Chinese walker

Facts and figures about water in Europe

Water resources are unevenly distributed in Europe. Annual average run-off ranges from 3,000 mm in western Norway to 100-400 mm over much of central Europe and less than 25 mm in central and southern Spain.

Water resources in Europe have been profoundly influenced over the past century by human activities, including the construction of dams and canals, large irrigation and drainage systems, changes of land cover in most watersheds, high inputs of chemicals from industry and agriculture into surface and groundwater, and aquifer depletion. As a result, problems of overuse, depletion and pollution have become evident, and conflicts are developing between various uses and users.

In Europe, improved water supply coverage is high, with access provided for 97% of the population. 100% of the urban population has coverage, compared with 89% of the rural population.

In terms of sanitation, 95% of the population is totally covered: 99% of the urban population and 78% of the rural population.

Only 4 European countries reported not having full water supply and sanitation coverage in 2000, all of which are in Eastern Europe: Estonia, Hungary, Romania and the Russian Federation.

Improvements have been made in reducing water pollution, mostly through stricter controls on industrial discharges and more sophisticated and comprehensive sewage and stormwater treatment.

A majority of European rivers, particularly in their middle and lower reaches, are in poor ecological condition due to the impacts of canalization, dams, pollution and altered flow regimes.

About 12 million people have been affected in Europe by floods or droughts over the past decade, split about evenly between the two. There have been nearly 2,000 deaths from floods, approximately 0.5% of all flood-related deaths worldwide.

Half of Europe`s alpine glaciers could disappear by 2025. In 2003, extreme warm and dry weather conditions caused an average decrease in glaciers thickness in the Alps of about 3 metres water equivalent, nearly twice as much as during the previous record year, 1998, and roughly 5 times more than the average loss recorded during the exceptionally warm period of 1980-2000.

In the Russian Federation, 1,400 areas with polluted groundwater have been identified, 82% of them are west of the Urals mountains. In 36% of the cases, pollution is due to industry, in 20% to agriculture (fertilizers and wastes from farm animals), in 10% to municipal landfills and in 12% to mixed sources.

Information from World Water Development Report ‘Water for People, Water for Life’, from the %26lsquo;Freshwater in Europe – Facts, Figures and Maps`, from the Global Environment Outlook 2000 and from “Freshwater: Europe” of the GEO: Global Environment Outlook 3.

Facts and figures about water and industry

Water is used by industry in a myriad of ways: for cleaning, heating and cooling; for generating steam; for transporting dissolved substances or particulates; as a raw material; as a solvent; and as a constituent part of the product itself (e.g. in the beverage industry).

The water withdrawals for industry are:

World: 22% of total water use.

High-income countries: 59% of total water use

Low-income countries: 8% of total water use

Industries based on organic raw materials are the most significant contributors to the organic pollutant load with the food sector being the most important polluter.

The contribution of the food sector to the production of organic water pollutant is:

High income countries: 40%

Low-income countries: 54%

In developing countries, 70% of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into waters where they pollute the usable water supply.

The annual water volume used by industry will rise from 752 km3/year in 1995 to an estimated 1,170 km3/year in 2025.

In 2025, the industrial component is expected to represent about 24% of total freshwater withdrawal.

Of major concern are the situations in which the industrial discharge is returned directly into the water cycle without adequate treatment. If the water is contaminated with heavy metals, chemicals or particulates, or loaded with organic matter, this obviously affects the quality of the receiving water body or aquifer. The toxicity levels and lack of oxygen in the water can damage or completely destroy the aquatic ecosystems downstream as well as lakes and dams, ultimately affecting riverine estuaries and marine coastal environments.

Past mining activities caused heavy arsenic contamination of groundwater and topsoil over 40 km3 in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, Thailand. A study commissioned by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 2000 concluded that the contamination would last for the next 30 to 50 years. Testing of 1,000 samples showed arsenic contamination in some groundwater wells to be 50 to 100 times higher than the World Health Organization’s guideline value for drinking water (0.01 milligrams per litre).

In 1986 a fire destroyed a chemical store in Basel, Switzerland, near the borders of France and Germany. Chemicals reached the water in the Rhine River through the plant`s sewage system when huge amounts of water (10,000- 15,000 m3) were used to fight the fire. The store contained large quantities of 32 different chemicals, including insecticides and raw ingredients, and the water implications were identified through the presence of red dye in one of the substances, which turned the river red. The main wave of chemicals destroyed eels, fish and insects, as well as habitats for small animals on the riverbanks. The total eel population was destroyed for 500 kilometres downstream, from Basel in Switzerland down to Loreley in Germany. It took 3 months after the incident for the contaminant concentrations to drop to normal values.

Information from the 2nd United Nations World Water Development Report, ‘Water, a shared responsibility’ and from the %26lsquo;Water and Industry` facts and figures` section of the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) website.

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)

Twenty-five years ago, Chinese city streets were crowded with people on bicycles, and there were few private cars. China still has approximately 500 million cyclists, the bicycle remaining the primary mode of transportation for many of the country`s poorest people. But bicycle production has been declining for the past decade, as the country becomes more affluent, and the majority of the bikes produced in China today are exported.

China cancelled bicycle-registration requirements in 2004, China Daily reported, “signalling the beginning of the end of its status as the world`s %26lsquo;bicycle kingdom` as an emerging middle class increasingly forgoes the clean and energy-efficient transport in favour of the car.” In cities such as Beijing, the bicycle is no longer viewed as a “transportation tool”. Cars and bikes compete for road space, and the capital`s wide boulevards, overpasses and ring roads reflect China`s new transportation priority. Each day, it is said, about 1,000 new cars take to the streets of Beijing.

By 2000, there were five million cars on the roads and the number is expected to keep growing by 10 to 20% or more annually over the next several years. While more disruptive road building and more air pollution come with the additional motor vehicles, car ownership is an aspiration of an increasing number of Chinese people – and the government views the development of a motor industry as an important facet of the country`s economic development. (Still, as part of a weeklong energy-saving campaign in June 2006, the State Council, China`s cabinet, urged civil servants to leave their cars at home and either walk or take public transportation to their offices.)

%26copy; Lovell

Since 2003, China has been considered the fourth-largest producer and the third-largest consumer of automobiles, and cars have surpassed industrial dust as the greatest urban polluter (representing an estimated 80% of urban air pollution in 2005). A consumer study in China found that most people consider knowing how to drive a car — along with speaking English and using a computer – to be one of three basic, necessary skills in modern society.

As a result of the growing popularity of – and pollution by — cars in China, the government promulgated new vehicle-emissions standards in 2004, in order to force polluters off the road. The new standards, equivalent to the so-called Euro II regulations, require a 30.4% cut in carbon monoxide and a 55.8% reduction in hydrocarbon and nitric oxide emissions in China. Low-quality petrol, according to the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), contributes to vehicular air pollution in China. It contains three to eight times more sulphur than does gasoline used in Europe and the United States.

According to SEPA, which issued five new national emissions standards for a range of vehicle types in 2005, “exhaust gas and noise emitted by vehicles have brought extensive concern from society”. It added that the “automobile manufacturing technology level in China is not good enough” at present, and that “low, even zero, emission vehicles will be the future development direction of China`s auto industry.” Even-higher emissions standards – equivalent to Euro III regulations – are expected to be adopted nationwide in 2008, with tougher regulations to be considered further in the future.

Along with road traffic, China`s railways also have been booming. The last stretch of the world`s highest railway, the nearly 2,000-km-long Qinghai-Tibet line, linking China`s Qinghai province with the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, opened on 1 July, 2006. President Hu Jintao declared it “not only a magnificent feat in China`s history of railway construction, but a great miracle of the world`s railroad history”. The Chinese consider the line an engineering marvel in having overcome the perennial ice and slush along the route, which many felt was too fragile to support tracks and trains. Projections indicate the railway will help double tourism revenues by 2010 and cut transport costs for goods by 75% in Tibet. Environmentalists remain concerned about the frail ecosystem on the Tibetan Plateau, which is home to numerous unique animal species, and have called for conservation measures.

Generally, rail mileage and traffic have increased rapidly, though not as fast as economic development currently demands. The rail industry, market researchers say, is an important part of China`s comprehensive transportation system. Its prospects are considered bright and likely to attract considerable financial investment in the years ahead.

The country has nearly 75,000 rail-kilometres (and more than 5,600 stations), according to 2004 statistics, and there were over 1.2 billion passenger-journeys on the lines. China`s Ministry of Railways said in July 2006 that the country`s trains had made 620 million passenger journeys in the first half of the year – up over 8% from the same period in 2005 — and carried 1.39 billion tons of goods, including greater amounts of economically critical coal and petroleum, as well as chemical fertilisers and pesticides – an annual increase of more than 6%. The country`s lines handle a quarter of global rail traffic on just 6% of the world`s tracks.

Chinese citizens are increasingly taking to the skies, too, travelling for business or pleasure, both within China and abroad. “For the first time in history,” The New York Times reported in May 2006, “large numbers of Chinese are leaving their country as tourists %26hellip; In 1995, only 4.5 million Chinese travelled overseas. By 2005, that figure had increased to 31 million, and if expectations for future growth are met or approached, even that gargantuan growth will be quickly dwarfed. Chinese and international travel industry experts forecast that at least 50 million Chinese tourists will travel overseas by 2010, and 100 million by 2020.”

Coupled with travel by the Chinese, of course, is travel to (and around) the county by visitors from abroad. The 2008 Olympic Games, to be hosted by Beijing, are expected to bring an additional 2.6 million Chinese to the capital during, before and after the games, plus an estimated 500,000 overseas tourists and spectators, according to the Beijing Tourism Administration. Citing figures from the National Bureau of Statistics and the China National Tourism Administration, the Xinhua news agency reported in 2005 that the number of inbound foreign tourists to the Chinese mainland in 2004 had reached nearly 110 million. They came, mainly, from 16 countries and brought around $25 billion into China`s foreign exchange coffers. And – like air travel all over the world — the planes they flew in on contributed to the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the industry`s voice, air transport is responsible for 3.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while supporting 8% of global economic activity. Over the last 30 years, the organisation says, aircraft emissions are down by 70%, due to fuel efficiency, new technology and direct routings. IATA and China reached agreement in early 2006 on a new route for international traffic – north of the Himalayas — which is designed to reduce flight times between China and Europe by an average of 30 minutes.

China has a shortage of international air routes, says IATA, because only 30% of the country`s airspace is available for civilian aviation and flight-planning policy is restrictive. Air-traffic delays have resulted in the “golden triangle” bounded by Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

IATA contends that the new route, known as IATA-1 (officially, Y-1), will have a “significant impact” on the environment, resulting in the annual reduction of 2,860 hours of flight time, 27,000 tonnes of fuel consumption, 84,800 tonnes of carbon-dioxide emission and 240,000 kilograms of nitrogen oxides emissions. It also will mean US $30 million in savings on airline fuel bills “at a time where the airline industry is bleeding red ink from the record high price of oil,” said IATA`s director general, Giovanni Bisignani, in April.

As airline fuel costs rise, domestic airlines too have initiated new fuel-saving measures. (Fuel costs represent 25 to 28% of the general operational costs of an airline in China, according to China Daily.) China Southern, which operates the most extensive air network in the country, for example, has applied to the authorities for more direct — and higher — flight routes designed to save fuel.

Along with such measures, however, China also plans to build 48 new airports over the next five years, bringing the national total to 190. The country`s largest international hubs – Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou – are already being expanded, and China has promised to buy hundreds of new planes by 2010. With the new ground facilities, reports the British newspaper the Guardian, “the country`s 1.3 billion people will be served by fewer than 200 airports, compared with more than 10,000 in the US, which has a quarter of the population.”

Environmentalists are worried by the expected boom in air traffic over the next several years, fearing increased depletion of the earth`s protective ozone layer (as well unsafe skies). Campaigners have targeted the world`s air travel as a serious contributor to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions — despite carbon-trading schemes such as Europe`s which are designed to reduce those emissions. At higher altitudes, contrails – the vapour trails, or artificial cirrus clouds, formed by condensation from aircraft engines or wing-tip vortices – also have an overall warming effect due to changes in radiation balance known as radiative forcing.

Despite the growth in cars, trains and planes, will China say goodbye to its non-polluting two-wheelers? Not according to a spokesman for the Beijing Traffic Administration Bureau, who told the China Social News in 2004: “The improvement in the state economy, the traffic situation and city management does not mean that Chinese are saying a final and complete farewell to the bicycle. Some people will still choose this non-polluting, small and green transport tool.”

%26copy; Lovell

And, according to the Worldwatch Institute, “one of the brightest signs on the bicycle landscape is the growth in output of electric bicycles, which have electric motors to make pedalling easier.” Their rapid rise is fuelled by Chinese sales: roughly one of every six bicycles bought in China in 2005 was an electric model – and China accounted for 95% of the 10.5 million electric-bike sales in that year.

Homepage photo %26copy; Milton Menefee

The Author: Maryann Bird is a London-based freelance journalist with a special interest in environmental and human-rights issues. A writer and editor, she was previously a staff member at Time magazine (Europe), The Independent, the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times.

China`s prolific economic growth has come at considerable cost to her environment. More than 80% of the country`s rivers are so heavily polluted they no longer support fish, and research institutions, including the World Bank, are busily attempting to place an economic value on the damage which some claim runs into tens or even hundreds of billions of yuan (1 billion yuan = US $125 million).

%26copy; Rob Welham

Some damage estimates have, without doubt, come as a surprise, but their underlying message – that China`s environmental crisis is serious – has not been denied and interest in green GDP accounting – a system to calculate GDP that subtracts a value for environmental cost – is on the rise.

For environmentalists the benefits of green GDP are obvious: a potentially powerful mechanism for environmental protection. Current accounting methods, they say, treat the environment as expendable whereas green GDP, if adopted, could begin to reverse the effects of environmental degradation.

Economists and statisticians – to whom GDP figures are bread and butter – see the significance of green GDP more from a scientific perspective: the accuracy of data, to them, is paramount. Together, however, their mixed interests have led to growing calls for the implementation of green GDP accounting.

The alliance, however, has yet to resolve basic issues that prevent the concept of green GDP from becoming reality. Specific concerns over how exactly to calculate environmental losses have yet to be resolved.

Time is one critical factor in the equation since environmental degradation is often a slow process that takes places over a long period – decades, centuries or even longer. Unusually severe dust storms that hit areas of northern China in April were, for example, were caused by changes in agricultural practices over the course of many years. Lung cancer can also be caused by extended periods of exposure to polluted air. Damages, therefore, would need to be spread over a number of years in the same way that an accountant writes-off an asset. But over how many years and at what value?

Estimations of environmental loss in terms of hard currency can also vary considerably because, unlike the conventional marketplace, there is no clear relationship between supply and demand of public resources over which there is little ownership. At present, calculating the value of environmental loss with any degree of accuracy is almost impossible.

Disagreements over methodology suggest that the hope of realising the goal of environmental protection through establishing green GDP is unworkable. However, this should not become a justification for abandoning green GDP altogether.

Opportunities, for example, do exist to use conventional GDP figures as a means to analyse, evaluate and improve upon the cleanliness of economic growth. Recent work by the national statistical bureau found that richer, eastern provinces – where growth has been fuelled by heavy industry – have begun to restructure their economies in favour of cleaner, service industries. Poorer western provinces, however, are still in the process of heavy industrialisation and pollution levels there are set to rise.

The current Five-Year Plan – the 11th, which runs from 2006-2011 – also shows encouraging signs. Environmental targets, many of which have been missed during the past – emissions of sulphur dioxide exceeded the target set in the 10th Five Year Plan (2001-2005) by almost 40% – have now been integrated with economic targets. The hope is that China`s success in achieving targets for economic growth over the past twenty years can now help with environmental protection, in particular energy efficiency. One of these newly conceived indicators reduces, by 20%, the amount of energy consumed to generate one unit of GDP. Another reduces the amount of pollutant discharge from work units in relation to GDP by 10%.

%26copy; Rob Welham

In this way at least some environmental costs are accounted for during production – before, not after environmental losses occur – and will naturally make GDP calculations much greener without the need to assess environmental loss, which is far less easy. If government, manufacturers and ordinary citizens continue to recognise environmental protection as part of the everyday costs of economic production this paves the way for setting more ambitious targets and increasing environmental protection.

The earth is unwell. While the planet`s vital signs are mixed, its temperature is clearly rising and its overall prognosis is worrying scientists who closely monitor its condition. Many believe that, as result of the climate change the earth is undergoing, urgent and unprecedented action must be taken if future generations are to inherit a secure and healthy place in which to live.

Global economic indicators are pointing upward, according to the Worldwatch Institute, which studies the complex interactions among people, nature and economies. In fact, the gross world product (GWP) — the total global value of finished goods and services — reached a record $59.6 trillion in 2005, nearly double the 1985 figure. However, says Worldwatch, despite upward trends in production, commerce and consumption, these indicators “are set against a backdrop of ecological decline in a world powered overwhelmingly by fossil fuels.”

In 2005, as GWP hit a record high level, so too did the average annual atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO%26sup2;) and the average global temperature. CO%26sup2; concentration rose 0.6% over the 2004 peak — the largest yearly increase ever recorded – and the average temperature reached 14.6 degrees centigrade (58.2 fahrenheit) – making 2005 the warmest year ever recorded on the earth`s surface.

A debate has raged for about three years now on whether a cascade of 13 dams should be built on the Nu River, sections of which are located in a UNESCO World Heritage site. Proponents have argued that it would be a waste of the river not to harness its turbulent water for hydroelectricity — and some have even claimed that 70% of local people like the idea, as they hold out hope that the dams might help lift them out of poverty.

Opponents, however, insist that the Nu River — one of only two major rivers in China that remain undammed — should be left undisturbed. They argue that building the dams would pose a serious threat not only to the environment in an area of spectacular beauty, but also to the region`s unusually rich cultural diversity. A multitude of minority nationalities have long lived in harmony with each other, and with the river and the mountains, in the Nu valley.

In late August 2005, an open letter to the government signed by scores of Chinese organisations and individuals called on the authorities to release environmental-impact documents and hold public hearings on the Nu River plans. Many months later, the petitioners and the public still await a reply.

Meanwhile, an army of engineers has descended on the valley, leading survey teams that are exploring the proposed dam sites. The teams are drilling on the riverbanks, drilling into the mountain cliffs and drilling down into the riverbed. Rock debris is strewn along the banks of the river, roads are suddenly blocked by mud-rock flows, and the river itself has turned from green to yellow. It is as if a grand campaign has been launched aimed at striking it rich and turning the Nu River water into oil and all the activity now occurring in the valley is just the beginning.

Site of the proposed Maji dam

Nuclear power: is it a force for good or for evil? Put bluntly, that is the essence of the argument that has preoccupied much of the world for the last 60 years.

To its backers, generating electricity by splitting atoms of uranium is a cheap, clean, safe and secure solution to humanity’s energy needs. To its detractors, however, nuclear power is a costly, dirty, dangerous and destabilising distraction.

Like all crucial and complex issues, there are inevitably truths – and half-truths – on both sides of the argument. As the world stands on the brink of a major expansion of nuclear power, it has rarely been more important to understand the opportunities and the threats posed by one of the planet’s most controversial technologies.

Nuclear power was ushered onto the world stage in August 1945, when the United States (US) dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people. After that, there could be no doubting that nuclear fission was capable of releasing huge amounts of energy. The only question was whether it could be tamed.

It didn’t take scientists long to figure out a way of using atoms for peace, instead of war. They controlled fission so that it produced a sustained chain reaction capable of generating enough heat to raise steam and turn turbines. In October 1956, the United Kingdom (UK) opened what was billed as the world’s first civil nuclear power station at Calder Hall in north west England. As well as producing electricity, the station also produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Since then, nuclear power has expanded across the globe. According to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there are now 442 nuclear power plants in operation in 30 countries. Five countries have more than 20 plants, including the US (103), France (59), Japan (55), Russia (31) and the UK (23).

The country with the highest proportion of nuclear electricity is France with 78.5%, followed by Lithuania (69.6%), Slovakia (56.1%) and Belgium (55.6%). According to the IAEA, China has ten nuclear plants in operation and another four under construction in Guangdong and Zhejiang, providing two per cent of the country’s electricity.

About three quarters of the world’s nuclear plants were built before the accident which ripped apart reactor number four at Chernobyl in Ukraine on 26 April 1986, showering Europe with radioactivity. Since then, reactor building in many western countries has stagnated, though plants have gone ahead in Japan, Korea, India and China.

Now, however, some countries are intent on reviving nuclear power, with the US, Canada, Russia, France and the UK all contemplating new stations.India, China, Turkey and even Iran are looking to work on or to expand their presently small programmes. China, for example, has recently announced its intention to build 40 new nuclear plants and a leading official from the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense has even declared that “Nuclear power will become the pillar of energy supply in coastal areas of east China.” Other countries, though, like Germany, Sweden, Spain and Italy are trying to reduce their dependence on nuclear electricity. The Swedish government has even said that its goal is to phase out nuclear power – which currently provides about half of the country’s electricity – and at the same time to eliminate dependence on fossil fuels.

Bradwell nuclear power station in Essex, UK (currently being decommissioned)

%26copy; Rob Welham

Perhaps the key factor in putting nuclear power back on the agenda in the West is the looming threat of global warming, partly caused by pollution from burning coal and oil. Nuclear companies have promoted reactors as a “green” source of energy because they do not emit carbon dioxide, one of the pollutants blamed for disrupting the climate.

Environmentalists, however, point out that the energy used to mine uranium fuel for reactors will generate carbon emissions. Furthermore, they say that such emissions will increase because lower grades of uranium ore will need to be exploited to fuel a global nuclear expansion, though such claims are hard to quantify.

The nuclear industry has also argued that modern reactor designs are much safer than Chernobyl, with more inbuilt fail-safe systems aimed at minimising the risk of radioactive leaks. Even in the worst circumstances, the industry says, casualties would be low.

This is disputed by the anti-nuclear groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, who accuse the industry of a concerted attempt to downplay the risks and consequences of accidents. Any additional radioactivity released into the environment can trigger cancers, they say.

These arguments came to a head in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident in 2006. A report by the IAEA, which promotes nuclear power, suggested that the radiation released by the accident would cause 4,000 cancer deaths. But this claim was undermined by other scientific reports which estimated that the death toll would be at least four times higher.

Even without the risk of nuclear accidents, environmentalists argue that nuclear power has show-stopping drawbacks. Reactors inevitably produce radioactive waste which remains potentially lethal for hundreds of thousands of years, posing a uniquely difficult disposal problem.

With the exception of some radioactive military debris in the US, no nuclear waste has yet been disposed of successfully. One of the key problems is that many people do not want to live next to a nuclear waste dump, although it is also impossible to ensure that there won’t be leaks over the longer term. Several countries are, nevertheless, investigating potential sites where waste could be buried deep underground. Sweden probably leads the world in research and development of such facilities, but these are unlikely to come on line for at least another twenty years and are difficult to build; one of the reasons why the government there has decided to phase out nuclear power in future.

The industry, on the other hand, points out that even if leaks occur thousands of years hence, their consequences wouldn’t be disastrous since much of the radioactivity would have decayed away. The volumes of the most dangerous high-level wastes are also relatively small.

The waste problem also has an important bearing on the cost of nuclear power – another hotly disputed topic. Critics point out that decommissioning nuclear reactors and associated plants, and disposing of the waste, is a messy and expensive business because so many of the materials become radioactive.

So far, they argue, the true cost of the clean-up hasn’t been included in the price of producing nuclear electricity because governments and taxpayers have been saddled with the bills, which can be massive. In the UK, the cost of decommissioning the first generation of nuclear plants has been officially estimated at over %26pound;50 billion (approx US$100bn), and has led to the bail out of nuclear companies seeking to avoid bankruptcy.

Nuclear advocates, however, say that the industry has learnt from past mistakes, and will include the cost of decommissioning and waste disposal in the price of future plants. With new designs, they say, nuclear power will earn enough income to cover all its costs, and more.

Not only that, the advocates argue, nuclear power is essential in any serious global effort to combat climate change. “The security of our world requires a massive transformation to clean energy,” says the World Nuclear Association, which represents the industry. “Renewables like solar, wind and biomass can help. But only nuclear power offers clean, environmentally friendly energy on a massive scale.”

This is countered by environmental groups, who argue that increased energy efficiency combined with the development of solar, wind, wave, tidal and biomass energy sources would be a far more effective and reliable way of cutting climate-wrecking emissions. They also back emerging clean coal technologies which promise to capture and store carbon instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission, warns that nuclear power can’t provide a quick fix for climate change. “There’s little point in denying that nuclear power has benefits, but in our view these are outweighed by serious disadvantages,” he says.

The biggest disadvantage, some say, is the continuing link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Although the civil industry has tried to disentangle itself from the military technology from which it was born, strong ties still persist in many countries.

Uranium is often enriched, increasing the proportion of the uranium-235 isotope by a few per cent, to improve its efficiency as a reactor fuel. Unfortunately the same technology can also be used to enrich uranium to 90% and over, making it usable in the kind of bomb that devastated Hiroshima.

Similarly, spent fuel from reactors is reprocessed to extract plutonium for use as reactor fuel, though it can also be used to make a bomb like that dropped on Nagasaki. Apart from a few grams in the Gabon desert, plutonium didn’t exist until it was created by burning uranium in a nuclear reactor.

The IAEA, backed by some governments, argues that it should be possible to separate the civil and military nuclear fuel cycles. It has proposed the establishment of a series of international centres for enrichment and reprocessing that would provide nuclear fuel services to developing countries, without giving them access to technologies that could easily be adapted for military use.

To critics, however, such a system would enshrine the fundamental apartheid at the heart of the world’s failing attempts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Those countries that already have civil and military nuclear technology get to keep them, while everyone else has to buy in their services. Whether that is a sustainable, workable or just way of conducting international affairs, history will judge.

The Author: Rob Edwards is the environment editor of the Sunday Herald and a correspondent for New Scientist. His blog is here.

Homepage photo by Adam Lederer

Homepage photo caption: Looking down the stairs to the entrance of the Chernobyl Museum. Each sign represents a town that no longer exists due to the disaster.

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).

Isabel Hilton: What attracted you to the Loess Plateau project?

John D. Liu: We started a decade ago [with the World Bank] to document it and gradually, by returning each year, we have seen such astonishing changes. Gradually it became clear that this was a representation of the fundamental information that determines whether ecosystems survive or collapse. Human civilisations develop, and in development they degrade their environments to the point that they can no longer compensate and they collapse. When the ecosystem collapses, it takes the civilisation with it. This is the perfect example.

This is the cradle of Chinese civilisation — the largest ethnic group on the planet — and it`s fundamentally ecologically destroyed. What is astonishing is that anybody bothered to try to rehabilitate it. It`s counterintuitive to stand on a mountain and not see any vegetation for 360 degrees around and imagine that there is anything you can do about it. Our normal preconceived idea is that it`s too bad, that civilisation destroyed itself. It`s over. There`s nothing we can do.

When we started to film this rehabilitation of the Loess Plateau, that was definitely how we felt. We thought it was definitely a bridge too far. Environmental understanding is all well and good, but this is so degraded. How can you do anything? There was a tremendous sense that this could not be done. Thankfully, the project organisers were not distracted by that. Now we have a functional model of how such ecosystems can be rehabilitated.

IH: What is the biggest obstacle ahead?

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