Latest comments posted about How participation can help China's ailing environment on ChinaDialogue en-gb http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/733-How-participation-can-help-China-s-ailing-environment http://staging.chinadialogue.net/images/cdlogo.gif http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/733-How-participation-can-help-China-s-ailing-environment Since grand scale encouragements for foreign investment for economic development, ‘foreign investment’ has been introduced, however, it exploited our resources, factories and cheap labour, while they own the majority of the capital; by the time they leave, there will just left behind bare rock and grey sky…… Miaohe Sun, 19 Aug 2007 06:39:43 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-4214 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-4214 People is entitled, but without actual power. Government officials facing the tradeoff between fiscal income and environmental protection (corporation taxation vs. serious pollution mitigation) lost their strategic long-term thinking, that is, they choose the former! The public can only tolerate in silence. Publicity of antipollution should be encouraged. And a more active involvement of the media is also needed... Sun, 12 Aug 2007 13:40:27 -0400 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-4181 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-4181 It has been the same for centuries for the powerful to seek rent. And this does not happen only to environment protection area. China still has a long way to go to advance its democracy progress. Hopefully, the country could make a breakthrough in the environment protection area. Sun, 04 Feb 2007 09:58:46 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1297 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1297 All issues in the end are about the balance of interests. Pan Yue's opinion in the article is great: the rich are consuming and damaging the environment, however, the poor are suffering from the pollution. Tue, 06 Feb 2007 03:12:29 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1336 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1336 The style of Ma Jun's article seems to be as mild and placid as his characteristics. However, you could feel the article's powerful, sharp and pointed strengthes. The relation between development and protection protection has been an over-talked topic, but this article displays a distinctive and pinpoint analysis. Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:05:55 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1229 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1229 This is a great article. It is impossible to make something from nothing - the production of market goods requires raw materials and generates wastes, inevitably. Raw materials are taken from the ecological system structure but that depletes connected ecological-system services. When a forest is fenced off to be used as a raw material source (by being logged) then its ability to act as a watershed, as a way of cleaning the air, as a place of leisure and habitat for pollinating bees is degraded. Waste returned to eco-systems (the air, water systems, the soil) further degrades ecological -system services. These are public goods that are degraded - they are not owned by anyone in particular and, when they are used as public goods, they are non-rival. ("non rival" means that if I use an open access forest as a place of leisure it is still available as a place of leisure to others). So eco-systems which are creating life sustaining services that are public goods are being degraded in the production of private goods. Negative economic impacts feed into a complex ecological system creating degrading effects some of which may be hidden at first, e.g. chronic illnesses appearing with a time lag, and creating unexpected non linear transformations.(In old fashioned Marxist jargon, quantitative changes suddenly become qualitative changes -or in ordinary talk, "nasty surprises"). The problem is that private benefits accrue to market actors with political connections in some places and the burdens and losses from degraded public goods are felt by other citizens in other places (e.g. they can no longer breath clean air or drink clean water). Ma Jun is quite right - this requires well informed mass participation by citizens to better generate the information needed to account for threatened possible or already existing negative impacts (ecological and collective costs). Those negatively effected must have access to information, research and support to feed their concerns into a process of negotiated collective restraints set on the markets driven by the profit seeking few. These are social justice issues. Despite this some economists say China should pollute to get rich first and clean up later. They say this is what happened in other rich countries. However, the turning points, the levels of income at which the worsening is supposed to halt and reverse, are too high for China to ever reasonably expect that it will get there. Its population will have choked on filthy air and water first. Moreover, much of the apparent improvement in wealthy countries comes from these nations offshoring the most environmentally damaging production stages of the goods that they consume to the poorer countries like China. Pollute first and clean up later is a theory that suits the big foreign interests and the wealthy shopper of my country. Brian Davey Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:10:40 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1163 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1163 Development is a firm principle; and it really has led to a dramatic improvement in China! During his time, Deng overlooked China's environmental issues; but now he probably would say development which takes environment into consideration is the only the firm principle that can guide real development. Thu, 01 Feb 2007 03:15:47 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1171 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/733#comment-1171