The first bend of the nine-crook Yellow River. Photos by Li Baoming

As controversy follows the environmental impacts of numerous key development projects in China, some of the most basic questions lack sufficient answers.

What actual changes might occur in ecosystems from certain development projects, how can the value of biodiversity be accurately assessed, and what degree of biodiversity can coexist with the increase in dams, roads, mines and tides of tourists?

As interest groups battle it out speculating on these issues, a scientifically solid foundation for answers is quietly being born behind the scenes, under a project called the China Biodiversity Conservation Blueprint Project.

Simple in theory but of great importance, the project will provide a detailed and practical database to determine priority areas for biodiversity conservation and serve as a scientific basis for supporting policy making decisions.

The team behind the project is China Program of the Nature Conservancy (TNC), an international non-governmental conservation organization based in the United States. The team just completed a three-week journey through the highlands of the upper Yangtze River basin to verify and update the project's growing database.

The Jiegu Monastery in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province.

This region is the meeting area of Sichuan Province, the Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province, with towering glaciers and river valleys cut through by the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers. It boasts some of the richest biodiversity in the world, including such endangered animals as wild yaks and Tibetan antelopes. Though the region might feel like the end of the world, it also greatly influences the world at its feet.

In late June, the team arrived at a dizzying altitude of 4,700 meters to the village of Manigange, Ganzi Tibet Prefecture of Sichuan Province. It is a regional crossroads with a steady mix of both Buddhist pilgrims and foreign tourists passing through.

Because of the economic boom from these outsiders, a local villager named Pani gave up his postal delivery job more than 20 years ago and opened a small guesthouse, the Pani Hotel.

He has expanded the hotel three times since then. Last year, Pani earned 200,000 yuan ($26,400) running the hotel, and his example has encouraged many others in the area to give up herding livestock for engaging in the tourism industry.

As a result, Manigange's streets are now a prospering jumble of the usual urban trappings - stores, hotels, cell phone shops, banks, pharmacies and car repair garages.

As night approached, the Blueprint team arrived in Manigange, dropped their bags and took to the streets to gather information on local biodiversity in the best way possible - by simply asking locals. A mix of Tibetan, Chinese and English could be heard at anytime in these discussions with locals eager to share any information they had.

Nearby is the White-lipped Deer Nature Reserve, containing a glacial formed lake and nearly 180 animal species, as well as Sichuan spruce, juniper and heavily sought snow-lotus flowers. Amongst this cradle of biodiversity, the Blueprint team worked closely with reserve management staff to validate information in the database.

Tracking the changes to this expansive remote region takes a diverse team of scientists, journalists and photographers, both domestic and international.

One of these scientists from TNC Australia, James Hardcastle, was astounded by the region's biodiversity and photographed 107 different species of birds on this trip alone, from buzzards to skylarks. While Hardcastle was photographing and cataloguing bird life, other changes were taking place at his feet.

A forestry official, surnamed Fan, in the remote county of Luhuo, Sichuan, said that local conservationists had recently been finding new species in the area - species that usually can only live in warmer climates, such as the black striped field mouse that was discovered here last year. Red chili peppers can also grow here in Luhuo, which was formerly too cold for the plant.

Barry Baker, a climate change specialist with TNC, is greatly interested in tracking and predicting the effects of a warmer climate in the region. At the Hailuogou Glacier, one of the lowest-altitude glaciers in East Asia, Baker compared photographs of the retreating glacier, verifying that changes are occurring at a rapid pace.

The Hailuogou reserve in Luding County, Ganzi Prefecture, is astoundingly rich in both biological and topographical diversity. From the bottom of the valley to the highest peak is a 6,000-meter altitude difference, containing seven vegetation and soil zones as well as a host of rare animal and plant species. This steep geography has produced a unique climate as well; below the mountains are areas with an average temperature of 15 C, mild summers and rich vegetation, while the higher elevations are dense with snow and have an average annual temperature of -9 C.

To study the effects of climate change in this area and try to predict what the area might look like in the future, Baker received the help of a trilingual (Tibetan, English, Chinese) Tibetan guide named Mani, who assisted in asking local residents about changes in vegetation and landscape over the last 20 years.

In one place, a local villager showed him a large 10-year-old patch of fir trees growing on a hilly slope, which was once covered in snow. Such kinds of changes were found all over the area. "Milder temperatures at high elevations are causing tree lines to move higher and higher, replacing previous alpine ecosystems," Baker says. "This is not necessarily a change for the better."

Fragile ecosystems above the tree line are not only an important aspect of regional biodiversity, but also contain the majority of medical herbs and grazing lands that provide livelihoods for local residents.

At lower elevations, the Tibetans who carry tourists in bamboo sedan chairs to see the glacier have begun wondering what the future holds for them. "Once the glacier is gone," says Zhaxi, one of the villagers, "how can our business continue?"

Meanwhile, behind every on-the-spot interview, photograph or record was a technical team inputting each scrap of information into the databases. Several members of this technical team worked long into the night on these inputs during the trip, ensuring the database is as comprehensive and reliable as possible.

Rivers in Southwest China have also seen a recent explosion in dam construction. Many of those construction projects have been enveloped in controversy. However, such arguments as where to and where not to build dams are often not backed up with solid data.

This is where the Blueprint project steps in. "Though its initial phases are focused on cataloguing the biodiversity in this upper Yangtze region," says project director Zhang Shuang, "it will eventually provide a scientific basis and proposal for priority conservation areas throughout the nation."

"Our goal is to provide the support for well-informed policy makers, helping the country to achieve actual sustainable development," he says.

Some of the world's richest biodiversity can be found within the borders of China; roughly 10 percent of all plant and animal species of the world.

According to A Yan, an official from the State Environmental Protection Administration, when facing the issue of coupling development with conservation, funding and efforts are too often only directed at areas of the most urgent conservation needs.

Under this context, the Chinese government sought to work with TNC on producing the binding for a nationwide biodiversity conservation plan, which became this Blueprint project.

A work of this scale is obviously not accomplished alone, as a host of both central and local government institutions, as well as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International (CI) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) are all significant partners in the project.

Reflecting on the trip, the Blueprint technical director Li Xinhai adds that "the invaluable help of each nature reserve manager and knowledgeable resident along the way is also of great importance to us".

The author is from the Beijing Office of the Nature Conservancy

(China Daily 07/25/2007 page18)