Exercise #2
February 3, 2022 By: Wanyue Li
In junior school, my grandparents were born in Beijing, China, and migrated to Calgary, Canada. I currently live in Canada, although my parents also immigrated to Canada a few years ago and live in downtown Calgary. Living in Canada has its share of environmental challenges that require addressing policy. The paper’s emphasis will be my father, given his huge k knowledge of life in China. According to Fang and De-gang, “China has a track record of poverty, insecurity, and income inequality.”[1] Since the 1970s, the country experienced massive economic development coupled with a surge in population, resulting in changed living conditions for people. Deng Xiaoping’s reign became the genesis of China’s fortunes to change as the economy grew rapidly.
After living in China for some time, my grandparents decided to move to China’s more quiet and peaceful places to settle as farmers. My grandparents loved farming, and they needed a farm in the rangelands to enhance their farming. Organic farming has always been practiced in my family, and my grandparents were the pioneers of this. Organic farming helps fight pests and diseases using organic methodologies.[2] They secured some money from the government that enabled them to get a parcel of land they could use for farming. They settled on their new farm as businessmen and farmers. This gave them more hope as their farming became more sustainable and helped them take my dad through school. Despite their family struggles, this was a golden opportunity that enabled my grandparents to export foodstuffs they planted and earned money in return.
As my dad grew up and took school seriously, he helped his parents in farming while also looking for jobs outside the country as he continued his education. But unfortunately, my grandparents lived in one of the places in China affected by climate change, and farming became quite unbearable.[3] They sent my dad to the city to look for a job as his fame continued to build because of his heavy involvement in many competitions in school. On finishing his education, my dad secured a job with an international agency on health that worked in China but was based in Canada. He worked there for a few years, and that is how my grandparents became the first people to be sent to Canada by the agency before my dad followed a few years later. His role in cross-cultural medicine allowed him to swiftly move to Canada and settle as he continued with his profession. Life in Canada has been great, but my family continued with organic farming as an environmental conservation approach in Canada with the environmental issues.
My dad found it easy to settle in Canada since many Chinese nationals had settled there by that time. My dad noted that China was significantly different from Canada on many fronts. For instance, unlike China, Canada had plenty of job opportunities, land, and food. However, the cost of living was higher in Canada compared to China. Living in Canada enabled my father to explore his full potential and start a flourishing business alongside his professional development was fast. Had my dad remained in China, we would not have made such progress as a family, given China’s communist society and living conditions. my parents leased land and started practicing agriculture in Canada. Organic farming has provided many opportunities for my parents to recycle products and use them as farm inputs.[4] This has enabled us to provide organic food to the country’s residents. Many organic crops are grown, which has resulted in rigorous environmental conservation measures. Many parents connect with the land because of their efforts to conserve the environment through organic farming.
In conclusion, we enjoy a huge heritage that the coming generations will benefit from as a family. Our Chinese descent allows us to be environmentally conscious of conserving the environment and maintaining ecological balance. This contrasts with the Canadians, who are focused on getting money through industries by logging and cutting down trees for money. Despite the success we enjoy as a family, achieving sustainable development in Canada might be a challenge as long as reforms on environmental conservation are not made. Implementing such reforms would make it easier for various stakeholders to engage in environmental conservation. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the reforms may not come easy as it may take more years for the environmental activists to finally get what they have fought to get since the early 90s.
[1] Fang, W. A. N. G., and M. I. A. O. De-gang. “Rural land finance supply during the transition period of modernization; Institutional design and implementation effect-The rural land financial thought in the 1930s and 1940s in China and its realistic significance [J].” Journal of Finance and Economics 39, no. 1 (2013): 38-48.
[2] Crosby, Alfred W. “Virgin soil epidemics as a factor in the aboriginal depopulation in America.” The William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History (1976): 289-299.
[3] Fang and De-gang., 38-48.
[4] Turner, Nancy J., and Sandra Peacock. “Solving the perennial paradox: ethnobotanical evidence for plant resource management on the Northwest Coast.” Keeping it Living: Traditions of plant use and cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America (2005): 101-50.