ChinaDialogue News

A Chinese environmental update

China Dialogue — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:34:00 +0000

China and India signed up to the non-binding climate accord struck in Copenhagen, boosting a deal strongly favoured by the United States, Reuters reported. The agreement does not include a timetable for cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.

Rich countries are “importing” about a third of their carbon emissions, according to a study by US-based researchers. Using a global-trade database to track goods and services, the BBC said, the scientists determined that nearly a quarter of China’s emissions come from goods exported to the west.

Chinese and international scientists are preparing to launch a joint study of the environment of the “third pole”, centred on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and neighbouring areas, Xinhua reported. The work will focus on the competing influences of water, ice, air, ecosystem and human activities.

Qinghai province, containing major deposits of China’s “combustible ice”, or methane gas hydrate, will see increased exploration for the new, cleaner energy source, according to Xinhua.

China's environment is “still deteriorating” overall, vice minister of environmental protection Zhang Lijun said, as the country burned record amounts of coal and lagged behind in meeting its energy-saving goals. Agence France-Presse said city waste and agricultural run-off also severely fouls the nation’s water supply.

Shaanxi provincial authorities fined the cities of Xi’an and Xianyang for polluting the Weihe, a major tributary of the Yellow River, China Daily reported.

The “resource-depleted” city of Fuxin in Liaoning province – left a legacy of pollution, inefficiency and perilous land subsidence by mining and power sectors – is recovering with government help, Reuters said.

Premier Wen Jiabao said the environment must be protected and education improved as the poverty-stricken province of Gansu is developed, according to Xinhua.

China intends to create new disciplines in undergraduate schools to nurture more talent for emerging industries of strategic importance, such as the low-carbon sector, information technology and biotechnology, Xinhua reported.

Stormy weather and water pollution were among the main causes of the deaths of 22 Chinese white dolphins in the Pearl River estuary in 2009, according to sohu.com.

Two herdsmen whose sheep were attacked were sentenced to eight and 10 years in prison for killing a rare snow leopard in north-west China’s Xinjiang region, the BBC said. And in Liaoning province, 11 Siberian tigers have died from malnutrition in a privately owned zoo over the past three months, Xinhua reported.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

A global environmental update

China Dialogue — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:47:00 +0000

Rich countries are “importing” about a third of their CO2 emissions, according to US-based researchers. The scientists say their findings provide an ethical reason why such countries should lead attempts to reduce emissions, the BBC said.

No women were among the 19 people named to a new UN climate-change financing group. Responding in a Grist commentary, Elizabeth Becker and Suzanne Ehlers noted that women in developing countries are the most affected by climate change as well as a pivotal force for building responses to climate impacts.

A worsening drought is severely affecting the world-famous mountain rice terraces of the northern Philippines, Agence France-Presse reported. A state of calamity was declared for the Banaue area, site of many of the ancient stone-walled paddies.

Conservation experts say efforts to extract salt from seawater in west Africa are laying waste to coastal mangrove swamps, causing erosion and ravaging fish stocks, according to Reuters.

Presentation of a US film prize to The Cove has dealt Japan a public relations blow just as the country faces growing pressure on other aspects of its exploitation of maritime resources, The Financial Times said. While the Academy Award focuses attention on the documentary-makers’ call for an end to the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, the town’s mayor defended the annual hunt as part of a long tradition.

The planet’s growing, urbanising population faces “an unrecognised weapon of mass destruction: houses”, The New York Times quoted an American seismologist as saying. Without new construction practices, Haiti’s tragedy may be surpassed in any one of a long list of poor cities facing inevitable major earthquakes.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, ordered architectural changes in the Kurdish eastern region where more than 50 people died in a recent quake, the BBC reported. He attributed the number of casualties to the area’s vulnerable mud-brick buildings.

Delicate policy calculations are needed to stimulate nascent solar industries and create sustainable “green” jobs, The New York Times said. The Spanish city of Puertollano’s experience may serve as a cautionary tale.

Nearly two years after pledging to restore Florida’s unique Everglades, the American state’s ambitious rescue plan is on track to save the fortunes of a giant sugar company, The New York Times reported.

Malaysians’ appetite for sea-turtle eggs could drive the creatures to extinction on the country’s shores, Agence France-Presse quoted conservationists as warning. WWF-Malaysia says hundreds of thousands of the eggs are eaten annually as a delicacy.

A Chinese environmental update

China Dialogue — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:07:00 +0000

China is starting to prepare for the commercial and strategic opportunities arising as global warming melts polar ice cover in the Arctic, the Associated Press reported, citing a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). While it is not an Arctic state, China is keen to have the right to access natural resources, the study said, and is increasing its regional research activity.

In its next five-year plan, China will spell out its greenhouse-gas emissions goals and monitoring rules for regions and sectors, Reuters said, with monitoring to show the country is serious about curbing emissions. In a report to China’s parliament, according to china.org, premier Wen Jiabao said the country would work to develop low-carbon technologies as well as new and renewable energy resources to actively respond to climate change.

China’s first power plant using sugar-cane leaves and other agricultural waste to generate electricity has begun operation in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, China Daily reported. And the country is raising energy-efficiency standards for air conditioners, sohu.com said, ending sales of the poorest performers.

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan, injuring more than 60 people, triggering power outages and halting high-speed rail service. Despite occurring soon after massive tremors in Haiti and Chile, the quake -- centred south of Taipei -- was not geologically connected to other recent seismic activity, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

The Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC) has been awarded this year’s Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize, chinanews.com reported. Named for Singapore’s first prime minister, the award recognised the YRCC for river-management initiatives and policies that have enabled China’s second-longest river to flow unabatedly over the last 10 years.

More Chinese provinces have banned the sale of cowpeas grown in Hainan province as concern about use of a toxic pesticide spreads, according to People’s Daily. Nationwide, cowpeas were tested after contamination was detected in Hainan-grown legumes on sale in Hubei and Anhui provinces.

A rare Siberian tiger discovered near the Russian border in Heilongjiang province seemed an auspicious beginning to the Year of the Tiger, but within days the emaciated cub had died of malnutrition, the Associated Press said. Just 300 Siberian tigers are believed to remain in the wild.

And a hungry giant panda was filmed chewing on bones and spitting out meat left for pigs in a farmer’s pen in Sichuan province, according to China Daily. The animal’s diet normally would consist mainly of bamboo.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

A global environmental update

China Dialogue — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:17:00 +0000

The death toll from the 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile has reached nearly 800 – a figure likely to rise as search-and-rescue operations continue, CNN said. Meanwhile, a NASA scientist said the quake had shifted the earth’s “figure axis” by about eight centimetres and shortened the length of an earth-day by 1.26 microseconds.

Water levels in the northern Mekong River are at record-low levels, posing a threat to water supply, navigation and irrigation in a region that is home to millions of people, Agence France-Presse reported. Northern Thailand, northern Laos and southern China all have all been affected.

Residents of Newtok, a tiny settlement in western Alaska, are preparing to become the United States’ first climate refugees and flee their homes by 2012 as thawing permafrost washes away, Reuters said. With help from US military personnel, they are building a new, higher village on nearby Nelson Island.

To most climate scientists, accusations about lack of integrity, deceit and bias seem deeply unfair, environmental scientist Alan Thorpe wrote for New Scientist. Mistakes may have been made, he said, but science is about the accumulation of knowledge, not fighting causes.

Writing in The New York Times, US environmentalist Al Gore noted that the reality of climate change has not been altered by the discovery of a few mistakes in 22 years of work by the UN climate panel.

Europe’s plan to lead the green-technology race has a gaping financial hole for the next four years, according to a Reuters analysis. The European Union is seeing its early advantage challenged by strong growth in other markets, notably China, Japan and the United States.

Sweden will build 2,000 new wind turbines over the next decade as part of a bid to dramatically increase its production of renewable energy, Agence France-Presse said, citing energy minister Maud Olofsson.

Although South Africa is trying to “green” the upcoming football World Cup, the tournament is expected to create a massive carbon footprint, due mostly to air travel to the country and internally among host cities. Emissions are estimated to be double those of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, according to Agence France-Presse.

Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has signed a decree allowing projects deemed strategically important -- including mining, power generation and transport -- to take place in protected forests, Reuters reported.

Scientists have discovered an area of the North Atlantic Ocean where plastic debris accumulates, comparable to the “great Pacific garbage patch”, the BBC said.

A Chinese environmental update

China Dialogue — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:48:00 +0000

Four years after scientists declared the Yangtze River dolphin likely to be extinct, the baiji is in danger of being forgotten, according to a British-led study in Conservation Biology, mongabay.com said. Researchers led by Samuel Turvey of the Zoological Society of London found clear evidence of “shifting baselines”, where humans lose track of even large changes to their environment.

Lying between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, a haven for birds on one of the world’s main migratory flyways is in danger of fragmentation, Agence France-Presse reported, as government and construction companies eye land for development.

Warning of a year of troubled negotiations, China’s climate-change ambassador, Yu Qingtai, said rich and developing countries have little hope of overcoming key disagreements over how to address global warming, Reuters reported. Major players are unlikely to budge on the issues that stymied talks in Copenhagen, he said.

China “could not and should not” set an upper limit on greenhouse-gas emissions at this time, China Daily quoted Su Wei, the country’s chief negotiator in Copenhagen, as saying. President Hu Jintao stated that China was committed to fighting climate change, but offered no new policies, according to Reuters.

At an environmental meeting in Bali, Chinese foreign ministry official Guo Zaofeng accused developed countries of reneging on past climate commitments, the Associated Press reported. Formal negotiations on a global treaty are to resume in Bonn in April, the news agency said, quoting UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, who is leaving his post in July.

China's environmental concerns have dashed Tengzhong’s dream of buying the iconic Hummer brand of sports utility vehicles from the American car-maker General Motors, Agence-France Presse said.

A UN report warned that developing countries, including China, face increasing ecological and health hazards from electronic waste, reported Deutsche Welle.

Yunnan province launched 1,555 weather rockets to curb the risk of forest fire amid the worst drought in 60 years, said meteorological authorities cited by People’s Daily.

More than one in 10 Chinese children sickened by contaminated milk showed signs of kidney damage six months afterward, researchers have found, according to the Associated Press.

The dispute between China and Google could have unintended negative consequences for scientific researchers in the country, according to Wired.com. The technology website quoted a Nature News survey in which 84% of Chinese scientists polled thought that losing Google would hurt their work process.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

A global environmental update

China Dialogue — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:48:00 +0000

The failure of the Copenhagen climate summit lay in the absence of the creativity required to bridge differences between rich and poor countries, Jagdish Bhagwati wrote in the Financial Times. A new protocol needs to be built, he said, on principles in existing international institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation.

Swedish investments in the World Bank’s “green” bonds have taken the total of such financing to over US$1 billion, Reuters said.

Water experts say Sana’a could become the world’s first capital city to run dry, Reuters reported. More water is consumed than produced from most aquifers in Yemen, a country whose population of 23 million is expected to double in 20 years.

Three decades of rapid development and rogue urban planning are to blame for the heavy toll from flash floods on the Portuguese island of Madeira, Agence France-Presse quoted environmentalists and construction experts as saying.

Experiencing one of its most severe droughts in recent decades – a situation attributed to the El Niño weather phenomenon – Venezuela declared an “electricity emergency” and dispatched Cuban pilots to seed clouds in the hope of provoking rain, according to The Guardian.

In far-northern Pakistan, two people were killed when the authorities opened fire on protesters concerned that their demands regarding the Diamer-Bhasha dam project on the Indus River were not being addressed, Dawn reported.

What supporters are calling the largest river and salmon restoration effort in US history has taken a critical step forward, The New York Times said, as agreements were signed to remove four hydroelectric dams in the Klamath River basin of Oregon and California.

The US Environmental Protection Agency announced a plan to improve the ecology of the Great Lakes by eliminating invasive species such as the Asian carp, cleaning up pollutants and repairing the area’s wetlands, Reuters reported.

Strict fishing bans have helped to regenerate wildlife and coral on one-third of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Agence France-Presse cited a new study as showing. And, the agency said, the European Commission proposed a ban on commercial fishing for bluefin tuna, beginning in summer 2011.

US president Barack Obama announced US$8.3 billion in loan guarantees to build the country’s first nuclear power plant in nearly three decades, a move designed to help advance climate legislation in congress, Reuters reported.

Bangladesh’s ship-breaking yards ground to a halt as some 30,000 workers fearing job losses protested a government decree aimed at improving environmental standards in the industry, Agence France-Presse said.

A Chinese environmental update

China Dialogue — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:06:00 +0000

China has been offered Indian navy protection to help it secure shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean that are critical to the Chinese economy’s energy needs, the Financial Times reported.

United Press International, meanwhile, said China’s construction of a port in Sri Lanka and a Chinese admiral’s suggestion that Beijing build a naval base in the Gulf of Aden have raised fears in the Middle East that a confrontation between China and India is looming along vital energy-export routes.

A Danish container ship took more than a month to reach Guangdong from Germany -- a week longer than it did two years ago, The New York Times reported. By halving its ships’ top cruising speed, Maersk cut fuel consumption on major routes by up to 30% and carbon emissions by a similar amount.

Shaanxi province has fended off desert encroachment in the heartland of the Loess Plateau through afforestation projects, China.com said.

The Asian Development Bank approved a US$135-million loan to help build China’s first integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal-power plant. Using technology that significantly lowers carbon emissions, the plant in Tianjin would be the first of its kind in the developing world.

With China leading the way, the cement industry will invest more than US$3.5 billion for air pollution-control systems in 2010, said the McIlvaine Company, a US-based environmental market research firm.

Kangbashi, in Inner Mongolia, is a state-of-the-art city built by the government and funded with coal money. But according to a report in Foreign Policy, it is both a boom town and a ghost town.

The Chinese electric-bicycle industry is spurring worldwide interest and impressive sales in India, Europe and the United States, said The New York Times.

Noting that water pollution in China is “one of the country’s biggest tragedies”, Greenpeace saw “great significance” in a government decision to blacklist 20 factories in Guangdong province.

According to a study cited by the BBC, the tiger began evolving 3.2 million years ago, and its closest living relative is the equally endangered snow leopard.

WWF honoured Chinese freshwater ecologist Chen Yiyu, who has led groundbreaking studies on the Yangtze River dolphin and championed research on Lake Hong’s ecosystems. And the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) honoured chinadialogue author Joydeep Gupta for an article on climate change in the Himalayas, written for the Indo-Asian News Service.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

A global environmental update

China Dialogue — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:47:00 +0000

Weather events such as the serial blizzards in the United States and rain rather than snow at the winter Olympics in Canada are to be expected as the earth’s climate warms, Grist reported. Climate-change theory holds that less predictable, more extreme and more damaging weather will increase. The El Niño phenomenon is also playing a role this year, wrote climatologist Jeff Masters.

Vested interests are exploiting scientific errors, said US climate envoy Todd Stern, who noted that “any individual mistakes, typos, whatever they might be” should not be used to undermine a “very fundamental record” on climate change, according to Agence France-Presse.

In agreeing joint action to rescue the polluted Baltic Sea, summit participants in Helsinki saw a post-Copenhagen paradigm for future cross-border environmental action, according to The Guardian. In Vienna, meanwhile, ministers from the 14 Danube river basin countries adopted a plan to clean up and protect the “Amazon of Europe”, Agence France-Presse said.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon set up a high-level advisory panel – led by Britain and Ethiopia – to mobilise funding to help developing nations address climate change, Agence-France-Presse reported.

The climate debate in the United States – and so the world -- is mired in political weakness and infighting, chinadialogue editor Isabel Hilton wrote in The Guardian.

Most of the snow and ice melt on Himalayan glaciers is due to airborne black carbon aerosols, SpaceDaily reported, quoting US researchers. And, said New Scientist, ocean warmth, causing melting from below, accounts for 75% of ice lost by Greenland’s glaciers.

An industry group including BP and Shell launched a legal challenge against California legislation that in effect rules out the use of oil from Canadian tar sands, The Guardian reported. Meanwhile, Canada is courting tar-sands investment from China and other Asian countries, the newspaper said.

British-led researchers say they have found the strongest evidence yet that links a devastating mud volcano in Indonesia to drilling at a gas-exploration well, Reuters reported.

Conservationists are at odds over a British plan to create a marine protection zone around a large portion of the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, according to New Scientist. The area is home to one of the world’s most unspoiled coral reef systems.

Plummeting sea temperatures in the southern United States have been killing coral reefs in the normally warm waters off the Florida Keys, Agence France-Presse reported.

A Chinese environmental update

China Dialogue — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:53:00 +0000

As the Year of the Tiger begins, WWF listed its “Top 10 Tiger Trouble Spots” on an interactive map. The environmental group said the map should help guide governments and conservationists ahead of a Global Tiger Summit in September.

Fewer than 50 wild tigers are believed to remain in China, People’s Daily said, citing the Wildlife Conservation Society.

A top Chinese forestry and conservation official denied that traditional medicine is contributing to the decline of wild tigers. China is committed to global tiger conservation even at the cost of its own culture, tradition and economic interests, China Daily quoted Yin Hong as saying.

A candid internal document from a Chinese government think tank, obtained by The Guardian, says rich nations furthered their “conspiracy to divide the developing world” at the Copenhagen climate summit in December.

The chief US climate envoy, Todd Stern, pressed China and other emerging powers to make clearer commitments on climate change, warning that the Copenhagen accord risked being “stillborn”, Agence France-Presse said.

Farmers’ fields are a bigger source of water contamination in China than factory effluent, the Chinese government revealed in its first census on pollution, The Guardian reported. Officials said the disclosure would require a partial realignment of environmental policy.

A new study in Science shows that farming practices in China – particularly the increasing use of nitrogen fertiliser -- are acidifying soils and threatening long-term food productivity, mongabay.com said.

Water pollution by heavy industries will delay completion of the eastern route of China’s south-to-north water diversion project until 2013, China Daily quoted officials in Shandong province as saying.

More than 300 people attacked a local government building in a small town in Guangdong province, protesting against a project to divert some of its water to a neighbouring town, China Daily said.

Adding to the international debate about climate change in the Himalayas, The Guardian quoted China Daily as reporting that the average temperature in Tibet soared in 2009 to 5.9° Celsius, 1.5° higher than normal.

In partnership with Denmark, China plans to build a national centre for renewable energy, to support development of the industry, China Daily said.

The Songjiang perch is returning to new-year menus in Shanghai for the first time in 20 years, Channel NewsAsia reported, following scientists’ success in breeding the fish in captivity. Overfishing and pollution had nearly wiped out the species.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

A global environmental update

China Dialogue — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:46:00 +0000

Addressing the issue of climate change for the first time, the primary US defence-planning document – the Quadrennial Defense Review – noted that global warming, energy security and economic stability are inextricably linked, Grist reported. Climate impacts and disasters will accelerate instability and conflict around the globe, the review said.

A proposed new US government climate information service is meant to help businesses adapt to the impacts of climate change and spur new technologies to cope with it, according to Reuters.

By 2050, melting Arctic ice could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance from US$2.4 trillion to US$24 trillion in damage due to rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, Reuters quoted a report financed by the Pew Environment Group as saying.

Finnish researchers called for a revision of climate-change estimates after their findings showed emissions from soil would contribute more to climate warming than had been thought, Agence France-Presse said.

Dreams of turning Australia’s tropical north into a major food bowl to replace drought-stricken southern farmlands -- and to help feed Asia -- have been crushed by a sustainable development review citing water limitations, according to Reuters.

A drought that has long gripped south-western Australia is linked with higher snowfall in East Antarctica, a phenomenon that may be rooted in global warming, say researchers writing in Nature Geoscience and quoted by Agence France-Presse.

A colony of sea lions from the Galapagos Islands has migrated 1,500 kilometres to Peru’s northern coast, according to Lima-based researchers. The Christian Science Monitor asks if climate change prompted the migration.

Activists vowing to stop the killing of whales exchanged water-cannon fire with a Japanese whaling fleet they are tailing in the Antarctic Ocean, the Associated Press reported.

A United Nations scientific agency backed an EU-supported proposal to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, according to Reuters.

India imposed a six-month moratorium on the commercial launch of a genetically modified variety of aubergine, saying further research was needed, said The Guardian.

Nomadic African herders are vital for the continent’s prosperity, but their way of life is being undermined by governments, conservationists and large-scale farmers, according to a new study cited by The Guardian.

As Vancouver awaits the start of the Olympic Winter Games, snow is being brought in from around British Columbia following the Canadian province’s warmest January on record, the Canadian Press reported.