Mobilizing People to Protect China's Rivers

Many cultures worship the lone hero who overcomes terrible obstacles in the fight for justice. True leadership, however, empowers others to become strong leaders alongside oneself.

For years, Liu Sheng* fought hard to protect the Xiang River in his hometown in Hunan Province from toxic pollution. He and his team at Green Hunan, an environmental group he founded in 2007, patrolled rivers to detect toxins and push polluters to clean up their act.

Soon they found themselves stretched beyond capacity to monitor the second largest river in China. Liu Sheng looked inward and realized that in order to succeed he had to overcome the biggest obstacle within himself: his desire for individual heroism. In order to make the Xiang River protection work sustainable, he needed to get citizens to participate.

When he first founded Green Hunan, mobilizing the public had been part of his plan. But faced with so much pollution, Liu Sheng and his team ended up trying to solve
the pollution problems themselves rather than investing time and resources to train citizen volunteers.

Now Liu Sheng was on a new mission: becoming an enabler instead of a doer. He persuaded his team to put their faith in the public and train local people to resolve environmental issues on their own.

Then he and his team traveled to each county and city in Hunan Province to inspire and train regular citizens. By 2013, his team had grown its local volunteer network to 100 people, and since then it has been doubling and tripling every year.

The success in Hunan Province convinced Liu Sheng that it would be possible to scale up his model. In 2017, he founded the China River Watcher’s Center. Now there are 2,000 watchers patrolling rivers in 26 provinces across China—putting him well on his way to make his vision come true: one million River Watchers guarding every single river in China.

*Photo Credit: Green Hunan