Polson woman joins China expedition

Monica Pokorny of Polson was one of 10 young professionals to spend three weeks in China in June as part of a public diplomacy exchange focused on global environmental issues.

“It sounded like a great opportunity and I wanted to be part of it,” said Pokorny, who works as a wildlife habitat restoration ecologist with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Lake County.

It was Pokorny’s second visit to China. The first was through a college language program in 1999.

The two-way exchange with China, organized by the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, was funded by a $440,000 grant from the U.S. State Department.

“[This] program offers Americans the opportunity to share their expertise and experience with foreign counterparts and to learn about Chinese problems and perspectives,” Terry Weidner, the director of the Mansfield Center, said in a June press release announcing the exchange.

Pokorny and the other nine Americans — seven from Montana and two from Alabama — first visited Peking University in Beijing. There they took part in a range of workshops on environmental issues with Chinese professionals.

In Guizhou Province in Southwest China, the Americans embarked on a number of field trips, visiting water treatment plants, habitat restoration projects, nature reserves and a minority village where people try to make a traditional Chinese living and enhance their income through things such as eco-tourism.

China faces massive environmental problems and its citizens are starting to realize that and demand changes, Pokorny said.

“Every day we were just meeting these incredible people. It really exceeded my expectations of what an organization or an individual can do in China,” she said. “People are having more and more of a voice on what they find unacceptable as to what a corporation or their government can do.”

Compared to a country like the United States, environmental regulation is still in its infancy in China. And the regulations that do exist often are ignored.

“They’re at the point where they need a lot of reform,” Pokorny said. “They need more dialogue with other countries on how they can decrease pollution and still remain economically viable.”

One thing that did impress Pokorny about the Chinese people was their willingness to recycle and reuse things such as building supplies.

“They look at it as a new resource. You go to the smallest town and there’s always a garbage can and a recycling can ... That was one thing I was really impressed by, where we could really learn from them,” she said.

But even recycling can damage the environment in China.

The country continues to import large amounts of electronic waste from other countries and much of it is processed in ways that result in extensive air, water and soil pollution plus health problems for workers.

“That needs to be part of the country-to-country dialogue,” Pokorny said of the hazardous materials contained in electronics and the waste flows from developed countries to developing countries such as China. “It’s great that we’re recycling, but are we doing it in a way that is not polluting?”

This month, China is sending 20 professionals in environmental fields to Montana. Presentations and workshops in Missoula and a trip to Glacier National Park are on the schedule, according to the Mansfield Center.

Pokorny said she looks forward to meeting the visiting Chinese here.

“It was really eye-opening for all of us and I think it will be really eye-opening for all of them,” she said. “We talked a bit about the Clean Water Act and wetland mitigation ... The idea of preserving a wetland, I’m not sure it’s something that happens in China. For them it seemed like a pretty new concept.”

The Mansfield Center aims to foster better understanding between the two countries and to help inspire new leaders in environmental fields in both countries who will work together to tackle global environmental issues.

“China’s environmental problems may require far-reaching reforms that can only be carried out by a new generation of leaders. Both the American and Chinese participants will have a real opportunity to make a difference,” Weidner said of the exchange program.

Following two decades of rampant industrial growth, China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and now is recognized as the world’s second largest economy. The projected rise of a Western-style consumer culture in China threatens to add significantly to the country’s demand for energy and natural resources and place more burdens on the global environment.

Airborne pollution from China already has been showing up on the West Coast of the United States, and it’s going to be important for the two energy- and resource-hungry countries to work together on global environmental issues, Pokorny said.

“It’s going to be hugely important,” she said. “We don’t just live in a local community, we live in a global community. The choices we make affect China and the choices they make affect us,” she said.