UCCA travel talks focus on environmental protection

Xiao Wei (second from left) joined in Greenpeace's saving the forest campaigns three times, and shared his adventures with audience at UCCA. CFP Photo

By Annie Wei

The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art’s (UCCA) ongoing series of travel talks is a departure from its usual lectures on art, design and creativity. The series, co-sponsored by Lonely Planet and The Travel Channel, shines the spotlight on environmental protection.

Last Tuesday, Xiao Wei, lead singer of the band The Catcher in the Rye, took the stage at UCCA, sharing his experience as a three-time Greenpeace volunteer at campaigns overseas.

In 2006, Greenpeace staff and volunteers were invited by the Kuni ethnic minority of Papua New Guinea to assist in the demarcation of their tribal land. It was Xiao’s first experience as a Greenpeace volunteer, which involved entering the rainforests of Papua New Guinea.

Besides telling the packed auditorium about the country’s people, culture and wildlife, Xiao also described how its forests are being destroyed by global warming and by unsustainable and unethical global business practices.

“Locals only make $5 (34 yuan) when they cut down a tree like this for foreign-owned logging companies,” he said, showing the audience a photo of a felled hundred-year-old rosewood tree.

“If locals can decide which tree to cut down and then find their own buyers, they can make $2,000 from this tree. The middleman took away $1,950,” he said.

To battle deforestation in Papua New Guinea, Xie said Greenpeace has encouraged locals to regenerate their forest resources instead of letting foreign-owned logging companies dictate industry practices. When Xiao returned to China, he wrote a song titled “Green,” to promote forest protection.

Last September, three months before the UN’s Copenhagen climate change conference, Xiao traveled to Thailand with Greenpeace to present evidence of climate change to conference participants and to speak to them about the importance of environmental protection.

The following month, he again joined the NGO in setting up a camp in the rainforests of Indonesia.

Yang Xiao, a 21-year-old college student, said he enjoyed the lecture, which combined stories about a country he has never visited with a meaningful topic like forest protection and climate change.