Green and keen

By Erik Nilsson (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-30 08:55

Australian Dermot O'Gorman, China's country representative for the World Wildlife Fund, plants bamboo with other volunteers on a panda corridor in the Qinling Mountains, Shaanxi province.

When American Sophia Mendelsohn came to work in public relations for a Western firm in Shanghai three years ago, she realized then she'd never understand China's economic miracle from the firm's office tower. She'd have to see it from the ground level.

When the 25-year-old shifted to the manufacturing sector, she began touring local factories, talking to factory owners, floor managers, workers, container drivers and their families.

"In two-plus years, I saw two college funds raised, one house and one apartment purchased, an elderly father's life extended because his son could afford better doctors and two girls sent to high school in Shanghai," she says.

"But, these are the thin silver linings of a gray cloud, one that extends over all their improvement and happiness. It sits over the factories and has the faint smell of chlorine and fish - the pollution we see every day."

She began wondering if there were more sustainable ways to reap such social benefits. Her research led her to believe there were, but if change were to happen, she believed it would have to come from the youth.

So Mendelsohn joined the Shanghai branch of the youth-oriented environmental protection organization Shanghai Roots & Shoots and the swelling ranks of foreigners engaging in environmental protection work in China.

Roots & Shoots Shanghai director Tori Zwisler got involved with environmental work in the country after meeting renowned primatolgist-cum-conservationist Jane Goodall in 1998.

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