BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Water is a daily necessity for most people, but it is a constant companion to primary school student Sun Yao in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
He has lived alongside Baicao River, a tributary of the Yangtze, the largest river in China and the third longest in the world, for more than 12 years.
At the upper reaches of Yangtze, the Baicao River provides drinking water to the 6,600 inhabitants of Piankou Town, Beichuan County, which was among the most severely damaged during the May 12 Wenchuan earthquake that claimed more than 80,000 lives.
However, the Mother River has seen a drastic change over the last two decades.
In the 1980s, it was "so clear that you could see to the bottom", recalls Zeng Wenjun, a town resident in his forties. "The Qingbo (Clean Water) Fish exclusive to the river was unmatchable in taste, but it is now regretfully extinct."
Sun was concerned about the foul-smelling "rubbish mountains" along the 10-km river, piles of polyfoams, cupboard cups, food scraps, medical needles and tubes, and plastic bags.
The run-off from private gold mines and sandstone collectors adds to the filth. The mushrooming small and medium-sized hydropower stations also pose an ecological risk to the livelihoods of the people living nearby.
The 1,000-plus towns along the upper reaches of the Yangtze pump the numerous tributaries with waste, causing a huge environmental problem at the Three Gorges Dam, says Fu Zhiping, a professor of ecology with Mianyang Normal University, Sichuan.
The Yangtze river system produces 40 percent of the nation's grain, a third of its cotton, 48 percent of its freshwater fish and 40 percent of the total industrial output value. However, it is also a depository for 60 percent of the country's pollution, making it the single largest source of pollution in the Pacific Ocean, according to Shangri-la Institute for Sustainable Communities (SISC), a Chinese non-governmental organization.
In the spring of 2008, both Sun and Fu took part in the Water School for a Living Yangtze under the International Water School Program sponsored by Austria's Swarovski, which also includes the Nile in Egypt and India's Ganges.
The Chinese program supervised by the SISC, with Ministry of Education and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as its partners, has covered more than 50,000 students from 27 middle and primary schools in Sichuan and the adjacent provinces of Qinghai and Yunnan, as well as Shanghai, where Yangtze meets the East China Sea.
Under the guidance of teacher Tang Ming, Sun and his classmates at Piankou Central Primary School began to monitor water quality by using graduated cylinders and test papers, which they had never used before.
The preliminary test result confirmed Sun's concerns: the PH index stands at 5.8 at the lower reaches of Baicao River, with the turbidity reach Grade IV, showing that the water has already been polluted to an alarming extent.
Based on further investigations in and around Piankou Town, Sun and his classmates proposed in a written letter to re-arrange the 15 dustbins along the two major streets "in a more scientific way" and establish a rubbish disposal system.
To their great surprise, the town government approved their proposal, and a sewage treatment plant based on the scientific principles of a biological wetland is also under discussion.
The students also disseminated questionnaires to the communities of Piankou, and 89 percent of the respondents believed it was necessary to treat the river pollution.
"The project provides a platform for effective environmental protection around the branches of Yangtze, and it is a model for shifting away from the exam-focused educational system," says Fu, who has 14 years' experience in the field of environmental education.
The water schools on the Yangtze have gone beyond the boundaries of campuses to complement local social, economic and cultural conditions.
For instance, the lamas of Dongzhulin Temple, in Deqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan, are invited to contribute to water protection through their religious teachings that link nature and man.
"The value of this project lies in its integrated model that involves the communities over a broad spectrum, instead of a technical solution targeting a minor issue. We encourage the process of learning by doing, so that a tangible change in mindsets and behavior will impact the policy-making of government, which promotes wider public participation in long-term environmental protection," says Dorjie, SISC program coordinator.
In 2009, the project will expand to China's capital Beijing, a city notorious for its scarcity of water. Apart from the Education for Sustainable Development on the Tibet Plateau project surrounding the Yalu Tsangpo River, the SISC is also aiming to carry out a similar environmental education project along China's second longest river, the Yellow River, says Dorjie.
