological activism - and, indeed, that of numerous others of his persuasion - with these words: "Clean environment starts with me."

Mehta's best-known crusade is his rescuing of the famous Taj Mahal from slow death in the early 1990s. Industrial air pollution from the city of Agra, where the Taj is located, was ruining the white marble of the 17th-century monument. In response to Mehta's petition, the Supreme Court ordered the closure of as many as 230 factories in Agra. Some 300 local industries were forced to install pollution-control equipment. Another of Mehta's petitions has helped reverse the colossal damage done on a daily basis to the Ganges, India's largest and holiest river; the municipalities of 250 filth-spewing towns near the river have now installed sewage plants.

 
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Trying to clean up India's water and air has been an uphill battle for Mehta. The authorities, he says, are "lethargic" and offer little or no help to ecological activists. Partly as a result of government indifference - and not infrequent collusion with offenders - Mehta has been up against a powerful industrial mafia that he says is "running the country." His life has been in danger on several occasions. Once, when the Supreme Court was hearing one of his petitions against illegal quarrying, thugs showed up at his house. Mehta was threatened with dire consequences if he continued with his activism. But the lawyer was unstoppable. He went on to win a case that led to the relocation of 1,300 industrial units from the heart of the capital to the outskirts. Days later, while Mehta was delivering a lecture in a New Delhi auditorium, a group of ruffians accosted him. He was saved only by the timely intervention of the audience.

Beside being a fierce litigant, Mehta is an avid campaigner who regularly undertakes "green marches." Accompanied by his activist wife Radha and their 15-year-old daughter Tarini, he has covered more than 2,000 kilometers and supervised the planting of some 750,000 saplings. "More than court battles," says Mehta, "it is grassroots work that is more important." In a poor and populous country like India, he explains, people's participation is crucial for the success of an ecological campaign. That is how he plans to tackle two upcoming - and daunting - projects: cleaning up all the 14 major rivers of India and saving the Himalaya mountain range from what seems to be slow but sure environmental degradation.

By Ritu Sarin/New Delhi


Matthias Ley for Asiaweek

MIYATA HIDEAKI
Japan's dioxin-buster

As pure as mother's milk is not a phrase one is likely to hear from Miyata Hideaki. The respected scientist long suspected that the milk from many mothers' breasts might be contaminated with the controversial chemical pollutant dioxin - something confirmed by tests he subsequently carried out. If it were up to him, most mothers would breast-feed their babies for only the first three months before switching to formula. "I can't help but believe it is safer to keep our babies away from mother's milk," he says.

In recent years, dioxin pollution has become a national obsession in Japan. One reason: it is closely linked to the burning of trash. Dioxin is often released when plastics and other wastes containing chlorine-based chemicals are burned. More than three-quarters of Japan's garbage is consumed at about 3,840 government-approved incinerators. Until recently, few if any controls on dioxin release existed.

When Miyata, now 55, first read about dioxin in a U.S. government research paper in the early 1970s, the chemical's dangers were not well known. Most Japanese and others would remain ignorant until the adverse effects of Agent Orange, a herbicide that the Americans used in the Vietnam War to defoliate forests, became more widely known. Indeed, it was only about four or five years ago that Japanese really awakened to the dioxin pollution surrounding them.

Although trained as a veterinarian, Miyata cut his teeth as an environmental scientist researching another toxic chemical, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), at the Osaka Prefecture Institute of Public Health. Working on Japan's worst instance of PCB poisoning, the Kanemi Rice Oil Case that killed 126 people in 1968, he and his colleagues isolated two additional toxins in the PCB-tainted oil, both of which the World Health Organization included in its list of carcinogens in 1998.

In the 1980s, Miyata joined Setsunan University near Kyoto. His team turned its attention to dioxin contamination from garbage incinerators. He didn't have to look far. Excessive amounts of dioxin were found in the ashes of all three municipal incinerators in Osaka. More disturbingly, he found the chemical to be present in mother's milk, an indication that the carcinogen was being passed on to the next generation.

But the issue did not really hit home until the mid-1990s, when the plight of Tokorozawa, a city north of Tokyo, became news. Because of the presence of numerous industrial waste incinerators in the area, some operating illegally, residents were assaulted by foul odors, while pine trees were blackened and moss was dying. Many people suffered from persistent coughing and sore eyes.

Faced with official indifference to their problem, residents turned to Miyata. He analyzed the soil and found high doses of dioxin. His detailed - and widely publicized - report finally drove the city fathers to action. In 1997, Tokorozawa became the first Japanese city with its own code for regulating dioxin release. Soon, requests for soil analysis were flooding into Miyata's office from all over Japan.

The Japanese government has generally been slow to acknowledge the dangers of dioxin. It has lagged behind other developed countries in setting standards for daily intake. But thanks in part to the efforts of Miyata, these standards have been progressively tightened. The latest regulation, which went into effect in January, aims by 2002 to cut dioxin release by 90% from 1997 levels.

"Dioxin is a symbol of our contemporary life of mass consumption based on mass production," says Miyata. This mass culture exacts a price, and people are paid back for what they do - or don't do - to the environment. If people continue to live indifferently, warns Miyata, it will be like "strangling ourselves."

By Murakami Mutsuko/Tokyo


Seokyong Lee/Black Star for Asiaweek

CHOI YUL
Subversive to patriot

Like the activism of many South Korean students in the 1970s and 1980s, Choi Yul's was ignited by a hatred of the repressive governments of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan. In fact, he can thank those despots for his decision to go green. It was 1975, and Choi was doing his first stint of jail time for antigovernment activities. To pass the time, he turned to books. "I read voraciously about the environment in Korean, English and Japanese," he says. "In 1976, I decided to dedicate my life to saving Korea's environment."

Six years and another jail term later, he founded the country's first antipollution group, which consisted of three members and operated out of an office the size of a small bathroom. Chun's government, not noted for its tolerance of activism, no matter how innocuous, started to harass the members. The secret police shadowed the activists and tapped their telephones. "They spread lies that we were trying to overthrow the government," says Choi.

Despite the intimidation, Choi continued with his crusade, finding airtime on a local radio station to publicize high disease levels at industrial towns. Ulsan, on the southeastern coast, was a case in point. "Orchards there used to produce huge, juicy pears," says Choi. "But the pollution shrank them to the size of a fist and made their skin hard." Residents of Ulsan and nearby Onsan suffered from pollution-induced ailments. Choi notes: "Of 10,000 people in Onsan, 700 had bone disease."

With the advent of the democratic era, marked by Roh Tae Woo's election as president in 1987, Choi used his newfound freedom to combine disparate green groups into the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement. KFEM made national headlines in 1989 when it succeeded in stopping the construction of a nuclear power plant. It has also protested against France's nuclear testing in the South Pacific and opposed the construction of golf courses, which in Korea can mean the bulldozing of entire mountains. Last year, the group staged a 33-day sit-in to draw attention to plans to dam a river.

Choi, above, has gone from subversive to patriot. Magazines have voted him Korea's most influential person. He won the Goldman Environmental Award in 1995, the first Korean to receive the coveted prize. His new credibility has won over even his old enemies: A few years ago, Korea's intelligence agency, whose agents had beaten Choi two decades earlier, asked him to lecture at its headquarters.

But Choi refuses to rest. Charging that the government is paying lip service to conservation, he continues to crisscross the country to raise awareness. Korea, he says, must tackle the environmental crisis brought on by its profligate consumption of fossil fuels. In the longer term, mankind must rediscover its oneness with nature. Twenty years ago, this was the stuff of heresy. Today, it is fast becoming gospel.

By John Larkin/Seoul


Niu Guang for Asiaweek

XIE ZHENHUA
Blue skies over Beijing

On Oct. 1 last year - China's National Day - Beijingers marveled at the blue sky they had not seen for years. Because the occasion marked the golden anniversary of the People's Republic, smoke-belching factories around the city had been closed down temporarily prior to the big day. "By the end of the year 2002," declares Xie Zhenhua, the tall and portly environment minister, "we hopefully will have blue skies [over Beijing] every day." He says the government is spending about $5.7 billion to meet that goal.

Xie, 50, became head of the State Environmental Protection Administration seven years ago. In 1998, the government boosted SEPA's profile - and its powers - when the agency was given the status of a ministry. "Before, we were mostly educating the people," says Xie. "Now, we try to implement the law. Environmental protection is a national objective." China has had an environmental code on its books since 1978, but this was hardly enforced over two decades of rapid economic growth. Xie aims to change that: "Pollution is no longer going unpunished. We are even meting out prison sentences."

To be sure, Xie, below, is aware of the obstacles he faces. For one, not everybody in the government has come aboard the green bandwagon. With the National People's Congress and state committees meeting in Beijing this month, Xie will be busy briefing lawmakers and officials on green issues. But he concedes: "Many are concerned mostly with developing the economies of their regions without giving much thought to the environment."

Despite stepping up its campaign to improve air and water quality in recent years, the government still faces a major clean-up. In the city of Chongqing alone, the World Bank estimates that 940,000 lives will be lost by 2020 because of pollution-related health problems. The air in a typical big city in China may have 10 times the particulate count of an equivalent urban area in the U.S. "China needs to learn from industrialized countries," says Xie. It took generations for green consciousness to take hold in the West, so China - and Xie - has a long battle ahead.

By Anne Meijdam/Beijing


Edwin Tuyay for Asiaweek

AIDA VELASQUEZ
A nun with a mission

In 1981, when diarrhea persisted among residents of the remote coastal village of Botilao in the central Philippines, they sought help from a Catholic nun. They were not asking for divine intervention, but looking for a rational explanation, which they believed Sister Aida Velasquez could provide. She did.

Laboratory analysis of the waters of Calancan Bay showed large concentrations of heavy metals such as cadmium, zinc, lead and mercury. The cause: the dumping of mine tailings into the bay by the Marcopper Mining Corp., one of Southeast Asia's largest copper mines. Velasquez's investigation helped set in motion events that eventually led to the mine's closure.

The nun's career as an activist began in 1976, when she was sent to meet the spiritual needs of factory workers in Bataan province, not far from the Philippines' only nuclear-power plant project. Trained as a chemical engineer at Manila's Mapua Institute of Technology, Velasquez was drawn into a debate over health risks when a priest asked her to help his parishioners understand nuclear power. While immersed in that issue, she was enlisted in the cause of residents of San Juan, Batangas province, who were opposed to a copper smelter being built in their town. The project's suspension in 1978 was the Philippines' first peaceful environmental victory by an organized group. Velasquez says she never made use of public protests. "My role is to disseminate information," she explains.

By 1981, her religious order, the Missionary Benedictine Sisters, recognized her ecological crusade as her own special mission and allowed her to work on it full time. She helped form groups to bring home the green message, including, in 1985, the formation of Lingkod Tao-Kalikasan (In the Service of the Human-Earth Community), to nurture ecological consciousness, especially among rural communities. But Velasquez's greatest environmental legacy is helping to craft Philippine Agenda 21, a lengthy ecological check-list to guide the country for the next 27 years.

Now 61, Velasquez lectures and writes on the environment, while representing the Philippines at international conferences. In 1997, the U.N. Environment Program honored her as one of the "25 Women Leaders in Action." UNEP noted that in most parts of the world women are the first to suffer from environmental degradation. "But women are also agents of change and the key to achieving sustainable development."

By Raissa Robles


Dan Groshong/Tayo Photo for Asiaweek

BARRIE COOK
Hero in a suit

Money bellows in Hong Kong. Its heroes are tycoons, its buildings monuments to wealth. Not exactly fertile ground for environmental movements. Enter Barrie Cook, a 57-year-old Englishman with impeccable corporate credentials. As executive director of Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings, he leads the cement division of one of Hong Kong's top conglomerates. So when he brought together 30 international and local business organizations to speak out on pollution, the government listened. Cook's Business Coalition on the Environment argues that sorely needed top talent, especially those people wanted for the often-touted New Economy, will not set up home in Hong Kong if they and their families cannot breathe the air.

"How will you be able to drive the economy forward?" the businessman asks. While others had made the argument before, this time it has sunk in. Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa dedicated much of his annual policy address last October to measures to help clean up Hong Kong.

Cook is anxious to deflect praise for his efforts, pointing out that many others have devoted their lives to the cause. But he does admit that - for better or worse - he has an advantage. "One of the biggest credentials I have is that I'm both an environmentalist and a businessman," he says. And a diplomat. Convincing the varied business groups in the Coalition to back decisions that may adversely affect their bottom lines is not easy. Cook succeeds by being open-minded and conciliatory. It also helps that he practices what he preaches. Even though the construction industry accounts for half the waste dumped in Hong Kong's rapidly rising landfills, the cement chief has made it his personal mission to push through charges that will discourage this activity and promote waste reduction and recycling. "I think one has to take a certain amount of short-term pain to make sure the future is sustainable," he says.

But time is running out. Hong Kong's ever-growing population is putting strains on the environment. "It's like running in front of a tidal wave," Cook warns. "If somebody falls down, the wave will just take us out." But the polluters shouldn't count on him being the one to stumble.

By Yasmin Ghahremani


Asiaweek Pictures

WONG HOW-MAN
Explorer and savior

Wong How-man has just returned from a three-week expedition to the China-Myanmar border. Sitting in his Hong Kong office, he reports that there is good news and bad. China has cracked down on illegal timber activities in the area, he says, but the loggers have simply moved into Myanmar, where controls are slack. Wong, left, wants to help protect the region's rare tropical trees, as well as the livelihoods of people on both sides of the crossing. "Projects along the border can also carry a secondary message of peace and friendship," he says.

Those are pretty lofty goals for someone who started his professional life not intending to save anything. All Wong wanted to do was explore - first as a photographer and writer for National Geographic magazine, then as head of the China Exploration and Research Society (CERS). He founded the organization in 1987 to research remote corners of China and document its heritage. But somewhere along the way, he ran into his conscience. "It was very hard to discover things and then record them dying," he says. Wong decided that where his group could make a difference, it would set up small programs.

In 1993, CERS discovered important wintering grounds for black-neck cranes in China's Yunnan province. But many were being shot by farmers trying to keep them from eating newly planted seeds. CERS hired workers to feed the endangered birds, and recruited others to educate the locals about the need to protect the culturally symbolic animals. As attitudes have changed, the cranes have started returning to Yunnan.

ASIAWEEK'S ENVIRONMENT SPECIAL REPORT:
Green Stakes: Why Asia has to clean up - fast
• Snapshots: Where countries stand on the environment
• Eco-warriors: Fighting to save the planet
• By Design: Ideas that can make a difference

CERS has been particularly aggressive in publicizing the plight of the Tibetan antelope, an endangered species it began studying in the early 1990s. The animal is illegally hunted for its luxurious wool, called shahtoosh, which is sold in Kashmir to be made into shawls that retail for between $1,000 and $5,000. Wong, 50, recalls with horror a 1998 expedition to the antelopes' calving grounds in the Altun Mountain Nature Reserve. Poachers had left some 70 carcasses, including those of newborns. By getting this and other stories told internationally, Wong has helped train the spotlight on the illegal trade in shahtoosh.

Wong's hope is that as environmental awareness grows, he will be able to move back into pure exploration. "Conservationists are not a dying species. Explorers are," he says. And those who are dedicated to saving what they discover are perhaps the rarest breed of all.

By Yasmin Ghahremani


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