Chinese walker

chinadialogue: In China, coal is the dominant energy source and the majority of this coal is used directly for burning. What serious environmental problems are caused by burning coal?

Weidou Ni: The distinguishing characteristics of China`s natural energy resources are abundant coal, scarce oil and a little gas, so in terms of primary energy production and consumption, coal has always held a dominant position. In 2005, China`s standard coal consumption reached 2.22 billion tonnes, standing at almost 70% of total energy consumption. In the use of this coal, 80% is directly for burning. Coal burned by coal-fired power plants accounts for over 50% of this. Over 70% of power plants on China`s electricity grid are coal-fired, while hydro, nuclear and other sources of power for electricity production account for no more than 30% of the total.

When coal burns, apart from producing a large amount of smoke and dust, it can also release the harmful substances carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulphur oxide, nitrogen oxide, hydrocarbon organic matter and so forth. If there are no controls on these pollutants, they will have significant damaging effects on humans` health and environment.

In the past, air pollution in China was simply regarded as a question of controlling “industrial smoke and dust”. But this has changed, and now sulphur dioxide is firmly at the top of China`s pollution-control agenda. In May 2006, China`s State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) ordered the country`s five main electricity producers to produce detailed plans for reducing their sulphur dioxide emissions, with the aim of reducing their emissions in 2010 to 10% below the 2005 level.

To China`s embarrassment, it is the world’s largest emitter of sulphur dioxide and the world`s second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. In October 2006, an international conference, Strategic Approaches to Regional Air Quality Management in China, was held in Beijing, and the local environmental-protection directors who spoke all focused on sulphur dioxide. But some experts have suggested it is now more important to look for ways to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions.

Zhou Guoyi and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Southern China Botanical Garden recently published a report in China’s Science magazine. After 25 years of research on old-growth forests in south China`s Dinghushan, in Guangdong province, the scientists concluded that the soil in old-growth forests has considerable capacity for carbon storage. They found that the top 20 centimetres of soil in every square kilometre of mature forest can store 0.61 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. This provides even greater impetus for the protection of China`s natural forests, and disputes traditional ideas that regard old-growth forests as nothing more than “carbon neutral,” with carbon uptake balanced by respiration.

But what do these results really mean? Will people come to realise the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions? And when a British economist issued a stark warning on climate change, how many Chinese people took notice of the impending disaster?

Liu Dongsheng, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, points out that the planet`s periodic ice ages mean that some cycles of warming and cooling are normal. But natural cycles of warming would result in increased vegetation in the northern hemisphere, rather than the drought and desertification that are so serious in places such as northern China today.

Paleoclimatologists have gathered considerable evidence from the ice caps, the seabed, deep soil, caves and fossilised trees to show that increases in carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution correlate with rising global temperatures, and that current temperatures are the highest in 420,000 years. This has lead some to propose that we have entered the “Anthropocene” era, in which human activity has a significant effect on the life of the planet. However, some put the dawn of this era as early as 10,000 years ago, when humans first started to plant grain and raise animals, resulting in emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with 20 times the global-warming potential of carbon dioxide.

Industry has released huge amounts of carbon dioxide contained in the soil, in wood and in ice into the atmosphere. On top of this, we have felled large numbers of trees, turned forests and grasslands into fields, built cities on coastal shallows and drained swamps in order to plant crops. Even those fields have now become “industrial development parks”; single-storey buildings have become skyscrapers; and our once-clear streams are completely polluted. Humans have committed two major environmental faults: as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased through our activity, we have also slashed the earth`s vegetation coverage – and its capacity to absorb the carbon dioxide we are producing.

Many place the burden of environmental responsibility on the shoulders of government and business, but this leaves out our own role in the situation. China became the “workshop of the world” because of cheap raw materials and a lack of environmental responsibility. Companies did not need to pay the true price of materials, for environmental recovery or compensation, and so that cost was not passed onto the consumer. Both government and business act on behalf of society; carbon dioxide emissions are a result of our lifestyles and consumption habits. The duty of environmental protection lies not only with the manufacturers; it is time to look at the responsibility of the consumer. Consumption creates carbon-dioxide emissions, and therefore consumers should feel a responsibility to reduce them. Only when people realise this will they be willing to pay “environmental taxes” to compensate resource depletion and pay for environmental improvement. After all, both government funding and corporate profits come foremost from consumers.

The more progressive among us are already taking up the cause. For example, the Costa Rican football team at the 2006 World Cup offset all the carbon dioxide emissions incurred in their participation in the competition. Very simple formulas can be used to calculate the carbon dioxide emissions that an individual is responsible for. All you need to do is visit a website, press a few keys to answer questions about what you consume, and you will get the results in seconds. And by calculating the cost of your consumption according to international carbon trading prices, you can work out your debt to the global environment.

But what should the money be used for? The answer is simple: improving the environment. It could be by planting trees or protecting permanent vegetation, restructuring industry or researching technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Only when we make up our minds to really do something about our carbon responsibility, will China`s carbon emissions get the attention they deserve and will practical solutions be found.

Now is the time to discuss our personal carbon responsibility and cut down our carbon emissions, to simply focus on sulphur dioxide is not enough.

Feng Yongfeng is technology correspondent for the Guangming Daily.

Homepage photo by Patrick Rioux

At one time, China`s economists proudly proclaimed the country to be the “factory of the world.” But unfortunately, this manufacturing has been characterised by a high consumption of energy and resources, large emissions of pollutants and low added value. And while China has exported many goods to foreign – and mostly developed – countries, we have kept the pollution for ourselves.

China needs to produce 100 million pairs of trousers in order to purchase one Boeing aeroplane. The country manufactures seven billion pairs of shoes a year, more than the world can wear at one time. And the price China pays for this manufacturing, in terms of increased pollution, is an extortionate one.

Among the environmental costs of our economic growth, the most serious and apparent are those caused by pollution. The release of pollutants with inadequate or no treatment, combined with a weak environmental protection framework means that the nation`s emissions continue to increase. A survey of 10 cities and provinces, including Beijing, Shanghai and Hebei, found that between 1986 and 2000, 5.5 billion tonnes of untreated sewage was discharged – a net growth of 2.27 billion tonnes. At the same time, the dumping of urban domestic waste grew by 28.96 million tonnes.

In rural areas the use of tractors means that farmers no longer raise draft animals, and the loss of an important source of organic fertiliser. As a result, the use of chemical fertilisers has risen. Moreover, the improper use of fertilisers means that efficiency is low. China uses an average of 434.3 kilograms of fertiliser per hectare, almost twice the international safety standard of 225 kilograms. But only about 40% of that is actually used by crops, the rest remains in the soil or groundwater. In 2000, an average of 13.4 kilograms of pesticide was used per hectare. Of this land, 70% was treated with organic phosphorus, 70% with highly toxic pesticide and 70% with insecticide. Sixty to 70% of this is left as residue in the soil. Pollution in the form of plastics used to package fertilisers and pesticides is also a serious problem. Half a million tonnes of these plastics lie in China`s fields: almost 40% of the total packaging.

On top of this, 100 million tonnes of straw – 17% of China`s total – is burnt off annually; the resulting smoke presents a danger to road and air traffic. The pollution caused by the production of livestock and poultry is equal to twice the solid waste output of the nation`s industry; in some areas such as Henan, Hunan and Jiangxi, it even reaches four times that level.

The consequences of pollution can also be seen in China`s rivers, lakes and coastal waters. Half the length of China`s seven major river systems, including the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the middle reaches of the Pearl River, is severely polluted. Eighty-six percent of urban waterways fail to meet minimum standards for water pollution. Environmental analysis of a 2,000 kilometre stretch of the Huai River found that 78.7% of the water failed to meet minimum standards for drinking water; 79.7% was unsuitable for use in fish farming; and 32% did not even meet standards for use in irrigation. In 2001, China`s coastal waters experienced 77 red tides over 15,000 square kilometres, 49 more occurrences than in 2000 and covering an extra 5,000 square kilometres. This was directly responsible for economic losses of one billion yuan (US$128 million).

Red tide photo by thesix

The economic losses caused by pollution are rising, and if they are not controlled they will hold back China`s growth. Direct economic losses due to pollution between 1990 and 1998 amounted to 100 billion yuan (US$12.8 billion) annually – 1.4% of total GDP and 29.4% of government income. And this does not even account for the social and political risks that pollution causes.

What can be done?

China’s central government is greatly concerned by these problems. Premier Wen Jiabao has stressed the importance of the “Three Changes”. Firstly, to move from a mode of growth that stresses the economy to one which balances the economy and the environment. Secondly, to move from a situation in which environmental protection holds the economy back, to one where they develop in tandem; from a passive and remedial model of environmental protection to a proactive, protective method. Thirdly, to move from the use of policy and administrative methods to protect the environment to the combined use of legal, economic and technical methods, alongside political intervention when necessary, to adapt to new circumstances and accelerate innovation. Specifically, to resolve China`s environmental problems we should proceed as follows:

First, China must adopt the concept of %26lsquo;Green GDP` in evaluating the performance of government officials. We should develop environmental planning, model projects and a circular economy, and include green GDP in performance evaluations of government officials. And maintain these in the long term. Many of China`s problems are questions of interests, and for officials this means their record of achievements. In the past, this meant only economic successes, and the environment took a back seat. But now, solving environmental problems must start with the evaluation of officials. In some environmentally sensitive regions the environment should be put first, and supported by state compensation.

Second, the country must increase funding for nature reserves and establish compensation systems in river basins. We should be funding national-level nature reserves from the national budget and protecting nature reserves rather than developing them, thereby spurring local economies. Provincial-level nature reserves can be funded in a similar manner, with operating expenses covered by local governments, in order properly realise the nation`s 2,194 nature reserves, which now only exist on paper. Economic losses suffered due to environmental protection should be compensated for by the state – a responsibility which richer areas should shoulder.

Third, we must improve environmental protection law and management systems. China should establish environmental protection legislation and effective protection mechanisms that will robustly intervene in those economic activities that cause pollution or harm the environment. We must strengthen the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA)`s ability to enforce the law and increase its strategic position within the development of the private economy. It is recommended that SEPA be renamed the Ministry of the Environment.

Fourth, we should carry out environmental education and encourage the public to participate in protecting the environment. Improving the environment and harmony between man and nature means fostering an environmental culture, building an ecological civilisation and raising awareness of environmental protection. China`s citizens must move from passive to active participation, using the legal instruments the state provides to protect their environmental interests and uniting against behaviour that damages the environment. The role of environmental NGOs should be strengthened. The media should also increase their coverage of environmental incidents.

Fifth, environmental protection should be developed as an industry. Developed countries realised this when they curtailed the strategy of “pollute first, clean up later”. Market mechanisms can promote private involvement in environmental management, meaning profits can be made from both creating and preventing pollution, and polluters will opt for the latter. The state needs to set clear targets for environmental protection and management, and assign funding. Lastly, these finances should be linked to actual results, not distributed to various authorities to spend on their own environmental protection projects.

Jiang Gaoming is a chief researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences` Institute of Botany and a doctoral candidate tutor, vice secretary-general of UNESCO`s China-MAB Committee and director of the China Environmental Culture Promotion Association. He is recognized for his introduction of the concepts of “urban vegetation” and “using natural forces to restore China`s ecosystems.”

Jixi Gao is chief specialist and head of the Institute of Ecology at the China Academy of Environmental Sciences. He has long been involved in the evaluation of functional ecologies, environmental assessments of regional development strategies and research into environmental pollution testing.

Traditional Chinese medicine is used by 1.3 billion people in China, and many Chinese communities around the world. The country has 3,800 Chinese medical institutions of county level and above, which together employ around 400,000 people. Traditional Chinese pharmacies are common both in cities and the countryside, and sell huge numbers of treatments every day. Millions of hectares of land are used to grow millions of tonnes of raw materials for the production of medicines. There are almost 3,000 enterprises and 2,000 factories that produce Chinese medicine (including some that also manufacture western medicine). It is a huge industry, and the country`s medicinal resources provide many with the healthcare they need.

But China`s twentieth-century population explosion led to a massive increase in the use of these resources. The export of raw materials in exchange for foreign currency left the country’s natural resources in a terrible state. Outdated, improperly-used technology in medicine has also resulted in a huge degree of waste. As a result, the supply of raw materials for Chinese medicines has become ever tighter, with the use of some ingredients being banned for their own preservation. It is a hard industry to make sustainable.

Major causes of waste include the failure to harvest medicinal herbs on time, the damage caused by poor transportation conditions and losses due to heat, moisture, pests and mould. Poor manufacturing processes also result in herbs prepared for decoction that are too thick, or crystals that are too large, affecting the absorption of active components and squandering valuable resources.

There has already been much research and debate on the subject; policies have also been introduced on cultivating new sources of Chinese medicine. But still nothing has been done to reduce this staggering loss of resources. If effective measures are not taken soon, the plight of China`s endangered species will continue to worsen and environmental protection will be held back. Consumers` desire for “convenience”, the improper use of technology and corporate greed means the situation just keeps getting worse.

Pharmaceutical textbooks tell us that to extract active components efficiently; saturated solutions must be removed and replaced with new solutions for a second and third round of steeping. This increases the amount of work involved and the power consumed. It also lengthens the production cycle and increases costs. When faced with a choice between lowering costs and increasing extraction, the majority of enterprises opt to save money. As a result, huge quantities of active components are thrown away with the “dregs” of the production process – and the quality of the medicine is reduced. This is one reason why mass-produced medicines are not as effective as ones made to order.

A lot of waste is caused by preparations that use only one active ingredient or only one type of ingredient. In some cases, a volatile component may be obtained through distillation, while another water-soluble component is discarded. Granulated preparations have been tested and found not to contain the active components of their raw materials, which have in fact been discarded during the manufacturing process.

Many manufacturers also only extract one chemical from their raw materials, which results in a colossal waste of resources. For instance, companies that manufacture for export extract US$13 million worth of ephedrine from 30,000 tonnes of ephedra annually, 10 times the amount that is used in traditional Chinese medicine. And liquorice root is a similar case. It is clear that the environmental damage caused has little to do with the plants` traditional use in Chinese medicine.

Another Chinese medicine, recommended for anti-malarial treatments by the World Health Organisation, has a huge market. But once the necessary component has been extracted, antibiotic components are thrown out with the “waste”. Over 5,000 tonnes are wasted annually. The use of resources in Chinese medicine needs to be overseen by a central authority.

Instant preparations

When I speak to people in the mainstream financial sector who are not involved in triple bottom line investing (TBLI) they all tell me it is not relevant, too small, too niche or too unimportant. Investment, I am told by financial experts in the City of London, in New York, Tokyo, Frankfurt and Paris, should only look at financial returns. It should not be bothered by social and environmental added value issues, or so-called non-financial criteria.

But doing that not only hurts the returns, it also breaks the solemn oath of fiduciary responsibility.

Another common excuse the professional investors give me for not looking at TBLI is that “there is no demand”. That might or might not be true. But what I find so interesting is that despite all these excuses and obstacles, TBLI, or sustainable investment, just keeps on growing: no matter what is thrown in its path, it doesn’t stop. I think it is the killer app.

TBLI includes all form of investment that looks at social, environmental and financial returns. It covers public equity, private equity, bonds, real estate, carbon finance, microfinance, project finance and many others. If you look at all these fields, every single one of them is growing and some are growing by leaps and bounds as institutional investors at last engage with Socially Responsible Investment (SRI).

Cleantech is investment in technology that reduces waste, energy use, water, toxicity and material and achieves financial returns. In the United States, Cleantech private equity is more than10% of the venture capital market, excluding corporate commitments. Walmart has announced that it will invest US$500 million per year in solar power to reduce their own energy costs and CO2 emissions and, at the same time, they are demanding a 20% reduction in energy and CO2 emissions from their own operations and those of all their suppliers.

General Electric recently announced that it will invest US$2.5 billion in clean water and energy technologies. BP has committed US$8 billion for renewable energy. Draper, Fischer, Kleiner Perkins, Robeco, Rabo, ABN, and dozens of others are establishing institutional mandates for cleantech space. Why? Because the market is booming. They are not doing it for the sake of their reputations but because they see a clear opportunity.

The amazing growth in commodity and energy demands due to the growth in emerging markets is creating a vast opportunity for resource efficiency. This will only increase as pressure on energy and commodities reaches the limits of supply. The Equator Principles, internationally recognised, voluntary project finance guidelines for the banking industry that establish social and environmental standards for project finance, began by covering project finance worth over US$50 million, and require social and environmental impact assessments before a loan is approved. Within 20 months of the Equator Principles being launched in 2003, 85% of the market had signed on. Now the figure has been reduced to US$10 million, and more than 43 banks have committed to it. Are all the banks doing this just for the sake of their reputation? No. They saw that the investment was more appealing if the risk was reduced. In addition, they saw that their project finance departments could do this.

When you take into account the hindrances to the growth of TBLI`s growth over the last five to 10 years, the results are even more extraordinary. Very few business schools teach their MBAs anything about sustainable finance. I know, because I have been teaching one of the few courses that does. All the schools, that I approached to with the offer of the course declined.

Most universities have been teaching the same lessons on finance for the past 15 years. Few, if any, banks give incentives to their staff for TBLI performance or targets. The CEOs stay around only a pitifully short time, so they have no incentive to create long term projects which will benefit their successor. Added to that, the tax system externalises all cost onto society and provides no incentive for environmentally or socially beneficial activities.

Look at the airplane industry. If you buy a bicycle in the Netherlands, you pay 19% VAT. If you buy gasoline in most of Europe, it costs Euros 1.30 or more per litre. But if you buy an airplane ticket, you will pay no VAT and no excise tax and the kerosene your plane uses costs about Euro 0.35 to 0.40 per litre. This is not a level playing field or a market mechanism.

In theory we subsidise green energy but we do not tax fossil fuels for the true cost of their societal impact. (Has anyone kept track of the cost of the wars in middle east lately? Should that not be added to the cost of oil?) But asset management employees only know what they know and they are not expected to know anything else.

The media are no help either. Most of the press focuses on the least important bit of financial information: what did the DOW or the FTSE or the other stock markets do today? They occasionally offer a token bit of information on TBLI, if it can be squeezed into an advertising special. For most of the time, the press is busy processing press releases and going to annual general meetings, where none of the journalists ask any major industrial company why their carbon risk is not clearly stated. If they did ask, they would find that nobody had an answer, but they don`t know to ask. The press was created by the same system that produced the rest.

In the United States, the neo-cons have even mounted a campaign (NGOWatch) to discredit the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) movement and SRI.

Even the organisations that have a clear moral and ethical purpose – organisations such as the churches, grant-making foundations, NGOs, and trades unions – fail to invest and manage their own assets responsibly. Private banks keep their clients in ignorance about the opportunities that sustainable alternative investments offer because it is a new sector and the private banks tend to avoid anything new like the plague. They prefer the familiar opportunities – like Enron, Parmalat, Worldcom and so on. This barrier is high, thick and well guarded and TBLI was not intended to get through, but it did.

We have an ignorant profession, reinforced by an educational system that reproduces the same ignorance, an institutional sector that hides behind the fiduciary responsibility of maximising returns and does not look at all the risks, a government that reinforces harmful behavior and a society that is fed on financial news designed to entertain rather than inform. The wealth management sector advises its foundation clients to give away 5% in charity, but invests the principle assets in destructive industries. With hundreds of similar roadblocks, it is a miracle that TBLI has come so far.

Perhaps the force behind TBLI was so powerful, that nothing could stop it. In the last 10 years, it has felt like driving on a highway behind five trucks that were dropping barrels in our path. But the industry that feels that social and environmental issues are as important as financial concerns, in assuring the financial return, has endured, grown and prospered and is now poised now to become the “mainstream”. Why? Because it is the smart, professional way to manage money for the long term.

TBLI is the Killer App.

Robert Rubinstein is the Founder and CEO of Brooklyn Bridge-TBLI Group. The TBLI Group runs the Triple Bottom Line Investing Conference, which will be held in Bangkok May 24-25, 2007.

Robert Rubinstein %26copy;

It was a message from my former student, now at Sheffield University, which alerted me to the story first reported by Sky TV: that Britain is transporting huge quantities of solid waste to China. The report said that in one recent trip the world’s largest container ship, the Emma Maersk, had delivered 170,000 tonnes of trash to Lianjiao in south China`s Guangdong province. Carrier bags from Tesco, the UK supermarket, and waste from food packaging were easily visible in the scattered rubbish.

Every year, China exports %26pound;16 billion worth of goods to the UK. In return, China receives 1.9 million tonnes of waste from the UK, the bulk of it non-biodegradable plastic. In only eight years, the amount of rubbish shipped to China has increased more than 150 times over.

Nature itself produces virtually no waste; one creature`s waste will be food for another. But even the most voracious of species cannot break down the organic compounds found in plastics. These are known as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), and 12 of the most harmful of these chemicals were restricted or banned by the 2004 Stockholm Convention on POPs. These chemicals linger in the environment for long periods and can enter the human body through food or respiration, causing poisoning, cancers and even death.

Workers pick the plastic out of this imported rubbish, which is then melted down and reused. The fumes from the melting process act as an irritant, and the chemical byproducts of the process are dumped into nearby rivers, blackening the water and damaging the environment in the city of Guangzhou, which lies downstream. But this is not the worst of it.

Burning plastics results in the release of at least five of the 12 POPs listed by the Stockholm Convention. When these criminals – both Chinese and British – dump their rubbish on Chinese soil, they bring with them these toxic chemicals. “It will take seven generations for these pollutants to disappear from the human body,” warned Li Guogang, chief engineer at the China National Environmental Monitoring Center.

Overseas waste dumping is a classic case of countries exporting their problems. The average American discards 23.4 kilograms of plastic packaging a year. In Japan and Europe the figures are 20.1 kilograms and 15 kilograms respectively, while in China it is a mere 13 kilograms. Developed countries recognised the threats that plastics pose long ago, and responded by using new materials and developing recycling. Before the 1980s in the US, waste plastic was dumped in landfill sites, but a sorting and recycling system now allows a high level of reuse. But some nations, such as the UK, prefer to use other countries as rubbish tips – exporting their pollution and turning a profit at the same time.

It is this profit that drives large-scale exports of waste overseas. British officials admit that waste exporters earn on both sides of the trade. They earn %26pound;35 per tonne of waste from local councils in the UK, and then instead of processing anything, pocket the cash and sell the waste on to Chinese importers. This trade, exposed by the UK press, has left China asking angry questions: who are these Chinese importers that are willing to endanger the health of their own people? Who is responsible for monitoring these firms? How can the local environmental authorities turn a blind eye when China`s rivers are running black? Where is the government when workers risk their lives sorting rubbish? If any one of these organisations fulfilled its responsibility, this trade would have been stopped, yet they look the other way for the sake of profit.

The UK government surely bears some responsibility. In 2005, Elliot Morley, then UK Minister for Environment, pledged to end the dumping of unprocessed waste. Two years later, the current Minister for Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare, Ben Bradshaw, said the public did not need to worry about this trade, as its impact on global warming is tiny. He even hinted that it would be a “waste of resources” for ships to return to China empty, referring in fact to the %26pound;35 pounds per tonne that would otherwise have to be spent on processing the waste, and the income that would be lost from Chinese importers. Sacrificing another country’s environment to defend its own backyard – whatever happened to Britain`s tradition of the “gentleman”?

One cannot help but be reminded of the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century. To resolve their economic crisis, the British peddled opium in China – to the harm of both the nation and its people. And now they are up to their old tricks, exporting the consequences of their extravagant consumption. Even the location – Guangdong – is the same. The difference is that now the smoke comes not from the opium burnt at Humen, but from burning plastics.

By now we should be alert to these “invasions” from developed, capitalist nations; the dumping of waste in China has been an issue for years. The US and Japan are also involved, and have turned minor Chinese ports into rubbish tips. China must not allow itself to become the world’s dumping ground. We must shut down the profit-seeking criminals – both in China and the rest of the world – who threaten China`s environment, which 1.3 billion people rely on.

Jiang Gaoming is a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences` Institute of Botany. He is also vice secretary-general of the UNESCO China-MAB (Man and the Biosphere) Committee and a member of the UNESCO MAB Urban Group.

Sky TV recently reported that the world’s largest container ship, the Emma Maersk, had arrived in south China`s Lianjiao, laden with 170,000 tonnes of rubbish. The local economy has relied on waste recycling for years. As a result, fumes can be seen pouring out of Lianjiao`s chimneys, its rivers are blackened, its soil is contaminated, its water is polluted and trash can be seen piled up like mountains. The story has ignited controversy in both the UK and China.

But this is not a new phenomenon. Western nations started exporting waste to developing countries as early as the 1960s and %26lsquo;70s, with disastrous consequences. In August 2006, a boat chartered by a Netherlands-based firm dumped hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, killing seven and hospitalising 24, with almost 40,000 people suffering to some degree.

The overwhelming opinion of online commentators is that this demonstrated how western countries adhere to double standards with regard to the environment. But waste dumping is not carried out by nations: it is carried out by corporations.

Exporting trash has allowed firms to earn money from governments in the developed world, cutting government costs and avoiding local regulations, while the exporters earn an additional income from selling the rubbish. At the same time, developing countries get a source of raw materials. China is the world’s second largest consumer of plastic; one tonne of synthetic resin costs 11,000 yuan (around US$1,420), but a tonne of imported plastic, discarded in the west, can be bought for as little as 4,000 yuan (around US$515). The work of sorting the waste is hard and dirty, but for many it is more lucrative than the alternative. “We`re poor, so we still have to,” explained one interviewee. “If we plant crops, we can only earn around 2,000 yuan (around US$260) every year. But this work pays much more quickly: as much as 800 yuan (around US$100) every month.”

When there is this kind of profit to be made, there will always be someone willing to risk others` health by importing trash, and many more who will endanger their own to sort it: it is simple economics.

Or is it? If the UK had weaker environmental laws, money could be made processing waste there, and nobody would export rubbish to China. Trash ends up in China because developed countries have more robust green laws, greater social supervision and more effective governments; high fees associated with waste processing and pollution emissions have made it uneconomical to process the trash locally.

But the low cost of waste processing and the large profits to be made in China make it a lucrative industry. Meanwhile, government oversight is weak and punishment is mainly in the form of fines that go directly to government rather than compensating the victims of pollution. As a result, companies and individuals involved can keep on polluting.

Globalisation benefits both developed and developing nations, but environmental laws and their enforcement are weaker in poorer countries. This gives richer nations a chance to export their waste and pollution. The economic and environmental differences are, in essence, the result of underdeveloped systems.

Globalisation increases the interaction between different systems, and exposes the gaps between them. In the same way that less-developed systems attract unregulated and risky investments, they also attract waste.

Governments, businesses and the international community should make a sustained effort to prevent the continuation and expansion of this serious problem.

International agreements that invoke the authority of a third party should be implemented. Sponsored by the United Nations or global environmental groups, such agreements would reduce the potential for harm to developing countries. The third party should also be able to help with the costs of environmental protection.

It is also important to control those factors that allow this unregulated trade. In this particular case, the UK government should bear responsibility for not implementing international agreements, take its rubbish back and discuss more effective systems for managing the international flow of solid waste with the Chinese government. Similarly, China should increase the cost of waste production and waste imports to reduce the price differentials: only this can get to the root of the problem. Otherwise, this issue will become intractable, and more problems will arise.

The Chinese government recognises the harm caused, and a law on solid waste is being rushed through the legislative process. Laws and regulations should be enough to improve the management of imported waste and reduce its environmental harm. But many have concerns about their effectiveness; waste processing and plastics are still highly lucrative industries, and the companies at the heart of the industry may just relocate.

The most basic and important measure is to build the public into the new systems. In the west, it is social pressure that blocks interest groups, keeps the government in line and pushes for strict environmental policies. Public movements inspired by environmental disasters in the 1960s and %26lsquo;70s led to a solid environmental protection system and a tradition of public oversight of the environment.

NGOs such as Greenpeace, the media, strict laws and responsible local governments must all play a part in helping China’s environment to ensure that situations like this do not continue to arise.

Tang Hao is a Guangzhou-based academic and commentator

For Chinese people, the Chinese New Year is about family gatherings, meeting up with relatives and valuing the country`s traditional culture. But often I ask myself what impact this has on the natural world.

Many people enjoy the pleasure and freedom of getting close to nature. I do not know if the earth really can speak, but I first wished I could hear it in 1998, when I went to see the autumn leaves at Xiangshan (Fragrant Hills), near Beijing. A friend took me there to enjoy the scenery, but all I saw were visitors snapping off the leaves, keeping them as souvenirs or just dropping them underfoot, leaving weeping sores on the trees.

I felt I heard nature’s lament again in 1999, during the National Day holiday to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. A group of friends and I used our week-long holiday to visit Lushan, a scenic mountain spot where Mao Zedong once famously posed for a photograph. But we were surrounded by hawkers with megaphones, and had to walk into the forest to be able to hear the birdsong and the wind in the pines. I wondered why we could not hear these things back near the hawkers. A friend suggested that maybe they were making a silent protest against all the noise.

A fellow reporter told me that during the 2006 May Day holiday, 204 tonnes of rubbish was cleared from Beijing`s Tiananmen Square, with cleaners and their machinery working round the clock to keep up with the trash discarded by tourists. At the same time, 30 members of Green Earth Volunteers visited Fanjingshan, in south China`s Guizhou, as eco-tourists, where they could enjoy – and help protect – the mountain scenery.

In 1986, Fangjingshan became China’s fourth internationally-protected nature reserve, known as a treasure both for people and planet. Its environment and forest ecosystem are virtually untouched, a perfect example of China’s natural subtropical forests. It is full of rare plants, including the last survivors of a number of ancient species.

Apart from scientists attracted by its biodiversity, the rock formations on the summit are often visited by geologists. “Mushroom Rock”, formed by wind erosion, and an archway soaring over the “Golden Knife Gorge” are both majestic sights. Following the path upwards, there are numerous points to view the untouched scenery. One of these looks out to a 38-metre-high stone pillar reaching up into the sky.

Before we set off, we knew that we would have to climb almost 8,000 steps to reach these sights. But we never expected that our trip would involve another task – picking up rubbish.

Empty bottles and food wrappers were scattered among the flowers and trees. Visitors ignored nearby rubbish bins, preferring to crush the flowers under the weight of their litter. As we cleared up after them, we wondered how nature would respond, if only it could speak.

Later, we left Fanjingshan and headed for Zhenyuan, a historic town. The Wuyang River runs through it, lined with architecturally-unique buildings. Small wooden boats drifted up and down the river, and standing on its banks there was a sense of man and nature living in harmony.

But a local explained to me that the boats were, in fact, picking trash out of the river. They were not employed by the local government, but were private individuals who sold the rubbish on. And they could make a very good living, he added.

Looking out at the boats we couldn’t help but wonder what the river would look like if there were not people hauling out the trash. And if we could understand the river, what would it complain of?

Moving on to Fenghuang, Hunan province, we stayed by the Tuo River. At dusk we stood by the window, watching a gentle rain fall on the water. With the locals washing their clothes on the banks and the moon hanging bright in the sky we were reminded of the poet Zhang Ruoxu’s Spring, River, and Flowers on a Moonlit Night.

We left our wooden guesthouse for a riverside stroll, and I saw a woman who sold river tours throw her watermelon skin into the river. When I explained that the river needed to be looked after, she just told me to mind my own business, and I saw her rubbish float off downstream.

It rained the night before we left Fenghuang. The next morning we took a boat out on the river and saw plastic bottles floating past, followed by food containers and even shoes. If the river could speak, would it not river ask us why we treat it like that?

Xiangshan is known for a natural spring where one can drink fresh, sweet water. Many Beijing residents carry containers there to collect water. But they leave behind packaging from their food and drinks, which can be seen strewn around the spring, contrasting starkly with the natural beauty of the surroundings. I heard a young non-Chinese boy ask his mother if the water could clean itself when it got dirty.

I have been to southwest China`s Tiger Leaping Gorge a number of times, and enjoyed the beautiful but perilous walks along its sides. But now there is a stone bridge, and the scenery is no longer pristine. Facing this, there is a concrete toilet block, and no matter how you try to frame a photo, you cannot avoid including the toilet.

The cliff face at Xishui, in south China`s Guizhou province, has a natural fresco where the photographer Chen Fuli once stood for three days and three nights, unable to tear himself away. But a few years ago, the local government placed an electricity pylon in front of it, again leaving the scars of human activity on what once was a natural scene.

Xiangshan, Lushan, Fanjingshan, Zhenyuan, Fenghuang, Tiger Leaping Gorge: these are all just individual cases. A little bit more rubbish in our rivers and mountains; a building put here and there – perhaps it doesn’t make much difference to nature as a whole. But China has three major holidays a year, and as people get richer they increasingly use them to travel the country. And as they go out to enjoy nature, I would like them to remember: don`t base your pleasure on nature`s suffering. If you want to live in harmony with nature, you have to try to listen to what it is saying.

Yongcheng Wang is a reporter for China National Radio. Wang founded Green Earth Volunteers, a Chinese environmental NGO, in 1996. She is also a winner of the Globe Award, China’s top environmental prize.

Homepage photo by Shenxy

Since the reform and open door policy of the late 1970s, China has achieved a consistently high level of economic growth, with an average annual growth rate of over 9.5%. But the ruthless pursuit of GDP growth has been highly inefficient, causing widening income disparities and environmental degradation on a colossal scale, and resulting in insufficient industrial innovation.

These consequences put into question not only the sustainability of China`s development, but also jeopardise social stability in the country. In recent years, income disparities and environmental degradation have led to an increasing number of social protests, especially in the coastal regions. The Chinese Communist Party has tightened its political control in order to maintain stability, but the leadership also understands that it must adjust China`s development model if it is to cope with the undesirable consequences of rapid economic growth.

Environmental issues in China are becoming increasingly political, and the country is entering an era of environmental politics like many other countries before it. Demands for a healthier environment from the prosperous eastern coastal regions have become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Since the Hu Jintao%26mdash;Wen Jiabao leadership came to power, China has been searching for a new development model which focuses on sustainability and social justice. China`s 11th Five Year Plan (2006-2010) and the recent Sixth Plenum have both shown %26lsquo;building a harmonious society` to be top of the leadership`s agenda.

The “green GDP” campaign is the means by which the leadership is enforcing its new policy orientation. While green GDP is not yet a widely accepted concept, the Chinese leadership is using it to try to change traditional opinions on economic development among its party cadres and government officials.

Green GDP is a figure for gross domestic product which takes environmental damage into account, and it can be expressed as a simplified calculation:

Green GDP = GDP – the costs of natural resource consumption – the costs of environmental depletion

In practice, a green GDP accounting method usually includes five natural resource consumption costs, including arable land, mineral resources, forest, water and fishery resources, and two environmental depletion costs, environmental pollution and ecological degradation.

In the light of the overheated state of the economy since 2003, green GDP is also considered to be a way of controlling local officials` economic activities. The green GDP concept is also in line with the essential political objective of using the “scientific development” model to build a “harmonious society”. Therefore, as one observer has pointed out, the combination of social trends, macroeconomic overheating and political factors has created the conditions under which green GDP has become fashionable.

China`s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently published their first green GDP accounting report based on local experiments. However, the result remains contentious.

The concept of green GDP has not yet been scientifically justified, and how to include factors such as environmental damage and public satisfaction is very problematic. Local governments have different ways of calculating their green GDP, leading to a lack of consensus on the meaning of green GDP at the national level.

Furthermore, out of the usual 20 categories of environmental pollution, SEPA and NBS only managed to include the costs of 10, and included no ecological degradation costs at all, due to the difficulty of obtaining data and the limited techniques. It is clear that green GDP, both as a concept and a practice, is still at an early stage in China.

According to the “China Green National Accounting Study Report 2004″, environmental pollution cost China 511.8 billion yuan (about US$64 billion) in economic losses, accounting for 3.05% of the year`s GDP. The environmental costs of water pollution, air pollution, solid waste and pollution accidents accounted for 55.9%, 42.9% and 1.2% of the total costs respectively. The report also estimated that to treat this pollution, China would have had to spend as much as 287.4 billion yuan, equivalent to about 1.8% of the GDP in 2004. However, in 2004 the actual investment in waste and pollution treatment was only about 190 billion yuan. The gap between these figures cannot be ignored.

In recent decades, local GDP growth rates have been the indicator by which the central government evaluates the performance of local government officials. This evaluation system has provided the incentive for local governments to pursue local economic growth regardless of negative consequences such as environmental damage and social conflict.

Policy implementation in the provinces has always proved a difficult task for the Chinese central government. They have to provide sufficient incentives for local governments to induce them to follow central policies. As repeatedly emphasised by SEPA deputy director, Pan Yue, there is a need for the central government to introduce a new system for evaluating the performance of local governments, which would provide an incentive for government officials to change their behaviour. The old evaluation system consists of three parts with 17 items, of which only one concerns the environment. This is not sufficient to induce local government officials to take the environment into account in their decision making.

In August 2004 the Ministry of Personnel issued a research report on “The Assessment of the Chinese Government`s Efficiency”, and released an evaluation system. This system contains three parts and 11 items, each of which has three indices. It aims to improve government efficiency and states that its goal is public satisfaction. The environment still comprises only one item, but its relative importance seems higher, since it is now one out of 11 items, rather than one among 17.

An experimental version of the new evaluation system is being carried out in three provinces: Inner Mongolia (north China), Sichuan (central China), and Zhejiang (east China). The new system is expected to give substantially more weight to environmental concerns and relate them to officials` performance in several ways:

1) local citizens` assessment of the quality of the environment;

2) measurement of changes in quality of air and drinking water;

3) forest coverage rate in the local area;

If you found a gold coin on the sidewalk, would you pick it up? Of course you would. Well what about US$3 billion worth of gold coins?

Saving energy is like finding money in the street, because it saves money and the environment in the process. A recent study showed that a 75 watt incandescent (tungsten) light bulb costs nearly US$10 per year to own and operate over the life of the bulb. By contrast, a compact fluorescent bulb that produces an equal amount of light, costs only US$3.50 per year. Taking those figures, the world`s largest retailer, Walmart, estimates that if each of their 100 million customers bought just one compact fluorescent bulb to replace an incandescent bulb in their home it would save those consumers over US$3 billion.

Of course “seeing the light” of energy conservation is not just about money, although that`s a logical place to start. Each of those energy-miser bulbs will also reduce the need to burn fuels to make electricity – the equivalent of about 110 pounds of coal – and reduce some 450 pounds of greenhouse gases. In California, the average home has 40 bulbs, so going beyond Walmart`s modest one-bulb-per-customer goal will deliver dramatic environmental and economic benefits.

That`s why legislators in California recently introduced bills to end the use of Thomas Edison`s iconic invention, the tungsten filament incandescent light bulb, within a few years. One of these bills carries a humorous title, but a very serious purpose. Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, a Democrat from Burbank, California, has introduced the “How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb Act” that would ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012. The 80 million light bulbs sold in California each year may soon be helping us to solve global warming, reduce the need to build costly new power plants, and put billions back into consumers pockets. Not bad for a simple device that most of us take for granted.

Assemblyman Jared Huffman, a Democrat from San Rafael, California, introduced another measure that would phase out the incandescents by 2018, starting with state-run facilities.

These measures are not without controversy, of course. Environmentalists fear the mercury used in compact fluorescents will make its way into landfills and ultimately our food or water supply, much as that highly toxic substance has already polluted the environment from the burning of coal. Business leaders fear the ban, claiming that the initial cost of buying compact fluorescents will hurt the economy, despite the obvious long-term gains. And then there are those who simply feel we should not prescribe what technologies or products consumers may or may not use.

But enlightened public policy around our energy consumption has already been demonstrated in California, paying big dividends for decades. In the 1970s, Californians were faced with a growing economy and a shortage of electricity. The Arab oil embargo of 1973 had raised energy costs, making an even bigger impact on the economy. The Clean Air Act has passed Congress just a few years earlier and California – arguably the home of smog – was struggling to reduce air pollution from sources like power plants.

The California Energy Commission went to work, designing and enacting numerous appliance efficiency standards for everything from lighting to dish washers. The result? In the past 30 years, Americans on average have increased their electricity consumption by 50%, but the consumption of Californians has remained level, making us the most energy-efficient state in the nation. The federal government has now adopted many of California`s appliance and other energy standards, making them the law of the land for everyone. Consumers didn`t lose choice – there are still dozens of makes and models of refrigerators to choose from, for example – but all of those choices are energy-efficient and save both money and the environment. Why not do the same with light bulbs?

Apparently the “tree hugging” residents of California are not alone in this strategy. Australia recently enacted a similar ban on incandescent bulbs and other states and countries are looking to follow suit. As millions of more energy efficient bulbs are produced, the cost will come down, making them even better bargains. Moreover, the scientists have just begun. Light emitting diodes (LEDs) and other technology may soon deliver yet another quantum improvement in energy efficiency for lighting, meaning we may soon be banning compact fluorescents for being too wasteful in the near future!

Terry Tamminen directs the Climate Program at the New America Foundation and is the former Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency. His latest book is “Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of our Oil Addiction” (Island Press).

Homepage photo by Gerard Baron