Poverty Alleviation and Biodiversity Conservation

As the world’s population exceeds 6.5 billion people, human impacts have been spread to every corner of the earth, causing severe ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss at unprecedented rates. Biodiversity conservation has become a central concern of environmental policies since the 1980’s. Although considerable effort has been undertaken, financial support for conservation is still far from enough for all worthwhile conservation projects. Despite its importance, biodiversity conservation still has to compete with other important or popular social and economic objectives, such as poverty alleviation, education improvement, health care, and material well-being, especially in the vast rural areas, the frontiers direct human-nature interactions occur.

Research in many developing countries has shown that improved health care and education, especially for women, may significantly decrease birth rates and mitigate the negative environmental impacts of increasing human population. Therefore, helping rural residents, especially those in developing countries, by improving their health and education have important implications for biodiversity conservation around the world.

Health and Education Conditions in Wolong Community

Similar to many other rural areas in China, the education system in Wolong Nature Reserve is still not well-developed, although significant progress has been made since the first two elementary schools in Wolong and Gengda townships were built in the 1930’s. Currently there are seven primary schools, one middle school and one high school, with a total of around 1150 students as of the year 2005.

The mountainous topography creates a lot of difficulties for children to access to relatively good schools in the township. There are four primary schools located in the remote area of the reserve far from the main road. Due to the poor transportation system in the mountains and low household income, some children have to choose these nearby small schools with even poorer educational resources. Each school has only 1-2 part-time teachers with extremely low income (< 40 US$ / month) and about 10-20 students. There is barely any educational funding for these village-level schools. Very often, in these schools, not even the teachers have enough money to buy good textbooks and sufficient instruction materials.

The public health system in Wolong Nature Reserve was poorly developed. There are only three small hospitals with a few doctors and nurses and inadequate medical equipments. To access better health care, local people have to travel more than 70 kilometers outside the reserve to the city of Dujiangyan, but many families cannot afford it, especially those who live in the remote areas far away from the major road across the reserve. Some people have even died without being treated.

HELP Wolong

A great deal of effort and funding is needed to improve the overall health and education situations for local people in Wolong Nature Reserve. However, our practice in the past has shown that by targeting those people who need help the most and making donations to them, small amounts of money could turn into significant positive impacts.

HELP’s long-term goal in Wolong is to work together with the local stakeholders, Michigan State University and other leading research institutes on panda research and conservation to develop site-specific community-based poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation projects, and raise funds to help them implement such projects.

Some, but not all, projects currently planned by HELP to be implemented in the near future are the following:

1. Support K1-6 students through the Financial Aid Program. Since 2006, a full tuition waiver policy has been implemented in Wolong Nature Reserve with government funding, but students still have to pay about 400 RMB (about 60 US$) fees each year for books and stationeries. Through the Financial Aid Program we will identify students from poor households and pay those expenses for them.

2. Support K7-12 students through the Scholarship Program. There is only one middle/high school in the reserve. Some families, especially those living far from the main road, cannot afford to pay the children's tuition and living expenses such as room and board, clothes and bedding. These children will be supported with $150 - $450/year by the Scholarship Program.

3. Library Program. In the Library Program we will help schools establish and expand their libraries by buying more new and used books and support teachers’ efforts to maintain the libraries.

4. Children’s Health Program. In the Children’s Health Program we will pay the basic children’s health insurance and provide nutritional supplements for economically poor households.

5. Villager Health Fund Program. In the Villager Health Fund program we will donate the money into village level health fund, from which patients from economically poor households will benefit.