Responsible Roundups

Responsible Roundup: 1/17/08

Every Friday, ResponsibleChina highlights major news about the environment, CSR and social entrepreneurship in China. For tips or suggestions, please send an email to erica [at] responsiblechina [dot] com.

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From online news:

The waters of the Yangtze have fallen to their lowest levels since 1866, disrupting drinking supplies, stranding ships and posing a threat to some of the world’s most endangered species.Asia’s longest river is losing volume as a result of a prolonged dry spell, the state media warned yesterday, predicting hefty economic losses and a possible plague of rats on nearby farmland.

Next month, China’s State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) will begin the country’s first national survey of pollution sources. Through this census, SEPA plans to identify sources of industrial, agricultural, and residential pollution throughout China. The survey will also tally the number of waste-treatment plants that are operating in the country.Data collection will take two months, and the full report will be ready in about a year. SEPA expects to spend more than $100 million on the project. To encourage officials throughout China to provide accurate data, SEPA has promised that the survey will not be used as a performance assessment tool.

Nearly 7,000 hectares of biodiesel forest will take shape in the northern province of Hebei this year, part of a national campaign to fuel the fast growing economy in a green way.In no more than five years, the Pistacia chinensis Bunge, whose seeds have an oil content of up to 40 percent, will yield five tons of fruit and contribute about two tons of high-quality biological diesel oil, according to the provincial forestry administration.Hebei was among seven regions designated by the State Forestry Administration (SFA) in 2006 to develop biofuel demonstration forests.

• Lives of Grinding Poverty, Untouched by China’s Boom
• By Howard French
• January 13, 2008

China has moved more people out of poverty than any other country in recent decades, but the persistence of destitution in places like southern Henan Province fits with the findings of a recent World Bank study that suggests that there are still 300 million poor in China — three times as many as the bank previously estimated.Poverty is most severe in China’s geographic and social margins, whether the mountainous areas or deserts that ring the country, or areas dominated by ethnic minorities, who for cultural and historic reasons have benefited far less than others from the country’s long economic rise.But it also persists in places like Henan, where population densities are among the greatest in China, and the new wealth of the booming coast beckons, almost mockingly, a mere province away.  

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From the blogosphere: 

• Riverbed Surfaces in Yangtze Wuhan Section
• China Digital Times
• By Michael Zhao
• January 11, 2008

A stretch of sandy riverbed has surfaced in the middle of the Yangtze River in Wuhan, thanks to a lack of rainfall and a dropping feed from the upper reaches [obviously thanks to the Three Gorges Dam, but the article didn't mention the dam at all]. This is the year that Wuhan’s Yangtze water level hit its historical low, 14.05 meters. Nearly 20% of the river islands are new in the past five years.

• Employers Paradise
• China Bystander
• January 14, 2008

There are 200 million migrant workers in China’s cities, with a potential backup pool of 100 million more waiting in the countryside. They see themselves treated as second class citizens at best, according to a survey by Shanghai’s Fudan University, working long hours that make them accident-prone from tiredness and too weary to study for the qualifications to get a better job. Compounding their misery, inflation is more than chewing up rising earnings.

• The Relationship Between Pollution and Unrest
• China Crossroads
• January 16, 2008

Last year, there were a lot of reports about social unrest in China’s interior reaching 80,000 incidents. Much speculation came along with the reports, and to the credit of the central party and media, reports of various incidents are being made public on a regular basis.

• Beijing is Polluted
• China Law Blog
• January 12, 2008

Since I had promised myself I would never devote a post to Beijing’s pollution, please consider this to be on government manipulation of statistics and the perpetual need to examine Chinese government reporting. The International Herald Tribune just did an article, entitled, “Air Quality Improvements in Beijing Challenged,” on a study claiming the sole basis for Beijing’s claimed air pollution improvements rest on its no longer “including readings from two stations in polluted areas and [its now] … using readings in three other stations in less polluted locales (h/t to China Challenges)

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Tags: China, CSR, Environment, pollution, responsiblechina

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