Is this a case of “Statistics, statistics and damned lies!”?
30/04/2013
* Author Sam Geall on China’s Green Awakening
BusinessWeek: “Most of the headlines about China’s environment involve victims and villains. On one side are the regular people suffering from exposure to toxic rivers and contaminated food; on the other, greedy factory owners and recalcitrant officials. Not visible in that black-and-white picture are China’s emerging ranks of environmental activists—some full-time nongovernmental organization workers and others simply volunteers responding ad hoc to threats to their health and livelihood. China’s first environmental NGO, Friends of Nature, was allowed to legally register in 1994, and since then thousands more have followed in its footsteps.
A new book edited by Oxford University lecturer Sam Geall, China and the Environment: The Green Revolution, traces the evolution of green activism in China. Geall is also executive editor of the online magazine ChinaDialogue.net. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, he shared his perspective on civil society in an authoritarian country—and how technology changes the picture.
Who are China’s environmentalists? How would you characterize today’s green advocates?
Journalists and broadcasters founded many of China’s most prominent green NGOs—after all, they witnessed the scale of the unfolding environmental crisis. China actually has a long history of civil society, which was suppressed during the Mao era. But the past 20 years have seen a flourishing of green NGOs. Now there are thousands registered, and many more unregistered. Today all sorts of people get involved in China’s environmental campaigns, from university students and middle-class urban residents protesting against the construction of polluting petrochemical factories or incinerators, to villagers in the countryside angry about pollution ruining their crops and their health.”
via Q&A: Author Sam Geall on China’s Green Awakening – Businessweek.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/greening-of-china/
25/04/2013
* China moves cautiously ahead on nuclear energy
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “From 2005 to 2011, China rapidly developed its nuclear power capacity. In 2010 alone, it began operations at two new reactors and broke ground on 10 more, accounting for more than 60 percent of new reactor construction worldwide and making the Chinese nuclear industry by far the fastest-growing in the world. By the end of 2010, China had 14 nuclear reactors in operation with a total capacity of about 11 gigawatts electric, or GWe. That was still a relatively small amount — in contrast, the United States had 104 commercial reactors with a total capacity of about 100 GWe in 2010 — but China was pursuing ambitious plans to rapidly expand.
Then came the tsunami and earthquake that led to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in March 2011, the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. After Fukushima, China changed course dramatically, slowing the pace of nuclear development to focus on safety. The slower pace is reassuring, but to really be a leader on nuclear safety, China should speed up the adoption of new laws on nuclear energy and enhance the independence and authority of nuclear safety regulators.
Putting the Brakes On. According to a government plan issued in 2007, China planned to install a total nuclear capacity of 40 GWe by 2020, which would account for about 3 percent of electricity generation nationwide. Many officials and experts expected that the number would actually increase further, to more than 80 GWe.
In its initial, March 2011 reaction to Fukushima, though, China’s State Council, the nation’s governing body, decided to suspend approval of new nuclear power stations, conduct comprehensive safety inspections of existing plants, and review all nuclear projects including those under construction. In October 2012, after concluding the inspections and reviews, the State Council issued a new plan that represents a serious and cautious reevaluation of safety issues and the pace of development. Called the Medium- and Long-term Nuclear Power Development Plan (2011-2020), its proposals include:
A return to normal construction at a controlled and orderly pace.
Permission for a limited number of new nuclear power reactors to be built in coastal sites that have been comprehensively evaluated.
A ban on new inland nuclear power projects, because the government fears a shortage of cooling water should accidents occur at such plants.
A requirement that all new projects meet the safety standards of the world’s most advanced nuclear reactors, known as third generation or Gen III reactors. Compared to earlier technology, these new designs incorporate improved fuel technology, superior thermal efficiency, passive rather than active safety systems, and standardized designs aimed at reducing maintenance and capital costs.
Based on the new plan, China will only approve a few new reactor construction projects before 2016. China now expects to grow its total nuclear capacity to 58 GWe by 2020, rather than the more than 80 GWe previously expected.
The government resumed approval of new nuclear power projects in December 2012, just as the new plan was issued. Several inland nuclear power projects where significant preparation work had already begun will be suspended, with some of their equipment likely transferred to coastal sites. While the pace of Chinese nuclear development will slow in the near term, the country’s long-term goals haven’t changed significantly. China continues to emphasize nuclear power as a crucial part of its energy mix. A government white paper issued in October 2012 observed that “as nuclear power is a high-quality, clean, and efficient modern energy resource, its development is of great importance for optimizing the nation’s energy structure and ensuring national energy security.” The white paper put China’s nuclear energy target at 40 GWe by 2015.”
via China moves cautiously ahead on nuclear energy | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
11/04/2013
* India, Germany sign six new pacts
Times of India: “India and Germany on Thursday inked six key MoUs including that for putting together 7 million for next four years towards joint research in the field of higher education and a pact for a soft loan of 1 billion for strengthening the green energy corridor.
A pact to promote German as a foreign language was also signed by the two sides following the 2nd round of inter-governmental consultations in Berlin.
Under pacts signed, both Germany and India have committed to 3.5 million each towards working on joint research and innovation programmes.
According to officials, under the strengthening of German language collaboration, currently 30,000 children in Kendriya Vidyalaya are learning German and under the pact they will try to increase the capacity.”
05/04/2013
* Economic development must be environmentally sustainable, says Manmohan
The Hindu: “Warning that environmental degradation could have serious consequences, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday emphasised that economic growth should be based on optimal use of natural resources and development must be environmentally sustainable.
Often, he regretted, “economic policies designed to promote growth have been implemented without considering their full environmental consequences, presumably on the assumption that these consequences would either take care of themselves or could be dealt with separately.”
Mr. Singh said this while inaugurating the International Workshop on Green National Accounting for India in New Delhi.
He said India’s commitment to planned economic development reflects the government’s determination to improve the economic conditions of people and an affirmation of the role of the government in bringing about this outcome through a variety of social, economic, and institutional initiatives.
“But as the economy develops the capacity to grow rapidly, it gives rise to many new challenges. For instance, natural resources are limited, and final.
“And one needs to decide how to use these scarce resources optimally, both from the economic development and the sustainability perspectives,” Mr. Singh said.
The Prime Minister said there is evidence to suggest that such policies may actually result in a net decrease in human well-being.
Globally, he said, environmental degradation is manifesting itself through the loss of fertile soils, desertification, decreasing forest cover, reduction of fresh water availability, and an extreme loss of bio-diversity.
“These are serious consequences, and it has become clear today that economic development must be environmentally sustainable,” he added.
Mr. Singh said through planned economic development, India aims to attain economic growth and poverty alleviation, and doing so in a sustainable manner.”
via Economic development must be environmentally sustainable, says Manmohan – The Hindu.
Related articles
- The past & present of Indian environmentalism (thehindu.com)
- Sustainable Development: Only a Buzzword? (thehindu.com)
25/03/2013
* Third Pole glaciers shrinking, affected by black carbon
China Daily: “About 90 percent of glaciers in the Third Pole region are shrinking, accelerated by black carbon being transferred from South Asia to the Tibetan Plateau, a top scientist has warned.
The Third Pole region, which is centered on the Tibetan Plateau and concerns the interests of the surrounding countries and regions, covers more than 5 million square kilometers and has an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters.
The area has the largest number of glaciers outside the polar regions and exerts a direct influence on the social and economic development of some of the most densely populated regions on earth, including China and India.
The glaciers are at the headwaters of many prominent Asian rivers.
Influenced by global warming, its alpine glaciers have seen drastic changes in recent years, such as thinning and shrinkage, which pose potential geological hazards to people both on and around the plateau.
Like Antarctica and the Arctic, the Third Pole is drawing increased attention from the international academic community, but the results of former international studies in this area are inconsistent, said Yao Tandong, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences‘ Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research.
The scientist, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee, said some people believe the glaciers will retreat and finally disappear by 2030, while others argue they will remain unchanged.
There are even people who argue that the glaciers have even moved forward, he said.
Researchers at Yao’s institute say they can now draw a more comprehensive picture of the region, by showing data on the glaciers’ status over the past 30 years. An investigation using topographic maps and satellite images revealed the retreat of 82 glaciers, area reduction by 7,090 glaciers and the mass-balance change of 15 glaciers.
“Systematic differences in glacier status are apparent from region to region, with the most pronounced shrinkage in the Himalayas, the southeastern part of the region.
Some of the glaciers there are very likely to disappear by 2030,” Yao said.
“The shrinkage generally decreases from the Himalayas to the continental interior and is smallest in the western part. Some glaciers there are even growing.”
He said changes in the glaciers will be accelerated if the planet continues to warm.
Potential consequences would be unsustainable water supplies from major rivers and geo-hazards, such as glacier lake expansion and flooding, which could threaten the well-being of people downstream.”
via Third Pole glaciers shrinking, affected by black carbon |Society |chinadaily.com.cn.
Related articles
- How will climate change affect the Himalayas? Scientists trek to find out. (csmonitor.com)
- Where has all the ice gone? (treehugger.com)
- Between Glacier And Dam: Living With Climate Change On Tibetan Plateau (chimalaya.org)
- Nepal’s glaciers retreat – but why? (climatenewsnetwork.net)
- Glaciers in the Himalayas Are Retreating – But Why? (climatecentral.org)
- Study Shows Canada’s Far North Glaciers Are Melting Fast (climatecentral.org)
- Canada’s Glaciers Could Shrink by a Fifth by 2100 (themoderatevoice.com)
25/03/2013
* China pulls 1,000 dead ducks from Sichuan river
BBC: “Around 1,000 dead ducks have been pulled from a river in southwest China, local officials say.
Residents found the dead ducks in Nanhe river in Pengshan county, Sichuan province, and alerted the environmental department, they said.
Local residents and livestock were not at risk as the river was not used for drinking water, officials added.
The news comes as the toll of dead pigs pulled from Shanghai’s Huangpu river passed 16,000.
Speaking in an interview with China National Radio on Sunday, Liang Weidong, a deputy director in Pengshan’s publicity department, said that the authorities were first made aware of the ducks on Tuesday.
Officials discovered over 50 woven bags which contained the carcasses of around 1,000 ducks in the river.
They were unable to determine the cause of death as some of the ducks were already decomposed, Mr Liang said, adding that the bodies had been disinfected and buried.
An initial investigation suggested that the duck corpses had originated from upstream and were not dumped by local Pengshan farmers, he said.”
via BBC News – China pulls 1,000 dead ducks from Sichuan river.
Related articles
- Dead pigs in China river exceed 13,000 (seeddaily.com)
22/03/2013
* As Pollution Worsens in China, Solutions Succumb to Infighting
NY Times: “China’s state leadership transition has taken place this month against an ominous backdrop. More than 16,000 dead pigs have been found floating in rivers that provide drinking water to Shanghai. A haze akin to volcanic fumes cloaked the capital, causing convulsive coughing and obscuring the portrait of Mao Zedong on the gate to the Forbidden City.
So severe are China’s environmental woes, especially the noxious air, that top government officials have been forced to openly acknowledge them. Fu Ying, the spokeswoman for the National People’s Congress, said she checked for smog every morning after opening her curtains and kept at home face masks for her daughter and herself. Li Keqiang, the new prime minister, said the air pollution had made him “quite upset” and vowed to “show even greater resolve and make more vigorous efforts” to clean it up.
What the leaders neglect to say is that infighting within the government bureaucracy is one of the biggest obstacles to enacting stronger environmental policies. Even as some officials push for tighter restrictions on pollutants, state-owned enterprises — especially China’s oil and power companies — have been putting profits ahead of health in working to outflank new rules, according to government data and interviews with people involved in policy negotiations.
For instance, even though trucks and buses crisscrossing China are far worse for the environment than any other vehicles, the oil companies have delayed for years an improvement in the diesel fuel those vehicles burn. As a result, the sulfur levels of diesel in China are at least 23 times that of the United States. As for power companies, the three biggest ones in the country are all repeat violators of government restrictions on emissions from coal-burning plants; offending power plants are found across the country, from Inner Mongolia to the southwest metropolis of Chongqing.
The state-owned enterprises are given critical roles in policy-making on environmental standards. The committees that determine fuel standards, for example, are housed in the buildings of an oil company. Whether the enterprises can be forced to follow, rather than impede, environmental restrictions will be a critical test of the commitment of Mr. Li andXi Jinping, the new party chief and president, to curbing the influence of vested interests in the economy.”
via As Pollution Worsens in China, Solutions Succumb to Infighting – NYTimes.com.
Related articles
- China Acknowledges ‘Cancer Villages’ As Pollution Worsens And Disease Soars (huffingtonpost.com)
- * Spill in China Lays Bare Environmental Concerns (chindia-alert.org)
- China’s new premier vows to tackle pollution (eco-business.com)
21/03/2013
* Millions of tonnes of rural refuse are dumped in waterways a year, bill says
So it’s not only factories and chemical plants that are at fault. Common rural folk are too!
SCMP: “Many were shocked when thousands of dead pigs were found floating on Shanghai’s Huangpu River this month, but animal carcasses are not the only things that end up in the nation’s waterways.
Rivers and lakes are among the major dumping sites of some 190 million tonnes of household waste generated in rural areas every year, most of which are casually dumped without being recycled or properly treated, according to a bill submitted to the annual session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing last week.
Research by the China Association for Promoting Democracy, one of the mainland’s eight non-communist political parties, shows that most household refuse in the rural areas is piled on the side of roads, dumped under bridges, in fields or on river banks, or simply burned.
Researchers said the variety and amount of rural waste had risen markedly over the past decade as living standards improved.
In rural areas, household refuse used to comprise mainly of kitchen waste and ash from burning coal or firewood, but Wang Jinxia, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences‘ Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy, said there was now more plastic packaging, sanitation products and even furniture in the thrown-away waste.
Wang said the limited amount of household waste, most of it biodegradable, could be absorbed by nature’s self-cleaning capacity in the past, but now the amount and variety of trash had far exceeded that capacity, threatening the environment.
“It [dumping refuse in rivers] is a rather prevalent phenomenon … in some extreme cases, the rivers are even clogged,” Wang said.
In the past month, photos have been posted online in a campaign to record polluted rivers, some completely covered by garbage. A stream in the Yongding county of Fujian province was used as a dump for waste including glass bottles, plastic bags, used lanterns and even furniture.
Last month, a Zhejiang businessman offered a 200,000 yuan (HK$247,000) reward to an environmental official in Ruian in challenging him to swim in a river full of household refuse and waste rubber from a shoe factory.
Every summer, 150,000 to 200,000 cubic metres of refuse is retrieved from the reservoir above the massive Three Gorges Dam to prevent it from jamming the floodgates, official media reports say. The waste include tree branches washed into the Yangtze by torrential rains, but most of it is household refuse from families living along the river’s upper reaches. Some rivers in cities have also become casual dump sites. For example, The Beijing News reported this month that the authorities had retrieved more than 10,000 corncobs from the moat of the Forbidden City – among the four tonnes of refuse that tourists threw into the Tongzi River.
Some sections of the waterway in the old town of Lijiang , a popular city for tourism in Yunnan province, were also found to be congested with plastic bottles, disposable tableware and other refuse, China National Radio reported last year, while some restaurants were accused of discharging their wastewater – containing grease and detergent – directly into the river.
The mainland banned the dumping of household refuse and industrial waste in rivers, lakes, canals and reservoirs in 2004 when the Solid Wastes Pollution Prevention Law was amended.
But researcher Wang, who did a survey of about 120 villages in seven provinces in 2010, said there was no such government oversight in some regions.
The high cost of refuse collection and treatment had also discouraged some local governments from tackling the problem, Wang said. For instance, a town with 50,000 residents would need to spend at least 3.5 million yuan a year for proper waste disposal, Wang said.
“Without a public service to collect and cart away the trash, people in rural villages have no choice but to dump it in the waterways or fields,” she said.”
Related articles
- Hundreds of Dead Pigs Found in Major Chinese Waterway (voanews.com)
- Chinese Official Refuses To Swim In Polluted River (huffingtonpost.com)
- China river’s dead pig toll passes 13,000 but officials say water quality is ‘normal’ (behindthewall.nbcnews.com)
13/03/2013
* China pulls nearly 6,000 dead pigs from Shanghai river
BBC: “Officials say the number of pig carcasses found in Shanghai‘s Huangpu River has risen to nearly 6,000.
In a statement, Shanghai authorities said that 5,916 dead pigs had been removed from the river by Tuesday.
But they said water from the river was safe, with water quality meeting government-set standards.
It is believed that the pigs may have come from Jiaxing in the neighbouring Zhejiang province, although the cause of their deaths is still not clear.
In a statement, the Shanghai municipal government said that the water in Huangpu River, which is a major source of drinking water for Shanghai, was safe. It also said that no diseased pork had been detected in markets.
However, the news has been met with scepticism by some users on weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, where the hashtag “Huangpu River dead pigs” has emerged.
“Cadres and officials, we are willing to provide for you, but please don’t let us die from poisoning. Otherwise who will serve you? Please think twice,” said netizen Shi Liqin.
“This river’s colour is about the same as excrement, even if there weren’t dead pigs you couldn’t drink it,” said another, with the username Yuzhou Duelist.
The general mood is of concern, rather than outrage or panic, reports the BBC’s John Sudworth in Shanghai, as the Chinese public are well used to food scandals, such as the use of oil scraped from sewers for cooking, and plasticiser found in baby formula.”
via BBC News – China pulls nearly 6,000 dead pigs from Shanghai river.
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