The vision of battling poverty on low-carbon pathways brought Lisa & Nicolas to China.
There they went to visit Yonsong Chen and his activities. In 2001, Yonsong Chen decided that his life had to change. Chen, a former employee at the foreign affairs office of the Yunnan province government, worried about the low public concern for environmental protection in China and decided to dedicate his life to giving people a sense of social responsibility. He founded the NGO Yunnan EcoNetwork in his beautiful Yunnan province, flanked on the north-west by tall Himalayan summits and crossed by the Mekong river. He also built the Green Environment Center on the Lashihai wetland plateau near the city of Lijiang.
The Center organises guided tours for school children, students, and employees of local companies, in which Mr Chen and his team show the beauty and value of the surrounding natural environment, the conservation challenges faced by local people, and the range of sustainable solutions available to them. Thanks to an outstanding passion and relentless will to transmit it and engage with people, Yonsong Chen and Yunnan EcoNetwork also run regional and national campaigns to show people the long-term benefits of sustainable individual behaviours, such as waste recycling. Those campaigns also have a social integration value, as they unite people living in Chinese cities around the same values of social and environmental responsibility.
The pictures show a glimpse of the Slow Motion Project’s work.
