EnvironmentalIssues

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 * Water Pollution:**

The condition of China's water is a problem that still continues today. Dumping of industrial and municipal factories have left many parts of rivers heavily polluted and "unfit for human contact." In the capital city of Hebei province, Shijiazhuang, the primary source of water for about two million people, is steadily running dry and continues to do so. Every year, the underground water table sinks about four feet and the local wells have sucked out about two-thirds of the local groundwater.  "Unregulated coal mines, steel factories and refineries have left half of the town's well water unsafe to drink, and cancer rates are way above average." “China is shutting down the most polluting plants and reducing car and taxi traffic in the lead up the games [2008 olympics] in an effort to improve air quality. But in the future, it will have to make expensive upgrades to its industrial infrastructure, much of which was imported from Europe and the West as industrial production shifted East.”  Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having a party. Economic growth topped 11 percent last year. Population is rising. A new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city’s water table.  “People who are buying apartments aren’t thinking about whether there will be water in the future,” said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for 20 years to raise public awareness about the city’s dire water situation. For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China — even as demand keeps rising everywhere.  China is scouring the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep its economic machine humming. But trade deals cannot solve water problems. Water usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders will increasingly face tough political choices as cities, industry and farming compete for a finite and unbalanced water supply.

 One example is grain. The Communist Party, leery of depending on imports to feed the country, has long insisted on grain self-sufficiency. But growing so much grain consumes huge amounts of underground water in the North China Plain, which produces half the country’s wheat. Some scientists say farming in the rapidly urbanizing region should be restricted to protect endangered aquifers. Yet doing so could threaten the livelihoods of millions of farmers and cause a spike in international grain prices.  For the Communist Party, the immediate challenge is the prosaic task of forcing the world’s most dynamic economy to conserve and protect clean water. Water pollution is so widespread that regulators say a major incident occurs every other day.  Cities like Beijing and Tianjin have shown progress on water conservation, but China’s economy continues to emphasize growth. Industry in China uses 3 to 10 times more water, depending on the product, than industries in developed nations.   “We have to now focus on conservation,” said Ma Jun, a prominent environmentalist. “We don’t have much extra water resources. We have the same resources and much bigger pressures from growth.”  In the past, the Communist Party has reflexively turned to engineering projects to address water problems, and now it is reaching back to one of Mao’s unrealized plans: the $62 billion South-to-North Water Transfer Project to funnel more than 12 trillion gallons northward every year along three routes from the Yangtze River basin, where water is more abundant. The project, if fully built, would be completed in 2050. The eastern and central lines are already under construction; the western line, the most disputed because of environmental concerns, remains in the planning stages.  The North China Plain undoubtedly needs any water it can get. An economic powerhouse with more than 200 million people, it has limited rainfall and depends on groundwater for 60 percent of its supply. Other countries, like Yemen, India, Mexico and the United States, have aquifers that are being drained to dangerously low levels. But scientists say those below the North China Plain may be drained within 30 years.

<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There’s no uncertainty,” said Richard Evans, a hydrologist who has worked in China for two decades and has served as a consultant to the <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[|__World Bank__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and China’s Ministry of Water Resources. “The rate of decline is very clear, very well documented. They will run out of groundwater if the current rate continues.” - www.nytimes.com <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">media type="youtube" key="eSpKdz5xD9A?fs=1" height="385" width="640" <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">**Desertification** <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Today, the region, comparable in size to New Mexico, is parched. Roughly five-sixths of the wetlands have dried up, according to one study. Scientists say that most natural streams or creeks have disappeared. Several rivers that once were navigable are now mostly dust and brush. The largest natural freshwater lake in northern China, Lake Baiyangdian, is steadily contracting and besieged with pollution.

<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What happened? The list includes misguided policies, unintended consequences, a population explosion, <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[|__climate change__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and, most of all, relentless economic growth. In 1963, a flood paralyzed the region, prompting Mao to construct a flood-control system of dams, reservoirs and concrete spillways. Flood control improved but the ecological balance was altered as the dams began choking off rivers that once flowed eastward into the North China Plain.” - <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[|__www.nytimes.com__]

<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[|__China__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has gained a sliver of ground in its ancient battle against the desert sands, the government announced today, though it warned another 300 years may be needed to solve "the most serious ecological problem facing the country".

<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A survey showed more than a quarter of China's land remained either degraded or lost to sand and gravel due to a combination of a naturally dry climate, centuries of over-cultivation and decades of excessive demand on <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[|__water__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and soil from the world's biggest population and fastest growing economy. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite the world's biggest tree-planting campaign, the relocation of millions of "eco-migrants" and restrictions on herding and farming, the report noted the "desertification trend has not fundamentally reversed". <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There were small signs of improvement. In the five years to 2010, the authors estimated the area of desert had shrunk by an annual average of 1,717 square kilometres. This was 40% better than the results from 2000-05, the first in China's history to ever show a gain. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But 1.7m hectares - more than six times the area of the UK - is still covered in sand dunes or gobi gravel desert. An even wider swathe of land is plagued by wind and water erosion or salination.” <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"We've made progress, but we face a daunting challenge," said Liu Tuo, head of the desertification control office in the state forestry administration. "It may take China 300 years."

<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[|__Tibet__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia remain badly affected, partly because they are at a high elevation and more vulnerable to rising global temperatures, glacier melt, retreating snowlines and water shortages. [|__www.guardian.co.uk__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ===<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">**Air Pollution** ===


 * Today - like yesterday and the day before - the city's skies were dark with a sulphurous smog that was so thick that is seemed to swallow up skyscrapers. The air quality is sometimes so poor that schoolchildren are warned to stay indoors at breaktimes. www.guardian.co.uk **

“China is shutting down the most polluting plants and reducing car and taxi traffic in the lead up the games [2008 olympics] in an effort to improve air quality. But in the future, it will have to make expensive upgrades to its industrial infrastructure, much of which was imported from Europe and the West as industrial production shifted East.” www.guardian.co.uk

From January to June of 2010, Hong Kong was highest in air pollution and hit the "unhealthy" mark 10% of that time. People with respiratory and heart problems are advised not to go near traffic during times when the "unhealthy" mark has been reached. In March, Hong Kong set a record when sandstorms from Northern China blanketed the city.

According to a 2007 report, about 400,000 people in China die each year from outdoor air pollution, 30,000 from indoor air pollution.

Other Notes <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Land, water, electricity, oil and bank loans remain relatively inexpensive, even for heavy polluters. Beijing has declined to use the kind of tax policies and market-oriented incentives for conservation that have worked well in Japan and many European countries. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Provincial officials, who enjoy substantial autonomy, often ignore environmental edicts, helping to reopen mines or factories closed by central authorities. Over all, enforcement is often tinged with corruption. This spring, officials in Yunnan Province in southern China beautified Laoshou Mountain, which had been used as a quarry, by spraying green paint over acres of rock.

<span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">President <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[|__Hu Jintao__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s most ambitious attempt to change the culture of fast-growth collapsed this year. The project, known as “Green G.D.P.,” was an effort to create an environmental yardstick for evaluating the performance of every official in China. It recalculated gross domestic product, or G.D.P., to reflect the cost of pollution. <span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> But the early results were so sobering — in some provinces the pollution-adjusted growth rates were reduced almost to zero — that the project was banished to China’s ivory tower this spring and stripped of official influence. Chinese leaders argue that the outside world is a partner in degrading the country’s environment. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chinese manufacturers that dump waste into rivers or pump smoke into the sky make the cheap products that fill stores in the United States and Europe. Often, these manufacturers subcontract for foreign companies — or are owned by them. In fact, foreign investment continues to rise as multinational corporations build more factories in China. Beijing also insists that it will accept no mandatory limits on its carbon dioxide emissions, which would almost certainly reduce its industrial growth. It argues that rich countries caused global warming and should find a way to solve it without impinging on China’s development.Indeed, Britain, the United States and Japan polluted their way to prosperity and worried about environmental damage only after their economies matured and their urban middle classes demanded blue skies and safe drinking water. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But China is more like a teenage smoker with emphysema. The costs of pollution have mounted well before it is ready to curtail economic development. But the price of business as usual — including the predicted effects of global warming on China itself — strikes many of its own experts and some senior officials as intolerably high. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Typically, industrial countries deal with green problems when they are rich,” said Ren Yong, a climate expert at the Center for Environment and Economy in Beijing. “We have to deal with them while we are still poor. There is no model for us to follow.” <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the face of past challenges, the Communist Party has usually responded with sweeping edicts from Beijing. Some environmentalists say they hope the top leadership has now made pollution control such a high priority that lower level officials will have no choice but to go along, just as Deng Xiaoping once forced China’s sluggish bureaucracy to fixate on growth. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But the environment may end up posing a different political challenge. A command-and-control political culture accustomed to issuing thundering directives is now under pressure, even from people in the ruling party, to submit to oversight from the public, for which pollution has become a daily — and increasingly deadly — reality.” - nytimes.com <span style="background-color: transparent; display: block; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The country increased its wind-power output more than 20-fold between 2003 and 2008” --- <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[|__www.washingtonpost.com__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“ China has ordered 2,087 steel mills, cement mills, and other factories with poor energy efficiency to close as the country struggles to cut waste and improve its battered environment. . . The plan calls for a 20 percent reduction in energy consumption per unit of economic output, or energy intensity, by the end of this year. The government said in March it had cut energy intensity 14.4 percent by the end of 2009 but said last week that energy intensity crept up 0.09 percent in the first half of this year.” -- <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; url(http: //www.wikispaces.com/i/a.gif); background-origin: initial; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; cursor: pointer; padding-right: 10px;">[|__www.bostonglobe.com__]