(Question about things) Chu Wenwen: "Generation Z", how to embrace the protection of global biodiversity?
China News Service, Kunming, October 16th, title: Chu Wenwen: "Generation Z", how to embrace the protection of global biodiversity?
China News Agency reporter Hu Yuanhang
At the 15th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity held in Kunming, China, Chu Wenwen, PhD candidate at Beijing Forestry University and founder of the Altay Regional Nature Conservation Association, shared the achievements of Chinese youths' joint efforts to protect beavers as a global youth representative .
After the meeting, she accepted an exclusive interview with China News Agency "Question about East and West" to further elaborate on her practice and thinking.
In the past four years, Chu Wenwen and her team have used social media platforms to launch the Xinjiang Mengxin beaver conservation series of charity projects "Beaver Canteen", "Beaver Guardian", "Beaver Ark", etc., successfully attracting millions of people The participation of Chinese young people has promoted a 20% increase in the number of beavers, a key national first-level protected wild animal in China, and has been selected as one of the 100 classic natural protection cases of the United Nations.
Chu Wenwen pointed out that at present, more and more "post-90s" and "post-00s" in China are like her, clarifying their attitudes towards biodiversity conservation and participating in it.
Chinese youth will play an increasingly important role in the protection of biodiversity in China and the world.
As a new generation who has been born seamlessly with the Internet information age, "Generation Z" is good at thinking on the Internet and will use more interesting methods to drive more people to understand, experience, and protect nature.
The summary of the interview record is as follows:
China News Service: What message do you most want to convey when you stand on the stage of global biodiversity protection on behalf of Chinese youth?
Chu Wenwen:
Standing on this larger stage this time actually represents the millions of Chinese young people behind me who participated in the Mengxin Beaver Conservation Charity Project.
We want to tell the world that Chinese youths are serious, serious, and dedicated to nature protection. We love nature and respect life. Everyone is using meager power to "build up mountains."
Compared to attending the conference, what makes me more proud is that there are so many people of the same age acting together.
I believe that with the joint efforts of everyone, China's nature protection industry will definitely be better.
Data map: On October 15, the first phase of the 15th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity concluded in Kunming, Yunnan.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Cui Nan
China News Agency reporter: What are the new characteristics of the way you and your peers participate in nature conservation?
Chu Wenwen:
My peers are actually a generation called "Generation Z" by everyone.
In the eyes of the older generation, the "Generation Z" are "shallow electronic natives."
But I think that being familiar with technology products and having broad information channels allows us to maintain a more open mind, to think more creatively, and to be brave to pursue and try various new things.
Like doing public welfare, we are not confined to traditional forms. We initiate and participate in various “online” public welfare projects such as online tree planting and online animal adoption, and we prefer to connect to society in a more interesting way.
Reporter from China News Service: Tell me about what attempts you have done in light of your practice? What kind of innovation is there?
Chu Wenwen:
My team and I mainly initiated three charitable projects, namely "Beaver Canteen", "Beaver Guardian" and "Beaver Ark", all to protect the Mengxin beavers that are only distributed in the Altay region of Xinjiang. .
The number of Mengxin beavers is about 600, and they are the first-level national key protected wild animals in China.
Data map: Mengxin beaver.
Zhongxin Video Screenshot
Among them, the "beaver canteen" is mainly used to plant shrub willows for beavers; the "beaver guardian" is mainly linked with local herders to patrol the beavers; the "beaver ark" is used to build a professional wildlife rescue center to protect the river. Raccoon and more animals.
All three of our projects were initiated on the Internet.
Animal protection needs to mobilize more social forces.
So from the beginning, we introduced live broadcasts and official account operations into our daily work. Not only did we regularly publish hard-working animal protectors’ daily growth posts, but also committed to turning the stupid-looking beaver into a “growing idol”.
Everyone thought of a lot of "new ideas".
For example, through public welfare crowdfunding, we called on everyone to save money for milk tea to grow shrubs and willows for beavers in the "beaver canteen"; set up a "beaver live broadcast" to let people intuitively see the real life of beavers; hold a "wild animal meeting" "Let netizens participate in the local wildlife protection on the spot; open the beaver adoption quota online, so that more people become "beaver guardians"...
Through these attempts, more and more netizens regard beavers as their "cubs" and will specifically count how many trees can be planted for beavers by drinking a few cups of milk tea.
With the joint efforts of everyone, we have built a "super canteen" with more than 400,000 bush willows.
There are also many netizens actively participating in the design of beaver cultural and creative products, making beaver emoticons like cheering for an idol.
Data map: Mengxin beaver.
Zhongxin Video Screenshot
China News Agency reporter: What kind of experience has been formed by this series of practices?
Chu Wenwen:
As aborigines of the Internet, our generation’s lifestyle has undergone subversive changes compared with previous generations: the Internet has become part of our innate life, and we are used to being active in various interests and cultures. At the forefront of social software, we are constantly looking for like-minded circle culture and self-contained language system; like playing online games, watching short videos and live broadcasts, etc.; pursuing personalization; advocating idol culture.
At the same time, our generation is more open-minded and pays more attention to personal interest and self-realization than the pursuit of material life.
These characteristics are destined to make us more like to use the Internet and new and interesting ways to participate in public welfare projects.
After groping, there are three aspects of experience: one is the use of "Internet" thinking; the second is the creation of the concept of "idol"; the third is the joint thinking of "building up mountains".
Internet thinking is a way of thinking that re-examines the market, users, products, corporate value chain, and even the entire business ecosystem in the context of the continuous development of (mobile) Internet+, big data, cloud computing and other technologies.
This can also be applied to public welfare projects to protect nature.
In particular, the social thinking, user thinking, big data thinking, traffic thinking, cross-border thinking, and sharing thinking included in it all have a lot of inspiration for public welfare projects.
Therefore, at the beginning of the design project, we are committed to making the threshold of nature protection lower, especially focusing on the use of social platforms and interaction with netizens.
"Idol" is a transliteration of English idol, meaning idol, originally derived from the name of young idols in Japan and South Korea.
The concept of "Idol" is not only applicable to the entertainment industry, but also to nature protection, especially animal protection.
Everyone who likes the beaver is willing to support, forward and protect it just like guarding the "idol".
Seeing that the hard work has been rewarded, everyone has more confidence and motivation to participate in the cause of protecting the "little idols".
Collaboration, in layman's terms, is to bring together many forces, accumulate little to make more, and build up a mountain of soil.
Long-term protection of animals or biodiversity cannot be accomplished by a single force.
Based on the Internet, we can attract as many forces as possible to join.
The protection of Mengxin beavers relies on everyone's efforts on the Chinese Internet. Our project is getting better and better. The number of Mengxin beavers has increased from 162 to 190.
This winter, the "Beaver's Ark" Wild Animal Rescue Center we are preparing to build will be put into use. This is the first professional wild animal rescue center in Altai Mountain in China.
Reporter from China News Service: How should the global young generation, including Chinese youth, better embrace biodiversity conservation?
Chu Wenwen:
With the development of the mobile Internet social era, "Generation Z" has gradually become a very active group in modern public welfare, and has become an indispensable part of biodiversity conservation.
For example, many of the founders of NGOs I know are young people like me. Everyone is working on the protection of different species with many different methods.
Everyone has a common feeling in the exchange, that is, global biodiversity conservation calls for solutions in a multicultural context.
This requires young people around the world to play a more active role.
Specifically, everyone should actively embrace a green, low-carbon and environmentally friendly lifestyle; focus more on environmental and ecological protection related fields; not only can actively join the team of nature protection, but also think about how to integrate nature protection into their own field ; Actively apply what they have learned to create more and more interesting protection projects.
(over)
About the interviewee:
Photo by China News Agency reporter Liu Ranyang
Chu Wenwen is a nature conservation worker and wildlife photographer.
2019 Ministry of Ecology and Environment-the most beautiful eco-environmental protection volunteer; winner of the May 4th Youth Medal in Altay, Xinjiang; member of the All-China Youth Federation; Ph.D. candidate at Beijing Forestry University.
Since college, she has been on the media to promote nature protection work and popular science wildlife monitoring and protection knowledge. She has successively participated in "I am a speaker", "Everyone", "Recount", "Zhengda Variety Show-Animals Are Coming" and other columns, and were invited to film " "Princess Beaver", "Save the Beaver", "This is Xinjiang" and other documentaries.
In the past five years, Chu Wenwen has focused on building three public welfare projects for nature protection jointly developed by local governments, nature conservation foundations, social organizations, enterprises, and national netizens: Beaver Canteen, Beaver Guardian, and Beaver’s Ark. Success Selected as 100+ global typical cases of biodiversity.