Jiang Gaoming is a professor and Ph.D. tutor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Botany. He is also vice secretary-general of the UNESCO China-MAB Committee and a member of the UNESCO MAB Urban Group. He is known for his concepts of “urban vegetation" and allowing damaged ecosystems to recover naturally.
Career
Jiang received his bachelor's degree in Botany at Shandong University in 1985 , and his master's degree in Botany at the Institute of Botany Academia Sinica in 1988 . He received his Phd in Botany in 1993. He studied at the University of Liverpool from 1991 to 1992. Jiang has done research on a wealth of topics. These topics include eco-environmental planning for middle-sized cities in China, bioindicating and biomonitoring of air pollution by plants, phosphorus cycling and chemical ecology, the ecology of colliery spoils, and urban vegetation. He initiated the first conference for the Young Chinese Botanists in Beijing 1987, and the first conference on Environment and Plant Resource Exploring in China in Changbaishan in 1988. Jiang was the first person to chart the pollution history of Chengde in northern China. He was the first to explain why ancient pine trees in gardens were dying. He has also established models for monitoring sulfur dioxide pollution in woody plants. Jiang noted the effects of tourism and urbanization on the Chengde Mountain Resort, which is the largest existing imperial garden in China. Jiang Gaoming is married to Jianjie Lu. They have a daughter.
Works
Jiang has published hundreds of articles, papers, and books, a majority of which are in Chinese. His main topics include plant ecology and plant ecophysiology. He publishes articles for chinadialogue, which are available in Chinese and English.
In July Jiang asked the government to watch out for invasive species, especially during the Olympic games. He noted that international meetings are often bothered by invasive species. This could cause biological catastrophes and incur major economic losses. For example, the State Forestry Bureau said last year that there were more than 290 alien species on the mainland, causing estimated losses of 56 billion yuan a year.
Jiang is eager to control desertification but he criticizes the government's policy of planting one species of trees. "Ecology is on everyone's lips, but ecology does not mean blindly planting trees," Xinhua News Agency reported Jiang as saying. Jiang thinks the main cause of desertification in Inner Mongolia is overgrazing. By 2000 some 80% of the grasslands in Hunshandake had deteriorated into desert, and 33% of the land had become mobile sand dunes. In the 1960s mobile sand dunes only made up 2% of the land. The first attempt to solve desertification involved planting 100,000 yuan worth of willows, because conventional thought led Jiang to believe trees were the best solution to stop sandstorms. Later Jiang's team tried a different approach. A 2670-hectare section of grassland in the Bayinhushuo Gacha was fenced off and no grazing was allowed. The success achieved in Bayinhushuo Gacha quickly spread to the surrounding regions: several gachas followed suit, fencing off grasslands for natural restoration and thereby expanding the protected areas to more than 6500 hectares. Jiang is pleased that a policy of "ecological conservation first, ecological construction second" was included in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan on Ecological Protection.
Jiang supports burning straw instead of coal as a source of power. He estimated that a biomass power plant of 25,000 kW can generate 100,000 tons less carbon dioxide every year compared with the coal burning power plant of the same capacity. Furthermore, Jiang said that biomasses are less wasteful than coal. Thirty percent of burnt coal is waste while biomass burning generates just two percent and can be used as fertilizer after proper processing.
Jiang believes that the use of pesticides in Chinese farming can lead to poor quality and even dangerous food. “Farmers adopted certain production methods to make food-production cheaper. They use whichever chemicals are cheapest. The use of pesticide seems better, and it is cheap. In fact, the pesticides they would buy are also used as fertiliser, and this makes it all the more dangerous,” Jiang said.
