Chinese walker

Since China embarked on structural reforms two decades ago, its economy has boomed to become the second-largest in the world, averaging a 9.5% rate of growth and doubling in the last decade alone. By leaps and bounds, China is growing wealthier, and the evidence of that progress can be seen in everything from new construction, energy demand and more cars on the roads to greater travel and availability of the latest consumer gadgets.

While countries around the world are benefiting from low-cost Chinese manufacturing, China is also providing – through both production and imports — a new world of consumer goods and services for its own people, who increasingly have the money with which to acquire them. The growing culture of consumption and consumerism in traditionally frugal China has serious environmental impacts, however.

The Worldwatch Institute`s State of the World 2004 report, which focused on consumerism, noted that while Americans and western Europeans “have had a lock on unsustainable overconsumption for decades %26hellip;developing countries are catching up rapidly, to the detriment of the environment, health and happiness.” According to the report: “One quarter of humanity%26mdash;1.7 billion people worldwide%26mdash;now belong to the %26lsquo;global consumer class,` having adopting the diets, transportation systems and lifestyles that were once mostly limited to the rich nations of Europe, North America and Japan.” While China and other developing countries are home to growing numbers of such consumers (particularly in large urban centres), however, disparities remain “as 2.8 billion people on the planet struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, and more than one billion people lack reasonable access to safe drinking water.”

To survive, people must consume, acknowledges Worldwatch, “and the world`s poorest will need to increase their level of consumption if they are to lead lives of dignity and opportunity. But the world cannot continue on its current trajectory%26mdash;the earth`s natural systems simply cannot support it. The economies of mass consumption that produced a world of abundance for many in the 20th century face an entirely different challenge in the 21st: to focus not on the indefinite accumulation of goods, but instead on a better quality of life for all, with minimal environmental harm.”

As China adds the weight of its consumer consumption to the global economy, Worldwatch`s more recent State of the World 2006 addresses a critical question: “Can the world`s ecosystems withstand the damage – the increase in carbon emissions, the loss of forests, the extinction of species – that are now in prospect? The answer is no, according to the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.” The millennium assessment on ecosystems and human well-being — a United Nations report released by the World Health Organisation — determined that human activities in the last 50 years have changed the diversity of life on earth more than at any other time in history, and that such activities, if continued, will have life-threatening consequences.

China`s demands can be measured in many ways, in snapshots of its growing consumption as it strives toward a “first-world” lifestyle. With lighting, air conditioning, computers and other office equipment, “China`s nearly seven million public servants reportedly use almost 5% of the country`s annual electricity, which is enough to meet the demands of 780 million farmers,” the newspaper China Daily reports.

In a globalised world, goods and services previously out of reach in developing countries – things once considered to be luxuries – are now seen as necessities by many: televisions, mobile telephones and other electronic gadgetry, cars and airline travel. Internationally known brands of clothing and other products abound in China`s biggest cities (particularly Beijing and Shanghai), along with an increasing number of western restaurant and coffee-shop franchises. Consumerism has been termed the new “ism” in China, linking happiness to material goods and helping to drive the economy.

Hand in hand with consumerism is consumption, which in some cases means the using up of a resource. China`s goal of achieving a first-world lifestyle for its people will double the world`s human-resource use. According to author Jared Diamond in his 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, China is the world`s leading producer and consumer of both coal and fertilizer, the second-largest producer and consumer of pesticides, the largest producer of steel, the second-largest producer of electricity and chemical textiles, and the third-largest consumer of oil. China`s auto production is now third in the world, behind the United States and Japan, adding to both energy use, air pollution and demand for oil.

China also ranks third in the world in timber consumption – wood for rural energy (firewood), for the paper and pulp industry and for the booming construction industry. (Diamond reports that “the projected decrease in Chinese household size to 2.7 people by the year 2015 will add 126 million new households — more than the total number of US households — even if China`s population size itself remains constant”.) Due to massive deforestation, followed (after severe floods in 1996 and 1998) by a ban on logging of its natural forests, China is on course to overtake Japan and become the world`s largest importer of tropical timber. Since the ban, writes Diamond, China`s wood imports have increased sixfold. Deforestation, he says, is being exported.

While the country`s demands for timber put massive pressure on the planet`s forestry resources, environmental campaigners say China is not alone in doing little or nothing to control the burgeoning trade in illegal wood imports. The conservation group WWF, in a 2005 report entitled China`s Wood Market, Trade and the Environment, says China is one of the major destinations for wood that may be illegally harvested or traded. More than half of China`s imported timber comes from countries such as Russia, Indonesia and Malaysia, all of which are struggling, says WWF, with over-harvesting, conversion of natural forests and illegal logging.

China`s increasing affluence has also produced more demand for meat and fish. In the northeast, freshwater swamps in the Sanjian plain have been converted to farmland. With a greater demand for meat comes a larger share of cereal production going toward animal feed. Per-capita fish consumption has increased five-fold in the past quarter-century, while China also exports fish, molluscs and other aquatic species. Chinese fishermen have cast their nets around the world – including in the lucrative waters off southwestern Africa in their (not always legal) search for fish. Overfishing occurs in China`s deep seas and along its coastline, and a growing movement – including Pacific Environment`s Save China`s Seas network – seeks to “help consumers focus on how their dietary choices affect our oceans` bounty”.

The water quality in rivers and groundwater sources is poor, due to industrial and municipal waste-water discharges, as well as agricultural and aquacultural runoff of fertilizers, pesticides and manure. All that nutrient runoff has produced excessive concentrations of algae, a process known as eutrophication. “About 75% of Chinese lakes, and almost all coastal seas, are polluted,” writes Jared Diamond. “Red tides in China`s seas%26mdash;blooms of plankton whose toxins are poisonous to fish and other ocean animals%26mdash;have increased to nearly 100 per year, from only one in every five years in the 1960s.”

As if the devastating toll on China`s resources by all this production and consumption activity were not enough, the country also imports untreated rubbish — including electronic equipment and toxic waste — from the rest of the world for disposal. As Diamond puts it: “This represents direct transfer of pollution from the first world to China.”

China — like the US, Europe, Japan and India – is exceeding its “ecological footprint”, a resource management tool devised by environmental analyst Mathis Wackernagel to estimate the amount of “ecological space” occupied by humanity. “Footprint analysis,” explains Worldwatch`s 2006 report, “measures what an economy needs from nature: the inputs that fuel it and the wastes that emerge from it.” To determine whether a country is living within its ecological means, its footprint is compared with its number of global hectares of biologically productive space. “Where a nation`s footprint is larger than its biocapacity, its economy is consuming more forests, cropland and other resources than the country can supply and is overtaking the domestic environment`s capacity to absorb wastes.”

“The world`s largest and most industrialised economies,” says Worldwatch, “are essentially consuming their ecological capital by cutting forests faster than they can regenerate, pumping groundwater faster than it is recharged, and filling the atmosphere with carbon that cannot be safely absorbed.” On a per-person basis, the inequality of claims on biocapacity is clear. The world average footprint is 2.3 global hectares per person. The average Chinese person`s is 1.6, the average European`s is 4.7, and the average American`s is 9.7.

As China (and India) continue to develop rapidly, the global footprint grows. Worldwatch says that “if by 2030 China and India alone were to achieve a per-capita footprint equivalent to that of Japan today, together they would require a full planet Earth to meet their needs.”

“China will, of course, not tolerate being told not to aspire to first world levels,” writes Diamond in Collapse. “But the world cannot sustain China and other third-world countries and current first-world countries all operating at first-world levels.”

NEXT: Transport

The Author: Maryann Bird is a London-based journalist

(photo by Shanghai Streets)

Isabel Hilton: You`re now a filmmaker, you live in China — tell me about your background.

John D. Liu: I went to China first in 1979. I was 27. I`m half Chinese and my father had been telling me since [then United States president Richard] Nixon`s visit in 1972 that I had to go to China to help China develop. I was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and was living in Bloomington, Indiana, in the US. I didn`t want to go to China. It was an interesting time: I was young and America was an interesting place.

I had been to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, but China didn`t seem very interesting. It had a communist government and when I looked across the border from Hong Kong when I was 13, I saw a man pointing a machine gun at me. China to me at that time meant [the philosopher] Lao Tzu and Taoism and Tang literature. Contemporary China didn`t resonate. Then, in the late 1970s, my father said, “You must go because your grandmother is going to die.” What could I say?

So I went to China and I realised he was right: it was much more interesting for me to film in China than in the US. So I did a semester of language training and I went to work for [the American television network] CBS as a producer-cameraman. I worked for them for 10 years.

IH: How did you get from there to the environment?

JL: I was so exhausted after the collapse of the Soviet Union that journalism had lost its appeal and I wanted to make films instead news reports, so I went to work for Italian state TV, where I made one-hour documentaries, then for German TV for three years. By then it was the mid-1990s and the environment had been deteriorating. China was changing from a fearful place, just out of the Cultural Revolution, to a market economy. There was a flowering of creativity and greater social freedom. Although 1989 punctuated it somewhat, even that was book-ended by decades of peace and prosperity.

During this amazing period of reform, opening and economic progress, there was so much pollution. Finally it struck me: I live in Beijing, my children were born here, and we were all suffering. It was clear to me that I had both the right and the responsibility to do something.

Most of the Chinese seemed detached, as though it wasn`t their responsibility. I think they thought the government was responsible and they had been conditioned to believe that they didn`t have either the right or the responsibility [to act]. Some people thought, “I`m just one person; there`s nothing I can do.” Others thought, “It`s nothing to do with me; it`s [the role of] somebody else.”

And in a way, that was my attitude. I used to think somebody ought to do something about the environment but what I meant was, “Somebody else ought to do something about the environment.” I was too important and busy. But after a while I realised that this was the same attitude that was part of the problem. So we began the Environmental Education Media Project, to take existing films on the environment to China and to translate them into Chinese.

We started working with the Television Trust for the Environment, and we brought over [Britain`s] Channel 4 and BBC`s excellent documentaries, on pest management and water wars. Finally we took hundreds of films. Then we wanted to make films and needed research, but there was no research facility.

So we said to SEPA [China`s State Environmental Protection Administration] that we wanted to build a reference and research facility. They have a huge US $70 million building built by Japanese foreign assistance, called the Japan-China Friendship Environmental Protection Centre, on the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing. They opened up the cupboard where cleaning ladies were storing their mops. We said this wouldn`t do. Finally they took us up to the seventh floor and opened a door marked “Library” – it turned out to be a huge room, 750 square meters — that had been empty for three years.

So we began to build a library. Now it`s the largest concentration of environmental information in China — the China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Centre. It`s on the web. [American environmentalist] Amory Lovins has spoken there – so many people have been through there now.

Then we started making films, researching water, wetlands, grasslands, migration and so on. Then we found HIV was a huge problem in China and there wasn`t much information about it. So we helped the Chinese Centre for Disease Control to create the China HIV/Aids Information Network (CHAIN).

Popular belief has it that obesity only affects wealthier societies where food is plentiful: the curse of the developed world epitomized by hulking Americans that struggle to order their king-size Big Mac, French Fries and Coke without breaking sweat.

Obesity is no longer exclusive to the developed world

The reality is a very different. Obesity and its associated diseases – diabetes, hypertension and kidney diseases – respect neither wealth nor class and strike instead into the heart of every society where there is easy access to convenience food, low physical activity and ubiquitous advertisements for sugar-fat-salt-rich food.

Heart disease, stroke, cancer and other chronic diseases associated with poor diet and low exercise have now made serious inroads into the lives of people in poor and middle-income nations. In total, these accounted for 80% (28 million) of the cases of chronic illness in 2005, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which fears that a further 388 million people will die from such illnesses over the next ten years.

Photo by Malias

Across South East Asia, cases of chronic disease are also high, accounting for 54% of all deaths during 2005. The situation in Thailand is particularly serious, says the WHO, which estimates that the number of obese 5-to-12 year olds increased from 12.2% to 15.6% in just two years. Obesity is generally associated with older age groups, but has yet to permeate into poorer areas where the price of convenience food associated with the epidemic is prohibitive.

China, too, has an emerging epidemic with one or two pockets of high incidence. Overall, obesity levels range from under 5% to almost 20% in some areas, according to regional surveys conducted during 2003. Most concerning, however, is high prevalence among the young. In Wuhan Province 8.9% of 10-12 year-olds were classified as obese by the study. Some areas, such as Beijing, also suggest that there is a gender perspective to the epidemic. In the capital more than 10% of 10-12 year old boys were obese – more than three times the rate for girls in the same study.

Responsibilities are divided

The existence of a genetic predisposition to obesity would provide a straight-forward explanation for the world`s growing stock of rotund individuals, but the precise causes of obesity are multiple.

Changing diets have clearly contributed to the development of the pandemic, driven by the move towards food processing that relies heavily on high injections of sugar and salt. Recent research by The Thai Health Promotion Foundation, for example, found that more than 90% of its sample of 700 pre-packed foods to contain excessive levels of sugar, fat and salt – a cocktail that can lead to diabetes and hypertension as well as obesity.

Choice, of course, enables informed individuals to avoid (or moderate their consumption of) foods that are known to have damaging health effects, but bad labeling, the study suggests, does not help in the decision-making process. Just one third of the sample in Thailand, for example, managed to provide adequate nutritional information on their packaging or list ingredients. Where available, say researchers, labels also tended to use small fonts and present information in a way that is difficult to understand. At least part of the blame, therefore, lies with the food industry itself.

Photo by Malingering

Children are most at risk

For now, young Thais have refrained from overindulgence in burgers and chips on account of taste. But tastes are changing and so is the food industry. Pizza Hut (aka Pizza Company in Thailand) has already rewritten its menu to include a Tum Yum Kung (spicy prawn soup) variety. Western convenience food, which contains 3 or 4 times more fat, sugar and salt than healthier local Thai snacks, is now thought to pose one of the greatest dangers to a country of “snackers.”

Catering to oriental taste in order to boost market share is only one dimension of the corporate weaponry. Intensive marketing activity now mostly targets children and changing cultural values now mean that a visit to see Ronald McDonald has become a symbol of growing affluence and status. The price of a Big Mac in Bangkok (the equivalent of USD 1.5 or Baht 60) may cover the food costs of one meal for a family of four, but younger Thais are prepared to splash out on junk-food if it means impressing friends – especially girlfriends. Similar trends are noted throughout many of China`s larger central and eastern metropolises. Shopping malls in Cambodia also house fashionable western eateries that only the privileged can afford.

Obesity ought not to be a problem affecting children, but cases as young as 3 are not exceptional. And for those that then become obese adults the risks (particularly in developing countries) have alarming potential – an increasing susceptibility to illness coupled with reliance on fragile health care systems that may not be able to offer or afford treatment. In China, there is only a very basic social safety net and hospitals are run like profit-making concerns: Only those that can afford treatment receive treatment

Child obesity is expected to soar worldwide according to the International journal of Pediatric obesity, and could start to erode health gains in many countries. Both morbidity and cases of premature death are expected to rise over the next decade costing the economies of China, India and Russian billion of dollars according to the WHO. China alone will lose $558 billion over the next 10 years of its national income due to heart disease, stroke and diabetes. And other important Asian economies – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and others – are fast reaching western levels of development and consumption.

Photo by Robad0b

An incomplete response

The place of food in the moral, political and monetary economy has changed radically in the last fifty years – and the result has been a vast and potentially catastrophic loss of equilibrium. The global food producer, who can move from country to country, acquiring land, importing agricultural machinery and fertiliser, and selling his product in the global market, poses a threat to the environment of a kind that has never been seen before.

And the global food distributor, who can descend like Wal-Mart on the periphery of any town anywhere in the world, with a tempting array of cheap food wrapped in plastic, poses a threat to local economies and lifestyles comparable to that posed by a tribe of belligerent invaders.

Those vast disequilibriating forces did not come about because someone planned them. They arose by %26lsquo;an invisible hand`, from the developments in international trade, agricultural technology and food processing that have occurred since the end of the Second World War. Nevertheless, there has been little or no effort from our political elites to come to terms with, still less to moderate, their adverse effects, and the perceived indifference of our governments to forces which are not merely changing every aspect of our lives but also impacting on the lives and environments of people all over the globe, is one reason for the growing movements of protest against the global food economy.

Much that people lament in the decline of traditional farming results, however, not from the global food economy as such, but from the local imposition of regulations that only global producers and distributors can comply with. The strange illusion that food is unsafe until wrapped in plastic has promoted an explosion of absurd regulations designed to quell the anxieties of our increasingly risk-averse populations.

But, by avoiding the small-scale risks associated with local food, people expose themselves to the large-scale risks associated with obesity, environmental degradation and the weakening of the human immune system. It is not enough to protect people from this or that infectious disease that is transmitted through the food chain. For diseases transmitted through the food-chain are for the most part diseases against which people acquire immunity, as all who have suffered from traveller`s tummy will know. Present policies towards diseases of the digestive tract may actually be making children more vulnerable to those diseases in the long-run and also requiring ever greater efforts to ensure that we are presented from birth to death with the kind of sterilised food that our weakened immune systems can deal with. This is fine in the short term; but one major hiccup, in the form of war, epidemic or economic disruption, and the result could be a large-scale disaster.

Global meat consumption is predicted to double by 2020. Much of this increase will come from China, where the growing middle class is demanding more meat and other animal products. As a result, China is now rushing helter-skelter down the path blazed by giant agribusiness corporations in western nations. Once, the animals we raised went out and gathered things we could not or would not eat. Cows ate grass, chickens pecked at worms or seeds. Then we ate their flesh, or their eggs, or drank their milk, thus adding to the amount of food available to us.

In this superficial age of ours, a swathe of beauty parlours has opened to meet the cosmetic needs of the adult population. But few people know that while the artificially produced beautiful people walk down our streets, the food products in our markets are also undergoing cosmetic treatments.

Wenling City in Zhejiang Province is famous all over the country for its prawns. The prawns from that area are yellowy pink, and look delicious, but behind this delicious exterior lies a dark secret. A local manager involved in the prawn processing business told me that the processing treatment is quite simple.

First the prawns are cooked in boiling water, then they are dried and peeled. The most important step of this process is the cooking. The colour of the prawns depends on the length of cooking time, so it is important to get it right.

The secret, though, is to add some red powder to the cooking pot, and to keep adding it during the cooking process. The colour stays on the prawn after the drying process for two or three months. The prawn producers in the area all use this red powder. According to various investigations, this red powder is called %26lsquo;Liangcanghua Essence`, commonly known as %26lsquo;acid red 73`. It is mostly used as a wood dye, and is forbidden as a food additive because it can cause cancer.

Pinglu County in Shandong Province is famous for its fruit. A few illegal canning businesses buy cheap, unripe strawberries, peaches and apricots and put them into cans. Central Television Station`s %26lsquo;Weekly Quality Report` showed how in Xinchao Canning Factory, the workers would pour onto strawberries chemicals to stop rotting and the growth of bacteria, then they would bottle the strawberries, and so as to make them look fresh, the workers would pour a red liquid into the bottles, a carmine colour, so that the green, unripe strawberries are transformed into red strawberries. And the method of turning white peaches into yellow canned peaches is even more horrifying. First the white peaches are put in a steel vat, and the skin is removed using industrial caustic soda, then they are soaked in lemon yellow and sunset yellow dyes and boiled, so that the white peaches turn a yellow colour. After that, sweeteners are added, the cans are labelled and sent off all over the country.

The beautiful cakes that are made for Chinese New Year always look appealing. But the beautiful exterior often hides dangerous, illegal contents. A New Year Cake shop in Shanghai`s Pudong District fumigates its cakes with a sulphur powder to preserve their shop life, whitens them with industrial bleach, and even uses cheap industrial sodium hydrosulphite to make the cakes look fresh. According to a worker in this shop, they were not the only company to use sulphur powder and sodium hydrosulphite, many other factories have used them for some time.

Recently the Nanjing hygiene quality inspectors have banned all products from the %26lsquo;Haibawangjia Tianxia` Company, because it has been found that they have altered the dates of quick-freeze products that have passed their sell-by dates, and put them on the market again. It was found that this company would scrape off the old sell-by dates and replace them with new ones before trying to sell the products off again. For suspicious customers, there is now no difference between products that have no sell-by dates printed on them from those that do, as they can`t be sure that the sell-by dates have been tampered with. How can people eat these kinds of products with any peace of mind? And many supermarkets sell loose dumplings, mixing up the fresh ones with the out of date ones. The factories just put the old dumplings into new bags and send them off to the supermarkets to be sold, and no one is the wiser.

On 1 June, this kind of thing happened in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. Seeing that the date on the 30,000 bottles of soft drinks had nearly arrived, the unscrupulous manager of the %26lsquo;Ketaolu` drink company decided to wipe the dates off using some kind of glue, then printed a new sell-by date that was a full thirteen months later than the old one.

Many customers wonder how it is that products that have passed their sell-by dates are not destroyed, but are instead returned to the manufacturer who then changes the dates and sells them again. Who is responsible for destroying products that have passed their sell-by dates? What have the relevant government bodies done about this situation?

There are many strange things that happen in food production. The Many Fresh Oranges drink processing company produces drinks that have no trace of real orange in them. What you find in the company`s factory is not oranges but nearly ten different kinds of sweeteners, flavourings additives and colourings. This was seen in April 2004 in their factory in Nanchang. The drink is just made from tap water and a great deal of additives that far exceed the maximum levels set by the government.

Even more worrying is the so-called %26lsquo;organic green tea` that purports to be of no danger to public health, but that in fact contain high levels of pesticides. The Xuanlang Tea Company of Shizi, Anhui Province, cultivates 20,000 mu (540 square kilometres) of tea. It is supposed to be a model for organic farming in China. A reporter from CCTV visited several tea farms in the locality and found that many farmers who had contracted land in the area were in fact using phosphate fertilisers, Jiaji 1605 and other such toxic agricultural chemicals. In the tea factory, the reporter found that the workers were adding glutinous rice powder to the tea, so as to make the thick, fresh tea leaves curl up. In the Number 3 Jingzhi Tea Company of Xuanlang it was discovered that the rice mixture sprayed on the tea was black. This meant that even the %26lsquo;dregs` of the tea could be sold for the same price as the proper tea.

There have been many suspicions about the dried milk pieces produced in China, with rumours that they contain no fresh milk. These rumours have damaged the domestic dairy industry. There has been a recent loss of trust in the safety of milk pieces. Many supermarkets have taken the product off their shelves or have demanded to see authenticity documents from the manufacturers. All milk pieces have been removed from the shops in Chongqing, and in Guangzhou, the customers have demanded refunds for the milk pieces that they have bought.

Recently, Beijing`s Quality Inspection Department made an investigation into meat products and canned foods, and found that only 75% of the meat products met with the safety regulations. The main problem with the meat products was that they used high levels of benzoic acid. Half of the canned food didn`t meet with the regulations. Only 66.7% of tinned tomatoes met with the regulations. The largest problem here was the quality of the ingredients and the high levels of additives. On 6 August, the department announced the results of an investigation it made into drinks that use carbonic acid. It looked into 30 drinks produces by 29 Beijing companies, and found only 18 met with the regulations – that is a failure rate of 69%. During the investigation it was discovered that the levels of saccharomycete and sulphur dioxide were too high.

Jiangsu Province has recently investigated 543 cake manufacturers, and found that of 113 cakes tested, only 65 met with the regulations, which is a pass rate of just 57.5%. After that the Jiangsu Hygiene Department warned customers to take care when buying unpackaged food products.

In Hunan, there is a tradition of pickling vegetables in earthenware pots. There is a fish head dish cooked with these pickles that is particularly famous in this region. But a quality inspection team in Hunan`s Qiuyang City found in the Xiangbei Market, a factory whose 60 square metres of floor space was covered with more than 80 black plastic bags, and that in the salty water in which the vegetables were being pickled were floating dead black and white cockroach-like insects.

An inspection team of Beijing`s Haidian District investigated a private supplier of dried radishes, and found that 25 tonnes, or more than 1300 boxes, of %26lsquo;Qianjiang` dried radishes that were headed for Beijing`s expensive hotels had levels of formic acid that were 5 to 7 times higher than those allowed.

On 11 April, the National Quality Inspection Department announced that they had found four products that contained illegal quantities of brightening agents. These were: %26lsquo;Qinlaoda` flour produced by Xian`s Qinlaoda Food Company; %26lsquo;Meidian` noodles produced by Shanghai`s Meidian Company; %26lsquo;Fengtao` flour and %26lsquo;Fengtao` noodles produced by Nanjing`s Chuangxin Food Company. They also announced that a survey into white and brown sugar in 2004 found serious problems with the white sugar produced by Haikou`s Jingshan Sugar Company, Yunnan`s Fulong Sugar Company, Yunnan`s Xingfu Sugar Company, and Yunnan`s Bafang Sugar Company. The main causes for concern were the high levels of sulphur dioxide residues, insufficient levels of sucrose, high quantities of dirt and grit, and unsatisfactory labelling.

Perhaps the biggest difference between food in the West and in China is that Chinese people like to eat lots of little snacks whereas Westerners prefer one %26lsquo;main meal`. In the West, restaurants and fast food outlets produce standardised meals, where quantities are strictly regulated. But the Chinese have a long history of eating snacks. Traditionally an agricultural country, when farmers went out onto the fields, they would bring snacks with them to eat and to share with friends, or would swap them with farmers from neighbouring villages. The quality of the snack was important – it would indicate how skilful the wife was in the kitchen and help the family to maintain their %26lsquo;face`. So over the centuries the quality of these snacks became better and better, so that gradually, all over China, one could find snacks that were both delicious and safe.

I think that when people eat snacks, their trust in what they are eating and the need to %26lsquo;keep face` is more important than the actual eating of the snack itself. But now these snacks that have such a long and glorious history strike terror in people`s hearts. Let`s just look at pickled vegetables. Although pickled vegetables were first made in Sichuan, there is hardly anyone in the whole country who hasn`t tasted this delicious snack. But now when you visit Sichuan, your friends will say to you: %26lsquo;Do you like pickled vegetables? There`s a factory in Chengdu that pickles the vegetables in DDVP.` In the past everyone in Sichuan would have pickled vegetables with their meals, but now the managers of some pickled vegetable factories say that, %26lsquo;We don`t eat any of these pickles in Sichuan, we sell them to people from other provinces.`

After some secret interviews, I finally uncovered the truth about this business. The most important part of the pickling process is the soaking. I noticed that the salt used in the pickling was not only whiter than most salt, but the grains were finer. So I asked, %26lsquo;How come it`s so white?` The manager said, %26lsquo;This salt is bought on the black market. It`s cheaper by 50 yuan a jin.` Later in the yard outside, I saw printed on the bags of salt the terrifying words, %26lsquo;Industrial Salt`, and %26lsquo;Not for human consumption.`

The workers of this factory showed me in another yard neatly arranged piles of this industrial salt. I asked, %26lsquo;Have you always used this salt?` They said, %26lsquo;Yes.` I said, %26lsquo;Do the other factories use it?` And the workers all nodded in reply. A few days later I returned to the factory, and noticed lots of little insects crawling around the vats of pickled vegetables, and I asked why there were so many insects. The manager said, %26lsquo;When we soak the vegetables there are always a lot of insects, but when we add the chemicals they all disappear.` A little later, a worker started adding chemicals to the vats. I asked what the chemicals were and the worker replied that they were insect killers. He also said that to ensure that no insects got to them, the pickles would be sprayed with insecticide every two or three days until they left the factory. When I asked exactly what kind of insecticide it was, both the manager and the workers said that they didn`t know. Because there was no label on the bottle of the chemical they used, I took a small sample of the red liquid, put it in a sealed container and sent it off to be checked by the China Food Import Export Investigation Centre, and was told that this chemical was 99% strength DDVP . . .

Only about a third of the pickles produced in Chengdu meet with the regulations imposed by the Chengdu Quality Inspection Department. On 16 June 2004, the Chengdu Quality Inspection Department announced the results of its survey into pickled vegetables. Of 70 batches of products produced by 56 factories, only 16 batches made the grade, which is a pass rate of just 22.86%. 17 batches had levels of additives above the maximum allowed. It was also discovered that 9 batches did not have as much product as labelled and 48 batches had labels that were inaccurate or had insufficient information. The Quality Inspection Department has requested that all those companies that didn`t make the grade rectify their mistakes.

In Guizhou there is a saying that %26lsquo;If you don`t eat something sour for three days, your legs will go soft`. The Guizhou restaurants have become famous for their sour fish soups, but recently 215 of them have developed some serious problems. On 16 June 2004, it was found that in 215 restaurants, there were high levels of opiates in their soup and flavourings, and the authorities have ordered these restaurants to be closed down. Zhang Xin, deputy head of Guizhou`s Anti-drug team, told me that the Anti-drug team joined forces with the disease prevention centre and the food quality inspection department to launch a campaign against the addition of opiates to food products. A combined investigation team carried out research in to 2642 restaurants in Guiyang, Bijie and Liupanshui, and found that in 215 restaurants, the food sold contained traces of opiates in varying quantities. During the campaign, 3,200 grams of opiate seeds and 1,700 grams of opiate shells were confiscated. The relevant authorities have closed these 215 restaurants, and ordered 36 other restaurants whose problems were a less serious to undergo retraining. It is said that many Guizhou restaurants that specialise in beef, lamb, dog, and spicy soups add opiates to their food so as to encourage their customers to return. Wei Tao, the deputy head of the Guizhou Disease Prevention Office, told me that some of the soups served at the restaurants contain traces of morphine, some in rather high quantities. He said that if the customers drink this soup over a long period of time they can become addicted to it, and their dependency might even drive them to take harder drugs.

The Living Planet Report 2006 describes the changing state of global biodiversity and the pressure on the biosphere arising from human consumption of natural resources. It is built around two indicators: the Living Planet Index, which reflects the health of the planet`s ecosystems; and the Ecological Footprint, which shows the extent of human demand on these ecosystems. These measures are tracked over several decades to reveal past trends, then three scenarios explore what might lie ahead. The scenarios show how the choices we make might lead to a sustainable society living in harmony with robust ecosystems, or to the collapse of these same ecosystems, resulting in a permanent loss of biodiversity and erosion of the planet`s ability to support people.

The Living Planet Index measures trends in the earth`s biological diversity. It tracks populations of 1,313 vertebrate species – fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals – from all around the world. Separate indices are produced for terrestrial, marine, and freshwater species, and the three trends are then averaged to create an aggregated index. Although vertebrates represent only a fraction of known species, it is assumed that trends in their populations are typical of biodiversity overall. By tracking wild species, the Living Planet Index is also monitoring the health of ecosystems. Between 1970 and 2003, the index fell by about 30%. This global trend suggests that we are degrading natural ecosystems at a rate unprecedented in human history.

Biodiversity suffers when the biosphere`s productivity cannot keep pace with human consumption and waste generation. The Ecological Footprint tracks this in terms of the area of biologically productive land and water needed to provide ecological resources and services – food, fibre, and timber, land on which to build, and land to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) released by burning fossil fuels. The earth`s biocapacity is the amount of biologically productive area – cropland, pasture, forest, and fisheries – that is available to meet humanity`s needs. Freshwater consumption is not included in the Ecological Footprint; rather it is addressed in a separate section of the report.

Since the late 1980s, we have been in overshoot – the Ecological Footprint has exceeded the earth`s biocapacity – as of 2003 by about 25 per cent. Effectively, the earth`s regenerative capacity can no longer keep up with demand – people are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources.

Humanity is no longer living off nature`s interest, but drawing down its capital. This growing pressure on ecosystems is causing habitat destruction or degradation and permanent loss of productivity, threatening both biodiversity and human well-being.

For how long will this be possible? A moderate business-as-usual scenario, based on United Nations projections showing slow, steady growth of economies and populations, suggests that by midcentury, humanity`s demand on nature will be twice the biosphere`s productive capacity. At this level of ecological deficit, exhaustion of ecological assets and large-scale ecosystem collapse become increasingly likely.

Two different paths leading to sustainability are also explored. One entails a slow shift from our current route, the other a more rapid transition to sustainability. The Ecological Footprint allows us to estimate the cumulative ecological deficit that will accrue under each of these scenarios: the larger this ecological debt, and the longer it persists, the greater the risk of damage to the planet. This risk must be considered in concert with the economic costs and potential social disruptions associated with each path.

Moving towards sustainability depends on significant action now. Population size changes slowly, and human-made capital – homes, cars, roads, factories, or power plants – can last for many decades. This implies that policy and investment decisions made today will continue to determine our resource demand throughout much of the 21st century.

As the Living Planet Index shows, human pressure is already threatening many of the biosphere`s assets. Even moderate “business as usual” is likely to accelerate these negative impacts. And given the slow response of many biological systems, there is likely to be a considerable time lag before ecosystems benefit significantly from people`s positive actions.

We share the earth with 5-10 million species or more. By choosing how much of the planet`s biocapacity we appropriate, we determine how much is left for their use. To maintain biodiversity, it is essential that a part of the biosphere`s productive capacity is reserved for the survival of other species, and that this share is split between all biogeographic realms and major biomes.

To manage the transition to sustainability, we need measures that demonstrate where we have been, where we are today, and how far we still have to go. The Living Planet

Index and the Ecological Footprint help to establish baselines, set targets, and monitor achievements and failures. Such vital information can stimulate the creativity and innovation required to address humanity`s biggest challenge: how can we live well while sustaining the planet`s other species and living within the capacity of one earth?

Figure 1: Living Planet Index. This shows trends in populations of terrestrial, marine, and freshwater vertebrate species. It declined by 29% from 1970 to 2003.

Figure 2: Humanity`s Ecological Footprint. This estimates how much of the productive capacity of the biosphere people use.

Figure 3: Three Ecological Footprint scenarios. Two may lead to sustainability.

Table 1: Ecological demand and supply. Countries with the highest total footprints.

Living Planet Index

The idea of trading carbon as commodity began with Kyoto. Now the carbon market appears to be here to stay. There is a strong interest at all levels – individual, business and government, in engaging with this newcomer in the financial world.

Carbon is an unusual commodity. It evokes a great deal of emotion and is tied to areas of social and environmental thinking that have never previously been aligned with conventional capitalist thinking. But through the carbon market we are beginning to see the ecological future of our planet priced and traded as a commodity.

Whilst this may sound like an unfeeling solution to the climate change crisis, environmental groups in the west are warming to the carbon market`s potential. Why? Because we need to reduce emissions dramatically in the next ten years, according to the world`s leading climate scientists. With time so short, we have to go with the biggest tool we`ve got – the market.

Carbon trading is one of the mechanisms approved by the Kyoto Protocol for nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. The Kyoto Protocol created the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to enable emissions being saved in one part of the world to be sold in another. The result is a vast number of projects, mostly in developing nations, being certified for emissions reductions. Renewable energy projects such as wind power are common. These are checked to avoid %26lsquo;double counting` and sold into one of a number of carbon markets from where the credits can be purchased.

The outcomes, in terms of environmental and social impact have been mixed so far, and the Kyoto Protocol is under fire for failing to deliver anything near the emission reductions the world needs. Indeed global emissions are continuing to rise and few countries can claim to have bucked the trend. But much has been learned since Kyoto and the learning curve is getting steeper.

Learning from the EU

The European Union has been operating an Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) since January 2005, with the first phase due to end in December 2007. beyond which the second phase will coincide with the first Kyoto commitment period which operates from 2008 to 2012 and requires signed-up developed nations to have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by around 5% below their 1990 levels. At its peak, the price for a tonne of carbon (CO2 equivalent) was above %26euro;30. Currently it is hovering around %26euro;12.

This is a “cap and trade” scheme. In such a scheme, those that emit carbon are each given credits — an allowance that entitles them to emit a specific amount of carbon. The total amount of credits cannot exceed the cap – which is the overall limit of total agreed emissions. The EU ETS covers around 40% of total greenhouse gas emissions from EU nations in several industry sectors such as paper, mineral and energy. The basic logic of any cap and trade scheme is that the market will find the cheapest savings. Any organisation covered by the scheme has two options if it exceeds its permitted allowance. It can purchase the more emissions rights in the market or it can reduce its own emissions through greater energy efficiency. According to the theory of the market, each installation will tend to make the most economically rational decision within its capped “carbon budget”.

Global impacts

Many project-based carbon reductions take place in China and India – two fast growing economies which offer many opportunities to deliver verifiable reductions because the pace of development of their energy infrastructure is so fast. Investment in clean renewable energy technologies aided by the finance made available through the carbon market makes low carbon developments more attractive to them. As the market for carbon expands, there is an ever greater opportunity to further reduce emissions.

On many fronts, carbon trading has so far proved to be a successful mechanism, though some criticise it for its traditional capitalist approach. However, criticism is muted, given the current lack of alternatives. Given the urgent need to reduce emissions, a strong carbon market offers a way to unlock the creative potential of many of the world`s great financial and cultural centres to try to solve the greenhouse gas emissions problem.

You, the new actor

At the present time, 44% of emissions in the UK are attributable directly to individuals, but the individual is not currently a player in the carbon market. In a globalised carbon market, the initiative to reduce emissions may not stay with governments. Companies and communities who recognise the scale of the threat of climate change to their own futures and the future of their families could themselves become the drivers.

As a concerned citizen, one could buy verified carbon reductions and not sell them – hence removing carbon from the market and therefore forcing the price up, but the RSA does not believe this is enough. We are looking at an entirely new approach to individual carbon trading which we hope could hold the key to balancing the development of the economy with the need to control carbon emissions in a fast, effective and equitable manner. It is the new show in town.

At present, there are few actors in the EU ETS – 12,000 installations, representing approximately 45% of EU CO2 emissions. The RSA conceives of every individual in the UK becoming an actor and, if the scheme succeeds, every individual in the EU – nearly 500 million people.

It would work like this: The government of the UK would allocate to each adult in the UK an equal per capita share of the 44% of the country`s emissions that are attributable directly to individuals (through fuel and electricity purchases). The remaining 56% of the UK`s carbon emissions would be auctioned to government and business.

That 56% operates in much the same way as the EU ETS. However individuals are now actors in the same market. If they emit less than their personal allocation, they can sell their emissions rights to those emitting more than their share.

Decoupling emissions from growth

So what would happen if each person was financially responsible for his or her own emissions? Firstly we would find out where our allowance was going: do we drive a big car? Do we leave the lights on? Do we have the heating turned up too high? Do we take many flights? If there was a strong financial incentive and individual access to the market, we think we would see a rapid move away from wasteful to low-carbon lifestyles. People would look for low-carbon products and services to save on their emissions allocations. If there was demand for low-carbon products, entrepreneurs, in turn, would develop and produce them for the market.

Each year, to fight climate change, the carbon budget will have to shrink. As the budget is shrunk, the goods and services required to meet the lowered targets will become available and affordable and a new low-carbon culture will continue to propel this change.

It would be good in other ways, too. It would enhance public health and energy security and, indeed, the Contraction and Convergence model could also be delivered through this mechanism. So what starts out looking like an idea with a strong core of market economics, on closer inspection turns into something which speaks to the heart of a strong and just society.

Matt Prescott is the director of CarbonLimited. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) is at the heart of work to further the debate on personal carbon trading through the CarbonLimited project. CarbonLimited runs until December 2008 and is delivering a programme of research, public debate and piloting. www.rsacarbonlimited.org

Homepage photo by Marek Futrega

Years before China completed its first certified green building, a team from Beijing went to meet with engineers in the US to discuss environmentally-friendly design. But when the Chinese team showed some early sketches to their American colleagues, the response was not what they were expecting.

The American engineers said the plans were completely unworkable – the lighting design, water systems, ventilation and so on would all to be redone. This setback left Gao Lin, the lead Chinese architect on the project, “looking completely shell shocked,” recalls Robert Watson, a senior scientist with the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, who advises the Chinese government on green construction. “He blinked and looked at me and said, %26lsquo;It`s like I`m seeing architecture for the first time.`”

Though it may lack the flair of much of Beijing`s newer designs, the resulting building, completed in 2004, is a wonder of environmental design and the first structure in China to receive a gold rating under the US Green Building Council`s coveted Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard, or LEED (a certification established by Robert Watson). Sitting just south of Yuyuantan Park in western Beijing, the ten-storey ACCORD21 office building uses 70% less energy than similar structures and saves 10,000 tons of water a year through rainwater collection. All this translates into enough savings to build a similar building seven years down the road.

ACCORD21 office building