Chinese walker

Forests have long been a hinterland: remote, “backward” areas largely controlled by external, often urban, actors and seen to be of little use to national development or the world except as a supply of low-valued natural resources. The year 2009 marked the beginning of the end of this era. Forest lands are booming in value for the production of food, fuel, fibre and now carbon. More than ever, forests are bargaining chips in global climate negotiations and markets.

This unprecedented exposure and pressure provides nations and the world at large tremendous opportunity to right historic wrongs, advance rural development and save forests. But the chaos at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen laid bare the looming crises that the world will face if long-term trends of ignored rights, hunger and climate change remain inadequately addressed in 2010. While the era of the hinterland is ending, the future of forest areas is not yet clear.

The year 2009 will be remembered for the global economic recession and the chaotic attempts to address climate change. But it might also be remembered as a year when governments were overthrown for ignoring local land rights and there was finally widespread realisation that addressing long-standing questions over forest and land rights and tenure is required for addressing global crises of food security, war and climate change.

In March the government of Madagascar was ousted, a move accelerated by widespread resistance to the government handover of half the island`s arable land to a South Korean corporation, Daewoo Logistics. This reality awoke many to the real political consequences of the volatile combination of insecure land rights, persistent government control of land and forests and booming demand for commodities like food, fuel and speculative forest carbon.

The Copenhagen summit neatly captured the contradictions and challenges of the year. Despite the unclear and limited outcomes, it was one of the most important global negotiations to date and indigenous and other community leaders were organised, influencing global decisions about the future of the planet.

Yet at the end of the summit, these same leaders returned home to forests where many do not have government-recognised rights to the land and trees they have used for generations. The flood of money now promised to their governments to help maintain tropical forests and secure additional carbon is putting unprecedented pressures on forest lands and also offering unprecedented opportunity to secure the rights and development of local people.

Forest communities have long been fighting for more control over their forests. Now, clarifying forest tenure and governance has become a priority for some global leaders and even carbon traders. If, and how, local, national and global actors deal with these issues will determine the future of forest areas.

Today, governments claim to own about 75% of the world`s forests, and just a little more than 9% are legally owned by communities and indigenous peoples. This unbalanced pattern of statutory ownership has begun to change over recent decades but state ownership claims remain particularly dominant in Africa. Latin America has done more to legally recognise the tenure rights of indigenous peoples and forest communities. In fact, at the present rate of change it would take 270 years for the tenure distribution in the Congo Basin to match that of the Amazon Basin.

Tenure transition from state to communities and households is both a reinstatement of traditional governance patterns and a modern development of more equitable governance, rule of law and defence of human rights. It can be peaceful and incremental but, more often than not, it has been confrontational.

The revolutions in Mexico in the early-twentieth century or China in the 1950s, for example, transferred the majority of forests from the state and large landholders to collectives and households. In Europe and the United States, communities and households own the majority of forestlands and in New Zealand and Canada, there are long processes of the indigenous Māoris and First Nations claiming their forest rights. But in a large part of the developing world, state domination over resources put in place during the colonial period has not given way to alternative models and post-colonial legislation continues to assign rights to governments at the expense of local peoples.

Conflicts between forest communities and outsiders are not a new phenomenon. Earlier in history, they were often limited in number and short in duration, with forest communities quickly overwhelmed by an external power. 2009 was different. Just as powerful global investors and national governments realised the enormous potential profit to be made from the remaining tropical forests, violent conflicts in and over forests sparked and raged anew.

Deadly conflicts in Peru and the repression of a longstanding insurgency in India are the most prominent examples but long-overlooked local disputes over resource rights have spun into major conflicts in Afghanistan and the Niger Delta. As the demand to control forest resources increases, so will violent conflict over these valuable resources.

Unready for REDD

As the dust settles from the chaos in Copenhagen, it is clear that REDD, the programme to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, is going forward with at least US$3.5 billion (23.9 billion yuan) of initial funding but without the framework or standards to guide it responsibly. The combination of new money and limited controls dramatically raises the risks and pressures on forests and forest peoples. The current lack of a comprehensive architecture for REDD means that the carbon market and funding will be global but justice and legal redress will have to be meted out locally.

REDD was held up as one of the rare points of consensus in Copenhagen: promoted by the “global north”, the world`s rich countries, because of the potential for easy and cheap emissions reductions and by the “global south”, or developing countries, for the lure of finance and investment. International programmes like the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and the UN-REDD Programme were set up to have pilot results ready in time for the Copenhagen summit. But as these pilots got under way, the inherent complications of slowing deforestation came into focus: effective REDD will not be easy. The FCPF and UN-REDD have received donations and pledges of more than US$186 million (1.3 billion yuan) from a handful of governments but only a small fraction of the money has been allocated to actions on the ground to date.

Despite the doubts still haunting REDD, existing REDD-readiness funds have established innovative governance structures that include representatives of indigenous peoples and civil society. This progress cannot be discounted for it hints at the real issues that REDD will encounter in implementation. Yet even where this is recognised, the operational capacity to include local participation and ensure rights recognition in REDD is quite limited.

Where there is value and confusion, there is also high risk of corruption and 2009 may become known as the first year of major carbon crookedness. Just before the climate talks in Copenhagen, the government of Papua New Guinea quietly disbanded its Office of Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability after longstanding and well-publicised accusations that it had illegally sold carbon-ownership certificates valued at AU$100 million (616 million yuan) to an Australian company and egregiously neglected to consult with forest communities – the clear legal owners of the forests of the country.

Last year the widespread lack of legal clarity and enforcement and rising global value of REDD attracted the attention of Interpol, the intergovernmental police organisation, and international environmental crime experts globally. In the words of Peter Younger, environment crimes specialist at Interpol, “The potential for criminality is vast and has not been taken into account by the people who set it up%26hellip;Organised crime syndicates are eyeing the nascent forest carbon market.”

2010 is the beginning of a new era for the people and forests in developing countries. Northern governments, investors of all ilk and traders of all hues will inspect and vie for forest lands, negotiating, luring and potentially bribing developing country governments – who still lay claim to most forests – to make deals. The era of forest as hinterland is over. Forests will remain remote, but they will be carved up, controlled and used as global political bargaining chips like never before. Work to strengthen local rights, local organisations, and governance is more relevant, and urgent, than ever.

This article is a summary of an original report by the Rights and Resources Initiative, co-authored by Liz Alden Wily, David Rhodes, Madhu Sarin, Mina Setra and Phil Shearman. It is used here with permission.

Homepage image by Erwyn van der Meer

The Great Barrier Reef — the world`s largest coral reef and the only living thing on earth visible from space – is one of Australia`s great natural gifts. It is home to an abundance of marine life and known for its thousands of individual reef systems, coral cays and hundreds of tropical isles.

Reefs are important ecologically, economically and socially. In many parts of the developing tropical world, coastal communities depend primarily on them for food and protection from storm-generated waves. In Australia, the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) generates billions of dollars annually, mainly from tourism. “The whole nation is proud of it,” says Graeme Kelleher, who served for many years as chairman and chief executive officer of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

“Ecologically, the GBR protects most of the Queensland coast — more than 2,200 kilometres — from erosion and the destructive effects of storms,” Kelleher explains. “The biological diversity of the GBR is very high — more than 350 species of reef-building corals and more than 1,500 species of fish. It is regarded internationally as one of the best-protected reefs in the world, being enclosed in a World Heritage Area and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.”

“The Great Barrier Reef contains many outstanding examples of important and significant natural habitats for in situ conservation of species of conservation significance,” added Kelleher, who is also a former vice-chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas. “It contains more than 2,900 individual reefs, covering more than 24,000 square kilometres, as well as about 980 islands.”

In the wake of the grounding of the Chinese coal-carrier Shen Neng 1 on the reef`s Douglas Shoal earlier this month, Australia announced that it would extend a satellite ship-tracking system to cover all of the massive reef, to reduce the risk such an incident occurring again. The system, currently in place for most of the GBR, would be extended south, Agence France-Presse said, and would force all ships to report their positions for tracking. The change must be ratified by the International Maritime Organisation, however, because much of the area is outside Australia`s territorial waters.

Until then, Australian transport minister Anthony Albanese said, safety agencies “will begin rolling out the infrastructure necessary to support the reporting system, such as sensors, communications equipment and modified navigational software. By beginning this work now, our authorities will be fully ready for the start of mandatory reporting in July 2011.”

In the Shen Neng 1 accident, oil spillage from the now-refloated ship`s tanks appears to be relatively minimal, with the greatest damage coming in the form of a three-kilometre-long scar gouged into the coral – and possible additional damage from the vessel`s paint.

The environmental scare, however, has heightened the urgency of efforts to ensure that ships can safely negotiate the Great Barrier Reef`s sensitive waters. “The key thing that we see is needed alongside this tracking system is to have pilots onboard every large ship that traverses the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area,” the BBC quoted Richard Leck of WWF Australia as saying. Such professional navigators, he said, can prevent accidents. “Most of the incidents that occur within the World Heritage area are due to human error.”

Kelleher sees long-term benefit from the Chinese ship incident “in that without doubt, specific action will now be taken to ensure that large vessels in the future will be forced to navigate through the reef in even closer accordance with the very strict rules than is normal nowadays. It needs to be recognised that those rules are enforced strictly now.”

“This accident is without doubt a major navigational error,” Kelleher added. “A lateral error of 12 kilometres in navigation is really bad and unusual. I support the idea of large vessels carrying toxic cargo through the Great Barrier Reef being required by law to be guided by a specialised marine pilot in charge.”

In early February, the results of a national pollution survey released by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) showed that the country`s pollution problems were much worse than previously estimated. The international media appeared to accept the ministry`s explanation for the discrepancy in its figures – agricultural sources of pollution had not previously been included. But such reports overlooked a more crucial factor: over the last two years the MEP has made no real headway in tackling pollution. It has merely made some feints and declared a paper victory.

On November 2 last year, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the minister for environmental protection, Zhou Shengxian, had claimed that China had “stopped water pollution worsening” and seen slight improvements in all areas over the previous year, during a speech at the 13th World Lake Conference, held in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

This conclusion does not match the facts. On November 11, the People`s Daily reported that, in spite of a six year investment programme, which saw 91 billion yuan (US$13.3 billion) spent on efforts to improve China`s three most polluted rivers and lakes, water quality remains poor. As the development of the Yangtze Delta has charged ahead, for example, the standard of water in Lake Taihu, eastern China, has fallen by three grades – from grade two in the 1980s to grade five or worse now. The many textile-dying, chemical- and food-processing plants around the lake have caused a major accumulation of pollutants. Lake Chao, in eastern China, and Lake Dian, in the south-west, have both shrunk and become more polluted as a result of aquaculture, reclamation of land for agriculture and the building of factories.

The MEP is also aware that, over the past year, there have been 12 incidents of heavy metal and metalloid pollution in Fengxiang in central China, Wugang in south China and Dongchuan, a district of the south-western city of Kunming. These cases left 4,035 people with excessive levels of lead in their blood and 182 with excessive levels of cadmium and gave rise to 32 “mass incidents”, or public protests.

The MEP`s national pollution survey itself undermines the department`s official statements. And even without that data, the Chinese public can see, smell and taste that water quality is still falling and that the environment as a whole is worsening. So why does the ministry insist that water quality is improving? Vice-minister of environmental protection, Zhang Lijun, explains that levels of sulphur dioxide and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) – a measure that helps determine the amount of organic pollutants in surface water – both fell in 2008 and 2009. This is the basis for the MEP`s claim.

But there are many different indicators of water quality. Measuring just two of these is clearly inadequate and can lead to the wrong conclusions being drawn – as the MEP has shown. It is as if the ministry is a doctor who has declared a patient suffering from a brain tumour healthy on grounds of normal blood pressure.

As the highest of China`s environmental protection agencies, the MEP must be aware that it is impossible to get a full picture of water quality by measuring just two factors. Nor can it be ignorant of the reality of China`s deteriorating rivers and lakes – given the national pollution survey has been underway for two years, the ministry must be familiar with the actual situation. But three months before the survey results were released, it was still saying that China had “stopped water pollution worsening”.

Why would the MEP do this? A quick look at its record over the past two years provides an answer: it was in dire need of an achievement.

Two years ago, the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) was upgraded to ministry status and its powers expanded. But the department`s actions since then have been disappointing. As a mere agency, SEPA may have been weak, but it still managed to cause a stir. It launched crackdown after crackdown – known as “environmental storms” – against companies that broke regulations, including the largest of hydropower firms. It enforced regional planning restrictions, refusing to approve projects for law-breaking local governments until changes were made. It called a halt to illegal works at Beijing`s Old Summer Palace and held an unprecedented public hearing, which became a model for public participation and democratic decision-making.

New legal documents, the “Temporary Measures for Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessments” and “Regulations on Publication of Environmental Information”, were drafted to ensure the public`s right to environmental information and participation. Research on environmental planning law was conducted and the concept of Green GDP explored as a way of tackling China`s worship of unbridled growth – which lies at the heart of China`s environmental deterioration.

All of these were significant victories, achieved by a weak government agency fighting real battles against powerful interest groups and building systems for better long-term governance. In 2007, I wrote that SEPA was little more than an unarmed weakling, yet it had already fought long and hard for the environment. Its bravery was recognised – but its weakness was also clear. It was not an independent ministry under the State Council, China`s highest organ of government, and it struggled to participate in policymaking and to coordinate with other departments. It lacked executive powers and capacity. So I and many others said: “If we expect this organisation to deal with the huge issues it faces, we must change the systems and legislation that surround it, and grant them increased power.”

Two years ago, the agency finally became a ministry and won greater powers. It was no longer a dwarf, but a full-grown man. But, disappointingly, it has achieved little of note since then. New regulations on public participation in environmental impact assessments and the publication of environmental information have been implemented, but this work started before ministry status was awarded and work was only needed on the final stages. And new laws governing environmental evaluations have so far failed to resolve any issues of public concern over major construction projects.

Moreover, the “environmental storms” have stopped blowing, with the exception of last year`s decision to halt two illegal hydropower projects on the Jinsha River, south-west China. Even then, the MEP only rushed to put a stop to them after State Council leaders started to take a look at the issue of illegal projects in the area. Prior to that, the ministry had quietly approved a different dam. True, sulphur dioxide and COD levels have fallen somewhat. But how much was this the result of reduced industrial production during the economic crisis? Moreover, “green GDP” was left by the wayside, after repeated cries of “not ready yet”.

After all this, the MEP needed a success to show to its superiors and the nation. So “worsening water pollution” was – on paper – stopped. To be fair, the national pollution survey is a big step forward. It has provided relatively accurate data and proved that the ministry`s own “achievements” are not all they may seem.

A few days ago an American reporter asked me whether or not China was really committed to environmentally friendly development. Like her, many foreigners are confused. The idea of building an “ecological civilisation” was included in the report of the 17th Party Congress and China`s leaders are calling for the development of a low-carbon economy and emissions-reduction measures to combat climate change. These are all solemn undertakings. But environmental damage continues to worsen, and not only do the environmental authorities do nothing – they claim false victories.

This does not look like environmentally friendly development. I could not answer the reporter`s question, just like I cannot explain the ministry`s failings over the last two years. If I had to reply, I could only say that I believe that China`s leaders have made the decision to go down a green path, but local government and environmental authorities have not yet taken this seriously.

Liu Jianqiang is editor in chinadialogue`s Beijing office.

Homepage photo of Taihu Lake by Greenpeace

Let me start with a few statements to indicate where I am coming from.

First, the theory and evidence that I have seen all seems to strongly suggest that human-related emissions of carbon into the atmosphere is causing, and will in the future cause, significant global warming.

Second, this global warming is on such a scale that it will wreak havoc on both poor and rich countries. It could even make large sections of the earth uninhabitable.

Third, the costs of abatement are large.

Therefore the decision to curtail emissions is a very serious one and it is clear that these decisions will also cause hardship in poor and in rich countries.

Fourth, despite these high costs, the time has passed that policy makers should still be acting on the null hypothesis that global warming will not occur.

Choice of null

Here I come to the first use of economics. It turns out that this point is central to current US policy. As I see it, current US policy is that the Federal Government should do continued research to ascertain the extent of global warming and its future path and the policy tree is to take future action only if the findings of this research are sufficiently conclusive.

If the world were to become drier in the future, wars triggered by water disputes would not only break out in places where there were good-quality water resources. “First-class” water would no longer be the only resource for which people would compete. Dirty, smelly and poisonous water also would become a precious resource, to be attained through force and bribery. Someday when people are boasting to one another about how many dirty-water reserves they have, pollution control technology, water decontamination technology and sea-water conversion technology will be dramatically improved. Technology such as drip irrigation, which utilises every drop of water, will greatly increase the productive capacity of water resources.

While some people wish that this day will come soon, some would rather that it never arrives.

Chinese people developed the bad habit of moving into big cities in ancient times. Metropolises such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are growing all the time. People who move to these big cities all hope that in the city they won`t have to worry about the water supply.

However, the water situation in the regions neighbouring big cities like Beijing is worrying. Take the Juma River in northeast China`s Hebei province, for instance. Less than one-tenth of its overall length goes through Beijing, but the river is reduced to a mere trickle by the time it runs out of the capital. The reason is quite simple: the water has been “confiscated” by Beijingers. In 2003, the people of Hebei became very upset over the situation and conflicts arose between them, but when these clashes did not resolve matters, they reported the case to the central government, demanding an explanation. In the end, the government said that “the amount of water that should be used is based on the scale of the drainage area”, a policy which did nothing to resolve the situation.

The Yongding River is the most famous river in the history of Beijing. Thanks to the Yongding, Beijing was once considered “a metropolis with a river running through it”. But now surveys list only three capital cities in the world with no river flowing through them, and Beijing is one of them. This is because the water in the middle and lower reaches of Yongding has already dried up. There are plenty of water reserves in the upper reaches of the Yongding, but the river has been prevented from flowing downstream by numerous reservoirs at different levels. Although building reservoirs can help prevent floods during the flooding season, the truth is that Beijing thinks it can divert water from these reservoirs to quench its thirst if a sudden cut-off in water supply should occur.

It has been some time since the start of the construction of the central route of China`s south-to-north water diversion project, which diverts water from provinces in central China all the way to Tuancheng Lake (next to Kunming Lake, on the grounds of Beijing`s Summer Palace). However, few people know what the real intention of this project is. In fact, the south-to-north water diversion project means diverting water from southern areas to Beijing. In case of a water emergency, reservoirs in Hebei province will have to ensure a sufficient water supply for Beijing, even if they run the risk of draining the water in the Baiyangdian basin (considered northern China`s “great funnel”).

If the water supply in Hebei is not enough, then they will draw water from Henan province, even pumping water from the dying Yellow River; if this is still not enough, water will be drawn from the Yangtze or the Han River in Hubei province. If the water supply from the central route of the south-to-north water diversion project is not enough to meet Beijing`s demands, then they will start using the eastern route and western route. If water from lakes and rivers are not sufficient, then they will pump water from the sea. (And if the sea`s water is still not enough, maybe we`d have to transfer water from Russia`s Lake Baikal, in Siberia, which contains about one third of the world`s fresh water.)

Recently, due to the global water crisis, Beijing`s “political priority in water use” – its special-needs status (as the country`s capital) over other regions — has encountered economic demands. During this year`s annual session of the National People`s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People`s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Xiao Yutian, a representative from Chengde city, in Hebei province, said:

“The fast development of Tianjin and Beijing, instead of radiating benefits to the surrounding areas, is actually absorbing their resources. For example, infrastructures, industrial projects and human resources have all flowed to these metropolises. In addition, in order to protect Beijing and Tianjin from sandstorms and desert winds, large amounts of farmland have been reforested in Zhangjiakou and Chengde districts, which has greatly hampered the development of their animal husbandry. In order to ensure the sufficiency and quality of the water supply for Beijing, Zhangjiakou and Chengde districts are striving to meet high standards in drinking-water protection. For example, on Chaobai River alone, over 800 industrial projects have been suspended from operation, which has resulted in huge tax losses. However, people in Zhangjiakou and Chengde districts never give up the responsibility for protecting the ecosystem in Beijing and Tianjin. There is a saying in Chengde: %26lsquo;Halt the sand and storms at the threshold of Chengde, send clean and clear water to Beijing and Tianjin.`Beijing and Tianjin should shoulder greater responsibility for the development of their neighbouring regions, and the government should take immediate action to put in place a compensation mechanism for Zhangjiakou and Chengde districts. Additionally, the central government should increase investment in the infrastructure construction in the underdeveloped regions around Beijing and Tianjin, and integrated measures should be taken to achieve a relationship in which the industrial boost in Beijing and Tianjin can exert positive influence on the surrounding underdeveloped areas.”

The call for an ecological compensation mechanism is particularly loud and clear in places such as water sources and regions located at the upper reaches of rivers. Zhangjiakou is the area providing the main water source for Beijing, and its five major reservoirs have been continuously transferring water to Guanting reservoir and Baihebao reservoir in Beijing since 2003. In the past three years, a total volume of 259.2 million cubic meters has been transferred into Beijing, a major part of which should have been used for irrigation by local farmers in Zhangjiakou.

Bai Junjie, a CPPCC member for Zhangjiakou, said: “If the water price is 0.15 yuan (US $0.018) per cubic meter — the lowest market price — the direct financial losses of these five major reservoirs (with over 300 employees in total) reached 7.5 million last year.” If they get compensation of about 0.1 yuan per cubic meter (US $0.0125) according to the current national water-compensation standard, it would still be very difficult for them to survive.

A lot of industrial projects in Zhangjiakou cannot be permitted because they are located at the upper reaches of the river, a situation which has greatly restricted the development of the local economy. But they have not got compensation of any kind from Beijing for many years. It was not until 1995 that Beijing started to allocate funds for water and forest preservation in Chengde and Zhangjiakou, two million yuan per year at the beginning, which later increased to eighteen million per year. The funding for soil preservation in Zhangjiakou has also increased to around eight million yuan per year.

The compensation mechanism proposed by Bai Junjie is to identify a place`s original water rights and to reach an agreement between the upper and lower reaches of the river on transferring these rights on a fee basis. In this way, if water used for irrigation in farming in the upper reaches should be transferred downstream for industrial purposes and household uses, the farmers could attain some financial compensation to help them build up industry in their area.

Zhangjiakou was the first city around Beijing to propose this mechanism, but in other parts of China, particularly places where the length of the river is confined to within one province, similar fee-based compensation mechanisms are quite popular.

For example, in order to ensure water safety, Guangdong province allocates 150 million yuan (US $18.8 million) every year to Xunwu county, Anyuan county and Dingnan county in Jiangxi province, located at the upper reaches of the Dong River (the eastern tributary of the Pearl River) for them to protect the ecosystem of the river`s source. A river called the Luoyang runs through Quanzhou city, in Fujian province. In order to maintain the quality of the water, the Quanzhou government set up the regulation stating that cities in the lower reaches which have benefited from the river should establish a special compensation fund to support the construction of environmental infrastructure in the areas on the upper reaches, and the funding should be shared among these cities according to the amount of water each of them has used.

Such a mechanism has also been put into action on the Jialing River, a branch of Yangtze, since last year, so that polluting factories in the upper reaches will have to provide financial compensation to the residents living downstream. Zhejiang province established a set of specific regulations on ecological compensation, and these regulations set clear rules regarding who is entitled to compensation and the methods of paying that compensation. Besides paying compensation through government funding, it can also be achieved through methods such as the trading of water rights or by increasing business investment in the markets of areas in the upper reaches.

“Compensation can be achieved by various ways,” said Ren Yong, the deputy director of the Policy Research Centre of China`s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). He said he particularly appreciates what has been achieved in Zhejiang province. He also noted: “There won`t be any significant breakthrough at local levels if the central government fails to lay down relevant legislation and policies. Particularly where border issues are involved. Without a policy platform, small rivers may not be a problem, but what about large rivers like the Yangtze and the Yellow River, which run through a number of provinces, and what about some big international rivers like the Lantsang River? You can imagine, if provinces like Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and Xinjiang all start to demand compensation, then who will be paying the bills, in what way and to whom? All these are very complicated problems.”

There are two things that humans do every day: one is consume resources and the other is create pollution. Ecological compensation emphasises increasing the value of natural resources, but it doesn`t provide an effective way to solve the problem of pollution. Addressing pollution requires taxpayers to pay an “ecological tax” – also known as an environmental tax or green tax. It is inevitable that people will pollute the environment, but the issue is that we have to take the responsibility to dispose of the waste we produce, and every one of us should pay to reverse the pollution resulting from our consumption and minimize the damage caused by industrial activities as much as possible. Only then should you be able to keep on polluting, and other people can have a safeguard for this continuing pollution.

The author: Yongfeng Feng is an award-winning journalist with the Guangming Daily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global environmental threats to China and the United States are like those to the rest of the planet. The two countries are among the world`s largest and most influential, and both are experiencing widespread, acute environmental problems with severe local, national and regional consequences. As such, China and the US are central to regional and global environmental protection efforts. They share the same global environment and interest in preserving it for this and future generations. Environmental diplomacy has become more salient as environmental issues have gained importance in international relations.

The rise of environmental politics and security

Nowadays, environmental issues — mainly global warming, ozone-layer depletion, acid rain, air and water pollution, desertification and the loss of biodiversity — have caught the attention of the human race. The global environment has changed beyond recognition and poses a great challenge everywhere. Moreover, environmental issues have moved from the margin to the center of security policies, particularly since the end of the cold war.

In June 2006, the Chinese Construction Minister decreed that all Chinese cities had to re-instate the bike lanes that had been removed over the last few years to make way for the car. All civil servants were told that they must either cycle, or take public transport to get to work. The Minister was, it seems, determined that China should regain its global fame as “the Kingdom of Bicycles”.

He will have quite a struggle on his hands with some of China’s increasingly powerful city mayors, for whom the car has become a far more fitting symbol of economic and political success than the lowly bike. Every day in Beijing, for instance, more than 1,000 new cars are rolled out on its already highly congested streets.

That is just one of a seemingly limitless flow of eye-watering statistics about China today. The sheer size of the country continues to astound the rest of the world. And if your passion in life is sustainable economic development, rather than simply the environment, then what’s going on in China is quite simply the most important unfolding story anywhere in the world.

If 10% of the 60 million people who live in the UK choose to reduce their energy consumption by 1%, it hardly registers as a blip on the world scale. But when 10% of the 1.3 billion people who live in China take advantage of its surging prosperity to increase their own energy consumption by 1% per annum, then the world had better take notice. Such decisions affect those of us who live in Britain and elsewhere as much as our fellow world citizens in China. In an interconnected and interdependent world, China’s emissions are everybody’s emissions.

Chinese politicians talk with justifiable pride of their enormous achievement in enabling more than 250 million people to escape grinding rural poverty, and to find jobs in the country’s burgeoning economy. Living standards have soared; and average life expectancy increased from just 35 years when the communists came to power in 1949, to 72 years in 2004.

These social gains have been driven primarily by the economic boom – with average growth of around 10% over the last 15 years. But that has caused environmental damage on such a scale that the entire growth model for China is now imperilled. According to a report in Nature in 2005: “The losses from pollution and ecological damage [in China] range from 7% to 20% of GDP every year in the past two decades”. The impact on human health has been particularly severe. About 300,000 deaths a year are attributed to air quality problems. Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, and levels of cancer in such areas are amongst the worst in the world.

Will China succeed in shifting its water policies onto a more sustainable basis? That really depends on its ability to make decisions on socio-economic and environmental grounds. By contrast, the Three Gorges Dam and the south-north water transfer project are examples of political considerations taking priority over the needs of water users and the environment.

The biggest debates on the south-north scheme have been about its huge expense. It is true that the central government has cleverly devised the financing structure so as to lay more of the burden on those local governments that benefit from the project. But doubts about its economic feasibility encourage the suspicion that it is being shaped by political factors.

Part of the problem is the involvement of too many players, at the national and local level. Within the national government, Water Resources is the principal ministry, but there is a real need to bring all the various bodies together and gain consensus – including the NDRC, SEPA and other relevant ministries such as construction, agriculture and forestry. At present, there`s a pretty diverse range of views. The water resources ministry, whose main goal is the management and development of those resources, sees Three Gorges as a big achievement, whereas SEPA has always been sceptical on environmental grounds.

As things stand, policy making and implementation are often incoherent, and there are overlaps in investment. And, although China does have a framework of laws on water management, they are not always properly enforced. This not only puts water assets in serious danger — it also raises questions about the state`s capacity to tackle the huge challenges it faces.

In the end, China`s allocation of so much scarce water to low-productivity agriculture is not sustainable. If it`s to tackle the grave dangers of water vulnerability, the leadership will have to abandon the myth of self-sufficiency in essential foods.

The author: Dr Seungho Lee is a specialist in water policy at the Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham.

This article appears in “Greening the Dragon: China`s Sustainability Challenge”, a special supplement produced by Green Futures magazine, published in September 2006. www.greenfutures.org.uk

Homepage photo by Magalie L’Abb%26eacute;

“Flooding has brought the most destruction to Fujian” over recent years, says deputy professor of ecology at Xiamen University Li Zhenji, but “the people can`t understand [why].”

There is no confusion that natural disasters can be deadly. Floods, droughts and (to a lesser extent) earthquakes cost countless lives and billions of yuan each year. Li recalls the 1998 flooding in Fujian as “the worst flood for 200 years.” The question which locals do not understand, rather, is why forests are not doing the job they were designed to do.

Ordinarily, forests shelter the earth`s soil from excess moisture, helping to avert natural disasters such as flooding and landslides and Fujian has the highest rate of forest coverage in China – more than 60%. “So why do we suffer these floods?” asks Li rhetorically.

In fact, Fujian`s status as China`s most forested province is misleading. “Since 1949 there have been three major changes in vegetation,” explains Li. “The last in the 1980s occurred when many mountain areas became orchards or bamboo forests – natural forests faced continued destruction” he continues, adding that Jian`nou City, in the north of Fujian, converted all of the natural forest which covered 10% of its land.

Bamboo forest, photo by Aaron Corey

Reforestation projects during the 1990s improved the overall situation, and by 1995 forestry reserves had increased slightly. But the replacement of older self-sustaining, native species trees with young fast-growing plantations is not like-for-like.

“The root system of a pure forest – fir, pine and eucalyptus – is much less able to retain soil than that of a natural forest and this can give rise to disasters such as landslides,” says Li, adding that “The water retention ability and biodiversity of pure forests are [also] much lower than that of natural forests [which historically covered large swathes of Fujian.]”

Research conducted by fellow colleagues at the Faculty of Ecology which studies the effect of natural forests on soil fertility, soil and water retention in the Min River Basin is unequivocal in its findings. A natural forest, research shows, can retain rainfall of up to 200mm in a single downpour and only begins to fail at 400mm. In a pure forest or orchard, floods can occur even if there is only 200mm of rain. The upshot is that the same amount of rain will produce much greater risk. Even an average downpour can result in flooded crops, it concludes.

“So why do we suffer these floods?” asks Li, repeating his earlier question – “Because of the destruction of natural forests” comes his reply.

Disaster prevention means protecting forests

Protection, however, offers salvation. “Without human interference this [ecological] weakness remains dormant,” concludes the above study. Li also claims that natural forests, if restored, would reduce the economic losses from flooding and droughts by 50% to 80%, bringing benefits worth hundreds of billions of yuan.

“The efforts spent on disaster relief would be better used for disaster prevention – and the best method of disaster prevention is to increase protection for natural forests and severely punish those who destroy them,” insists Li. Protection of natural forests that contain multiple species, he promises, would also preserve biodiversity, help to prevent disease (by diverting bugs away from local crops) and reduce local poverty, which has been hit by soil erosion associated with deforestation.

But “If fast-growing forests continue to replace natural ones, these natural disasters will worsen,” warns Li.

Forestry authorities are an accomplice in environmental destruction

Local forestry bureau chief Hong Shenghe confirms that forestry officials are on the frontline in protection efforts and provides reassurances that “Without our approval, nobody can touch a single tree.” But the commitment of the bureau has been directly challenged by villagers in Fuzhu Village who allege that regulations have been routinely broken to accommodate local businesses such as Fangte, a local forestry company accused of felling natural forests in cahoots with local officials.

“Fangte were employing people to fell trees before they had permission” according to villagers. Fires, they say, were lit (in contravention of bureau rules) to help clear the natural forest behind Fuzhu, bogus paperwork passed onto Fangte by forestry officials to cover the incident up. “They even said it was us villagers who did it [set the fires],” add locals.

Villagers eventually turned to forestry police, but were met by unyielding officials who denied any knowledge of the forest, which brings back vivid memories for the locals. “The trunks were that wide you couldn`t wrap your arms around them. It was dark in there, and steep. We never dared to go in, even to cut firewood,” they recall.

But academics at Xiamen University including Li Zhenji acknowledge that natural forests are indeed being secretly replaced, with forestry firms using underhand methods to obtain the necessary legal documents and that southern China now faces an eco-crisis. If the actions of these self-interested officials are not controlled, says Li, the forestry authorities will not only fail to protect these natural resources, they will actually have the opposite effect – becoming an accomplice to the destruction of the environment.

Meanwhile, Hong Shenghe reports that reforms which address the issue of forestry rights are now on trial in Fujian and meet with his own personal approval, but warns that “the principle of %26lsquo;who plants, profits` is more suited to the less fertile and less forested north, where it will encourage locals to improve the environment. In the south where natural forests are abundant, it may at times have the opposite effect.”

A better role for the forestry bureau, Hong believes, is in the provision of guidance and advice to locals, who currently hold land rights. “Forestry officials don`t just need to protect the natural resources, in the future they also need to offer good guidance to local residents,” he says, adding that “If we don`t, they [locals] will transform their natural forests to artificial pure forests, or transfer the land to commercial forestry firms, with the same dangerous consequences.” But villagers may ask: what use is such a reform when there are so many bad eggs on the inside?

The author: Yongfeng Feng is an award-winning journalist with the Guangming Daily.

Homepage photo by Matthew J. Stinson