Nanjing’s finless porpoises have been much in the news of late; their numbers on a steady rise and them featured extensively in last week’s Yangtze Culture Forum held in our own fine City. But bizarrely, they also have to thank pollution for part of their fame.
That was the takeaway to emerge on 26 November, when the Yangtze Finless Porpoise Science & Education Centre organised over 20 students to carry out its “Smiling Angel” action.
The Yangtze River finless porpoise is called a “smiling angel” on account of its perpetual grin. But what of the connection to environmental pollution? For that, we need refer to Nanjing Sembcorp Water Co. Ltd., that was handed, after almost endless legal deliberation, fines totalling ¥520 million in 2019.
That particular company was found to have, between 2014 to 2017, illegally discharged 280,000 cubic metres of high-concentration wastewater, over 4,300 tonnes of sludge and 54 tonnes of hazardous waste, into the Yangtze River.
Going back and forward between courts in both Nanjing’s Gulou and Xuanwu districts, Sembcorp’s General Manager, surnamed Zheng, and 12 others, were convicted of committing environmental-pollution crimes and sentenced to fixed-term imprisonments ranging from 1-6 years.
We often hear of such cases and this publication has reported on many thereof. But much less well known is the answer to the basic question; what happens to all the money?
That’s where the specific wording in the verdict comes in. In addition to enormous amounts in compensation, the Xuanwu Court decreed that there be a penalty imposed of “¥233 million [to be put to use] in investment in alternative-restoration projects”.
It therefore came to be that such monies played an active role in the construction of the Yangtze Finless Porpoise Science & Education Centre, as Nanjing Daily reports.
The irony is of course not lost; that it take the mindless and wonton destruction of our ecology to assist in bringing one of the Yangtze’s most-beloved inhabitants back from the brink of extinction.
