environment | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

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.

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)

Posted in Economics, Environment, Internal politics, Politics, Pollution | 1 Comment »

Tags: Beijing, China, climate, environment, Fu Ying, Inner Mongolia, Li Keqiang, National People's Congress, Shanghai

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.”

via Millions of tonnes of rural refuse are dumped in waterways a year, bill says | South China Morning Post.

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)

Posted in China alert, Pollution | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, China Association for Promoting Democracy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, environment, Huangpu River

07/03/2013

* Lawmaker calls for pollution liability insurance law

Xinhua: “A Chinese lawmaker has urged the government to create laws enforcing a scheme that makes enterprises pay compensation in cases of polluting accidents.

Insurance (Photo credit: Christopher S. Penn)

Such environmental pollution liability insurance, serving as a safety net, will help enterprises that pose heavy risks to better prevent pollution and ensure compensation for victims when they fail, said Zuo Xuwen, director of the Hubei provincial Insurance Regulatory Bureau.

China is in urgent need of implementing the insurance in the face of intensifying pollution pressure recently, Zuo said on Thursday in Beijing on the sidelines of parliament’s annual session.

Pilot environmental pollution liability insurance schemes have already had success in the provinces of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangsu, according to Zuo.

In September 2008, some 120 households in Zhuzhou City of central China’s Hunan Province received compensation from an insurance company after falling victim to leakage from a local insecticide factory that caused great damage to the environment.

Zuo suggested that local legislation should be set up in accordance with each regional situation to encourage enterprises to participate in the insurance.

Zuo also called for the setting-up of pollution compensation funds when there is confusion in identifying polluters. This move would buffer victims from greater losses, and the fund would be entitled to the right of recourse for those eventually proved responsible, the official said.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission jointly issued a guideline in January to promote compulsory insurance pilots in heavy industries and other big-polluting enterprises.”

via Lawmaker calls for pollution liability insurance law – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Pollution | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Beijing, China, China Insurance Regulatory Commission, environment, Government, Insurance, pollution, Pollution insurance

03/03/2013

* Spill in China Lays Bare Environmental Concerns

NY Times: “The first warning came in the form of dead fish floating in a river.

Then officials in this city got confirmation that a chemical spill had taken place at a fertilizer factory upstream. They shut off the tap water, which sent residents into a scramble for bottled water. In the countryside, officials also told farmers not to graze their livestock near the river.

The spill, which occurred on Dec. 31, affected at least 28 villages and a handful of cities of more than one million people, including Handan. Officials here were irate that their counterparts in Changzhi, where the polluting factory was located, had delayed reporting the spill for five days. For the past two months, Changzhi officials and executives at the company running the factory, Tianji Coal Chemical Industry Group, have generally stayed silent, exacerbating anxiety over water quality.

The conflict over the Changzhi spill has drawn attention to the growing problems with water use and pollution in northern China. The region, which has suffered from a drought for decades, is grappling with how industrial companies should operate along rivers. Local officials are shielding polluting companies and covering up environmental degradation, say environmentalists.

“Problems with water weren’t so serious before, but they have become much worse with industrial consumption,” said Yin Qingli, a lawyer in Handan who filed a lawsuit in January against Tianji, which uses water to convert coal to fertilizer at the factory in Changzhi.

Environmental degradation has led many Chinese to question the Communist Party’s management of the country’s economic growth. Addressing the problem is one the greatest challenges for the administration of Xi Jinping, the new chief of the Communist Party. Environmental issues will most likely be on the agenda at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, scheduled to begin on Tuesday.”

via Spill in China Lays Bare Environmental Concerns – NYTimes.com.

Pollution Problems in China (urethaneblog.typepad.com)
Chemical spill poisons drinking water (upi.com)
China’s Poison-Filled River (theatlantic.com)
Mayor ‘sorry’ for chemical contamination in river (capitalfm.co.ke)

Posted in China alert, Economics, Environment, Manufacturing, Pollution | 1 Comment »

Tags: Chemical accident, chemical spill, China, environment, fertilizer factory, industrial consumption, National People's Congress, Xi JinPing

24/02/2013

* China to push compulsory insurance for polluting industries

Reuters: “China will force heavily polluting industries to participate in a compulsory insurance program to ensure they can adequately provide compensation for damage, the government said on Thursday.

Steam billows from a chimney of a heating plant near the World Trade Centre Tower III, a 330-meter-tall (1,083 feet) skyscraper, in central Beijing February 4, 2013. REUTERS/Petar Kujundzic Pollution has become a core concern for the stability-obsessed ruling Communist Party because of the public anger and protests it generates and because the issue cannot easily be hidden from view.

Companies that must participate in the scheme include mining and smelting industries, lead battery manufacturers, leather goods firms and chemical factories, the Environment Ministry and China Insurance Regulatory Commission said in a joint statement.

Petrochemical companies and firms that make hazardous chemicals and hazardous waste would also be encouraged to participate, it added.

Special environmental protection funds would be allocated to companies taking out the insurance, and they would be given priority for bank lending, the statement said.

Companies which don’t apply for the insurance may face negative environmental impact assessments and credit downgrades, which could hamper their development, it added.

A pilot insurance program currently covered more than 2,000 companies across a dozen provinces and had underwritten some 20 billion yuan ($3.21 billion) in risk, the government departments said.

“Using the tool of insurance … is conducive towards pushing companies to raise their environmental risk management and reduce incidents of polluting accidents,” it added.

The insurance scheme follows a spate of rules aimed at cleaning up the country’s notoriously filthy environment.

via China to push compulsory insurance for polluting industries | Reuters.

Posted in carbon emission, China alert, Economics, Environment, Green, greenhouse gas, Pollution | Leave a Comment »

Tags: China, China Insurance Regulatory Commission, climate, environment, Environmental impact assessment, environmental impact assessments, pollution, Risk management

10/02/2013

* China targets $287b resource recycling industry

China Daily: “China will boost the annual output value of its resource recycling industry to 1.8 trillion yuan (287 billion US dollars) by 2015 as part of the country’s bid to develop a circular economy.

The government will also increase the resource productivity, or economic output per unit of resource use, by 15 percent as of the end of 2015, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planner.

The goals were written in a national plan on spurring the development of a circular economy recently released by the State Council, or China’s cabinet, the NDRC said in a statement on its website.

Major tasks listed in the plan include building nationwide industrial and agricultural systems that are cleaner and allow more recycling of renewable resources and promoting green consumption.

It’s imperative for China to speed up developing the circular economy as the country sees continuously growing energy and resource demand, piling waste and rising pressure in tackling climate changes, the statement quoted an unnamed NDRC official as saying.

China pins hopes on circular economy, an economy highly efficient and recyclable in resource use, to shift its growth pattern to a more sustainable and greener one.”

via China targets $287b resource recycling industry |Economy |chinadaily.com.cn.

Making Sense of the Circular Economy (triplepundit.com)
Consumers Goods Firms Could Save $700 Billion With Circular Economy (environmentalleader.com)
China to cut unit industrial energy consumption by 5% (nzweek.com)

Posted in agriculture, China alert, Economics, Environment, Good news | 1 Comment »

Tags: China, Circular economy, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, environment, National Development and Reform Commission, NDRC, Recycling, resource productivity, science, Waste Management

02/02/2013

* China’s Environmental Protection Racket

WSJ: “Beijing’s choke-inducing air – which blanketed the city for nearly a week before being cleared away by a bout of sorely-needed wind on Friday — prompted Premier Wen Jiabao to call for action to protect the environment and public health.

If the premier and his colleagues can see through the smog on the policy front, they might consider something that has been all but overshadowed by the capital’s plight: the sorry track record of the environmental watchdog in little Nantong in east China’s Jiangsu province.

The problems in Nantong are a tale of environmental protection gone seriously wrong in a country where money clearly talks. They may also be small but critical components of an increasingly toxic environment.

According to a series of newspaper reports, online versions of which appear to have vanished into the country’s not-so-thin air, more than 30 environmental and other officials from the Nantong area were implicated in a scandal that involves bribery and turning a blind eye to pollution problems. Thanks to the reporting of the Shanghai-based China Business News (in Chinese here and here), it’s now fairly clear that Nantong environmental officials were running something closer to an environmental protection racket.

The newspaper, which had been following the story since the summer of last year, reported earlier this month that the scandal had reached the highest level of the local environmental protection bureau. Contacted by the Wall Street Journal, an official with the Nantong Environmental Protection Bureau was unable to elaborate beyond the official posting on the Nantong discipline inspection committee’s website, which stated that former bureau director Lu Boxin was found guilty of accepting bribes and sentenced to 12 years in prison (in Chinese).

This brief report, posted under the banner headline of “Study the Spirit of the 18th Communist Party Congress, Promote and Deepen the Anti-corruption Campaign and the Building of Clean Government,” said that the bribes were taken on more than one occasion.”

via China’s Environmental Protection Racket – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/greening-of-china/

Posted in China alert, Consumer protection, corruption, Economics, Environment, Green, Illegal practices, Pollution | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Beijing, China, climate, environment, environmental protection bureau, Jiangsu, jiangsu province, Nantong, Wen Jiabao

21/01/2013

* Ex-minister blames China’s pollution mess on lack of rule of law

SCMP: “China had a chance to avoid environmental disasters some 40 to 30 years ago, the country’s first environmental protection chief has lamented amid worsening air and water pollution.

But Professor Qu Geping, who has overseen environmental policymaking since the early 1970s, said pollution had run wild as a result of unchecked economic growth under a “rule of men”, as opposed to the rule of law. Their rule imposed no checks on power and allowed governments to ignore environmental protection laws and regulations.

“I would not call the past 40 years’ efforts of environmental protection a total failure,” he said. “But I have to admit that governments have done far from enough to rein in the wild pursuit of economic growth … and failed to avoid some of the worst pollution scenarios we, as policymakers, had predicted.”

Qu, 83, was China’s first environmental protection administrator between 1987 and 1993. He then headed the National People’s Congress environment and resource committee for 10 years.

After three decades of worsening industrial pollution resulting from rapid urbanisation and industrialisation, China has accumulated huge environmental debts that will have to be paid back, Qu said.

He said recently he regretted that some of the very forward-looking strategies – emphasising a more balanced and co-ordinated approach to development and conservation, that were worked out as early as 1983 – were never put into serious practice when China was still at an early stage of industrialisation.

In 1970, premier Zhou Enlai had invited a Japanese journalist to give a lecture to senior government officials on the lessons Japan had learned from a series of heavy metal pollution scandals that killed several hundred people during a period of rapid industrialisation in the 1950s and 1960s, Qu said.

“But looking back, China fell into the same trap again,” he said. “In some cases, the problems are even worse now given the country’s huge population and the vast scale of its economy.”

via Ex-minister blames China’s pollution mess on lack of rule of law | South China Morning Post.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/economic-factors/greening-of-china/

Top News: High pollution sparks China anger (bbc.co.uk)
Beijing, China Air Pollution Hits Hazardous Levels (huffingtonpost.com)
Amid Smog Deluge, China Environmental Reports Accused of Fraud (theepochtimes.com)

Posted in Affluence, carbon emission, China alert, Climate change, Consumer protection, Ecology, Economics, Environment, Green, greenhouse gas, Illegal chemicals, Manufacturing, Politics, Pollution, Sustainable development | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Beijing, China, climate, environment, environmental policymaking, Environmental protection, Japan, National People's Congress, pollution, premier zhou, rapid industrialisation, Zhou Enlai

07/01/2013

* All cold on the southern front

I didn’t realise until this article that northern Chinese cities has district heating supplied by the municipal authorities. I don’t know if that is free or paid for. But regardless, it must be much cheaper than providing your own heating.

Xinhua: “In ravaging cold, when Chinese people living in northern cities are enjoying indoor warmth, southerners wonder how long they have to wait for before the government decides to install a public heating network.

The problem is they are trapped by a line drawn by late Premier Zhou Enlai six decades ago.

The line, which stands between 32 and 34 degrees north latitude, almost along the Huaihe River and Qinling Mountains, not only defines China’s northern and southern parts, but also determines different winters for the people.

Cities to the north of the line have public heating which circulates hot water generated by government heating stations through pipelines and radiators inside almost every resident’s building and public facility.

Room temperatures in the north could be more than 20 degrees Celsius.

However, people living in cities to the south of the line, including the country’s largest city Shanghai and other major metropolitans Chongqing, Nanjing, Wuhan, have to use various private and isolated heating devices to warm their freezing and humid houses.

The southerners have been plagued by the winter chill and have been complaining, especially after cold-air outbreaks when snow and ice have frozen southern provinces such as Hunan and Guangdong.

“Without heating indoors, even getting up takes a lot of courage,” “wangzikai” said on the popular twitter-like Sina Weibo.

Dai Tongtong, a freshman studying in central China’s Wuhan City, is a northerner. She said the cold mixed with moisture in the south affects her no matter how thick her clothes are.

To get away from cold of the dormitories, she and her fellow students cram into libraries and public reading rooms to share warmth generated by air conditioners.

In an opinion poll conducted by http://www.qq.com on Thursday, 88 percent of a total of 104,618 participants voted to install a collective public heating network in the south.

Some local governments in the south have started to build trial heating networks in urban communities, while national legislators and political advisors still endeavor to persuade the central government in giving local governments the option to construct public heating networks covering whole cities.”

via Web China: All cold on the southern front – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

Posted in China alert, district heating, Economics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: climate, environment

02/01/2013

* China’s taste for pork serves up a pollution problem

This is but an indication of what is going to happen when billions of poor people become affluent enough to want the things that affluent Westerners take for granted.

The Guardian: “Fan Jianjun points to a concrete pipe jutting from the lake bank. Sludge spews from its mouth and arcs across the water, the surface bubbling with the bodies of flies.

Piglets being fed on a farm near Suining, Sichuan province, China - 27 Apr 2009

Fan has lived in Houtonglong village all his 31 years. The water was clear, he says, before the pig farm was built and people’s health began to suffer.

No one consulted the villagers before Shengtai pig farm was built 100 metres from their homes. The farm produces 10,000 animals a year – a relatively small concern in the world of industrialised farming – but there is so much waste to dispose of, the village air is thick with the stench. In the rainy season manure escapes from the farm, covering the roads. Villagers are developing respiratory problems and Fan struggles to raise chickens and ducks, which die soon after hatching.

In the 10 years since the farm arrived, the villagers have tried to get it dislodged. “We pulled down the walls several times, and blocked the gate with mud and trucks,” said Fan, a self-employed businessman. Complaints to the local government have gone unanswered, so Fan turned to internet forums to raise awareness. “We can only hope the farm will stop polluting our environment,” he added. “Our village was once a very beautiful place.”

Pork is China’s favourite meat: last year the country produced 50m tonnes – more than half the world’s total – and as the disposable incomes of China’s 1.3 billion people rise, their appetite is growing. “Pork is wrapped up in ideas of progress and modernity,” said Mindi Schneider, a sociologist at Cornell University. Until the 1990s typical families only ate meat at Chinese new year.

Memories of the devastating famine that killed tens of millions in the early 1960s still weigh heavy on the Chinese psyche. “I’ve heard people talking about eating meat in ‘revenge,'” Schneider said. “It was so limited before. Now it’s like: ‘look at this progress, we can eat as much meat as we want.'”

In 1980 the average Chinese person ate 14kg of meat. Today that person eats over four times more, almost 60kg. In comparison, the average American eats 125kg of meat each year and the average Briton about 85kg.

The livestock industry is transforming accordingly. Seen from a hilltop 200 miles from Houtonglong, the future of Chinese pork production takes the form of 32 identical redbrick pig sheds, shaded by leafy trees.”

via China’s taste for pork serves up a pollution problem | World news | The Guardian.

Posted in Affluence, agriculture, China alert, Consumer, Economics, Environment, Pollution | 1 Comment »

Tags: China, chinese new year, Chinese people, disposable incomes, environment, Farm, Meat, pig farm, Pork

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

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* As Pollution Worsens in China, Solutions Succumb to Infighting

* Millions of tonnes of rural refuse are dumped in waterways a year, bill says

* Lawmaker calls for pollution liability insurance law

* Spill in China Lays Bare Environmental Concerns

* China to push compulsory insurance for polluting industries

* China targets $287b resource recycling industry

* China’s Environmental Protection Racket

* Ex-minister blames China’s pollution mess on lack of rule of law

* All cold on the southern front

* China’s taste for pork serves up a pollution problem

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