Latest Articles by Jiang Gaoming

Toward sustainable urbanisation in China

Gaoming Jiang — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 12:29:00 +0000

As its construction boom continues apace, China should not embrace the large and the foreign, argues Jiang Gaoming. Smaller, more sustainable cities will mean that precious natural resources won’t be lost forever.

China’s large-scale urbanisation dates back to late 1980s, when Beijing still had fields and natural wetlands. Since the 1980s, urbanisation has accelerated, with the number of cities in China’s central and coastal regions leaping from 315 to 521 from 1988 to 2000. Cities are expanding at an even faster rate than their populations. Urban land increased by 8% from 2000 to 2003, while the urban population grew by only half that figure. And now the country has become a giant building site, with almost 770 square kilometers of land being built on annually -- a figure that increases by almost 6% annually.

This urban explosion is linked to an unfortunate quest for large, foreign-style cities. Cities, plazas, roads, houses – the bigger and more foreign they are, the better, whether they are needed or not. Cities are swallowing up their surroundings – particularly Beijing, which is expanding by 20 square kilometers per year and showing no sign of slowing. Economically backward cities build huge plazas, cities with no congestion build eight-lane highways, all for the sake of appearance. The trend for spacious accommodation started with Beijing officials, with the standard living area for a departmental cadre rocketing from 70 or 80 square meters to over 200. There is even competition over who has the biggest office. And buildings are built in foreign styles, leaving us with non-descript cookie-cutter cities.

This construction makes an undeniable contribution to GDP, but the ecological and social issues it causes have been ignored. The current urbanisation rate is about 40%. If China is to achieve moderate levels of development, this will rise to 60% – encroaching on even more land and using even more resources. If China’s urbanisation is to be sustainable, the country must halt excessive expansion and resolve the issues discussed below.

photo by Yuek Hahn

Big cities or small towns?

China’s urbanization is focused on expanding its cities – there are lots of people, so you enlarge the city – and that expansion then attracts more people. This unlimited expansion causes more pollution, congestion and poor living conditions, threatening the natural and rural environment.

Urbanisation in China is different to that of developed countries. The nature of the population flow is different. When rapid urbanisation started in 1960s America, the country had a population of only 23 million. But China’s urbanisation has been a quick expansion of residential areas and transport infrastructure to envelop populations. In the next 25 years, 850 million rural residents will be relocated to the cities. The use of resources is also different. Materials for the United Kingdom’s urbanisation were supplied by its colonies worldwide, but China must rely on its own (non-renewable) sand, soil, stone and steel.

And so this rapid expansion is not feasible for China. We need smaller cities with a range of employers to attract rural labour. Green belts similar to those surrounding England’s cities should be used to protect the environment and limit urban expansion.

Solid, practical cities – not showpieces

The desire for the foreign is widespread. Traditional Chinese architecture is frowned upon, with US and European styles preferred. (Even the statues are bare-arsed Greeks.) Municipal leaders think it reflects better on them, and the city planners know where the money comes from. And in this rush for Roman plazas and European streets, China’s own traditional culture is lost and our cities all come to look the same.

Dreams of western lifestyles see the rich spending their money on large apartments or villas, which are eating up China’s parks and scenic areas. The well-known Fragrant Hills in Beijing are now surrounded by housing. Despite astronomical prices, supply can’t keep up with demand. Many are purchased merely as status symbols by people too busy to live there; they sit empty, as in a ghost town.

These problems permeate China’s urbanisation and are causing excessive expansion and massive waste of land and resources. Green areas and natural habitats are shrinking and the cities are losing their individuality. Urbanisation requires practical infrastructure and smaller housing. The government has recently taken steps in this direction, but their effect remains to be seen.

photo by EddieG.se

How long will non-renewable resources last?

One direct result of urban expansion is the massive consumption of non-renewable resources. Villages surrounding cities are being replaced with high-rises. This “fast-food” approach to urbanisation is destroying villages and consuming precious non-renewable materials.

Management of China’s waterways is chaotic, with contractors able to dredge sand at little or no cost. An excavator hired at CHY 200 an hour [$25] can scoop up a tonne of sand in no time – sand which then no longer helps to control floods and to filter water. Many natural waterways are disappearing, along with the wetland vegetation on their banks.

Rock and soil face a similar fate. Entire mountains are carved up for sale. Boulders weighing a tonne are sold off by the roadside. Granite and marble are processed into artworks to be sold abroad, and clay is fired into bricks for buildings.

And yet the buildings China is throwing up today are of poor quality, built with demolition and rebuilding in mind, further depleting building materials. If this continues, our supply of sand, then clay and finally stone, will be depleted.

This is our last chance to preserve these materials. We need quality buildings made to last. We need to consider the use of renewable or reclaimed building materials – for example, banning the use of clay bricks in favour of those manufactured from coal ash. Only in this way can we leave some of these non-renewable materials for future generations.

Homepage photo by Vagrantant

The author: Jiang Gaoming is a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Botany and a doctoral candidate tutor, vice secretary-general of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation’s China-MAB (Man and the Biosphere) Committee and member of the UNESCO MAB Urban Group. He is recognised for his introduction of the concepts of urban vegetation and using natural forces to restore China’s ecosystems.

Trees are not enough

Gaoming Jiang — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 13:12:00 +0000

City planners often don’t pay enough attention to China’s natural heritage, says Jiang Gaoming. Losses to rural ecosystems, he argues, are not worth the appearance benefit in urban areas – which need their own native biodiversity.

Sustainable urban development in China depends on both the control of pollution and the protection of biodiversity. The importance of the former is now widely accepted, but the latter is still ignored, even by city planners. The wonders of Beijing’s culture are intimately linked with its biodiversity. Central Beijing has 226,000 old-growth trees, and there are 180,000 more in its suburbs. The city is surrounded by rich and diverse ecologies. Baihua Mountain and Wuling Mountain have 1,200 species of higher plants – a natural heritage more precious than any building. London, New York, Paris and Berlin do not have this kind of rich environment. Yet this natural heritage goes ignored.

The planting of trees on urban pavements has not taken ecological factors into consideration and is clearly artificial, monotonous and unreasonably spaced. In city centres, the large numbers of tall buildings and trees lining the streets prevent the flow of air, while in the suburbs more trees are needed. A sad sight, indeed, is the concreting over of the base of the trees, preventing the growth of bushes and grass. The needs of small mammals and birds are not considered. Poplars monopolise the streets of our northern cities – but where are the indigenous shrubs and plants? There is no canopy coverage and lifespan is short, with trees discarded within a couple of decades. There is no consideration of biodiversity.

Cities need to plan for long-term preservation – the older they are, the more valuable. When designing the imperial resort of Chengde, Emperor Kangxi ordered that all existing vegetation be retained. Tragically today’s city planners use only a few commercial varieties, and cities lose their native biodiversity. So some planners turn their eyes to surrounding villages and buy up large trees in great numbers. This means great business for the tree traders, but disaster for trees in rural areas. (In the worst case, rural trees literally fueled the steel-production drive of the Great Leap Forward.) The trend started in Shanghai and spread nationwide, and now almost every city beautification project ships in truckloads of large trees.

One city brought in over 6,400 trees -- each of more than 30cm in diameter -- at a cost of RMB 10,000 apiece. A single tree changed hands for RMB 220,000. Another city purchased large numbers of mature trees from villages and plantations in an attempt to be named a “National Park City” – but before long over 70% of them had died off. A north-eastern city launched a program to transplant 300,000 trees from villages within two to three years. These schemes cause a number of problems.

First, they cause serious damage to rural ecologies and biodiversity. Each tree forms a complete ecosystem with its soil, organisms in the soil, surrounding vegetation and birds, mammals and insects. The amputation of the tree destroys that ecology. Soil and water are lost, animals lose their home – losses that are not worth the benefit to appearance of our cities. The removal of a tree 30cm in diameter also results in the loss of one to two tons of soil. Many older villagers complain that they no longer recognise their birthplace.

Second, huge numbers of trees die during transportation. The cutting of root systems, stripping of leaves and long-distance transportation means 50 to 70% of trees die before they reach their intended destinations. And even if they do survive, what value is there in a mighty tree becoming little more than ornamentation?

Third, the process is part of poorly considered projects which value form over substance. Trees grow slowly. Two decades ago, many specialists suggested tree plantations for future use in cities – but nobody paid any attention, leading to today’s tragedies. Improvement depends of us realising that there is no easy solution; using these large old trees as a quick, green fix is a typical example of projects operated for appearance only. This has led to a lack of tree plantations for the purpose of ornamentation, and those that do exist now have to compete with tree speculators.

Fourth, it leads to corruption and crime. The high cost of bringing trees to the cities mean that there is profit to be made. These large trees have become a commodity, and we now see tree scalpers traveling between villages, seeking a quick profit. Investigations have show that a century-old pear tree can be bought locally for under RMB 100, and a crane to remove it hired for RMB 200 an hour – but get it to the city, and it’s worth over RMB 10,000. Where the money goes is clear. The potential for profit is too high for city officials to resist.

Fifth, the trees bring diseases and pests, which originally were part of a balanced ecosystem where their natural enemies kept them in check. But when the trees are brought into the cities, disease and pest populations explode. This has caused rises in the numbers of various insects in the cities.

Urban biodiversity needs to be approached scientifically. Local ecosystems need to be preserved, with plants selected from surrounding areas to be moved into the cities where they should form self-sustaining communities. Simply trucking in trees is inadequate.

The author: Jiang Gaoming is a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Botany and a doctoral candidate tutor, vice secretary-general of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation’s China-MAB (Man and the Biosphere) Committee and member of the UNESCO MAB Urban Group. He is recognised for his introduction of the concepts of urban vegetation and using natural forces to restore China’s ecosystems.

A new future for China’s grasslands

Gaoming Jiang — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:35:00 +0000

Moving livestock south from China’s grasslands can help with their ecological recovery, and open up new agricultural possibilities. Jiang Gaoming presents a radical, organic vision for the future of farming in China.

China’s many varieties of grassland cover an area of 1 billion acres. They account for 41% of the country’s total area, and are 3.3 times the size of its cropland. Yet these vast grasslands cannot feed the animals they are home to, which together account for one-third of China’s livestock. Many years of overgrazing have led to the deterioration of 90% of China’s grasslands, giving rise to environmental problems such as sandstorms.

Ecologists sometimes refer to the “10% rule”: that 10% of the energy of a primary producer should be passed on to a secondary producer. This means that under good environmental conditions, the world’s green vegetation totals about 200 billion tonnes (pure carbon), of which around 10% will be eaten by herbivorous animals. The dry weight of vegetation on China’s grasslands is 300 million tonnes, leaving about 30 million tonnes for grazing if the ecosystem were undamaged. But the methods currently used to calculate grassland capacity are flawed, and overgrazing is widespread. Actual numbers of livestock are far above even ‘theoretical’ thresholds, and the grasslands have inevitably deteriorated. How can this pressure be relieved and the grasslands allowed to recover?

The answer lies not with the grasslands, but in China's cropfields. Aside from producing 500 million tonnes of food, China’s 167 million acres of farmland also produce over 700 million tonnes of straw. Corn, wheat and rice make up 38%, 22% and 19% of the total straw, respectively. Other crops produce smaller proportions, such as legumes (4.8%), tubers (2.8%) and rapeseed (8.3%). Of this straw, 94.9% can be used as fodder. In fact, all of China’s straw could provide 22 times as much fodder as the grasslands can reasonably provide. And using technology to double the value of the fodder could feed all of China's livestock.

Unlike on the grasslands, if straw is eaten by sheep and cattle it can be returned to the land in the form of manure or residue from biogas production. Not only will the land be unharmed, but it will also be fertilised. Livestock production should be moved south, from the arid grasslands of traditional herding areas in Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the food-producing provinces of Shandong, Henan, Hebei, Sichuan and Hunan.

China has 4.7 billion chickens, and an annual demand of 3.7 chickens per person per year. But farmers squeeze chickens into wire cages and overuse additives to fatten them up as quickly as possible. This makes them ready for slaughter in 45 days, as opposed to the 300 days of a free-range chicken. These unnatural meat-production methods are contributing to obesity in our cities. They are aiding the spread of avian flu that endangers food safety and public health, and are inviting criticism of China’s record on animal-welfare issues. The wide open spaces poultry need are not to be found in farmyards, much less in wire cages; the space is out on the grasslands. Chickens present no danger to the grassland, and can help control pests. In the future, the huge quantities of chicken and eggs that China needs should come from the grasslands.

Raising chickens on the grasslands. (Photo by Gaoming Jiang)

Tragically, all this potential livestock fodder is now treated as waste and burned off in the fields, despite regulations to the contrary. There is currently no way to use the straw, and so the law is ignored. But if full use was made of the straw, the value added could be five to 10 times the worth of the grain itself.

Burning straw in the fields (Photo by Dezhang Shan)

Farmland in places like Shandong can produce about one tonne of grain per mu (0.17 acres) of land. After costs, this can bring in an income of around 500 yuan (US$64), less than a migrant worker in China’s cities will earn in a month. But if three tonnes of fodder could be harvested at the same time, it would feed an adult cow for 150 days. Cows could bring an extra 2,700 yuan (US$345) of value per mu, and raising dairy cows would be more profitable still.

From ancient times until recent years, straw was used as fuel or to feed draft animals that ploughed the fields. Now tractors have replaced draft animals; chemicals have replaced organic fertilisers; and coal and gas have replaced straw as fuel. But tractors don’t produce manure, and chemical fertilisers are dangerous, causing pollution, losses in soil fertility and increasing costs for farmers.

Apart from the material waste, the loss of energy is also significant. Although for many years China has advocated the use of biogas, high costs and a scarcity of manure has made government support ineffective. But the use of straw as feed, can provide an efficient new source of power, as manure is used to make biogas and biogas residue is used to fertilise crops.

Straw must be processed into fodder to supply livestock feed, to provide energy from biogas and ensure China’s sustainable agricultural development. There are huge profits to be shared not only between crop farmers and livestock farmers but also the transportation, processing and organic fertiliser industries. The power and service sectors can also benefit, all of which will be linked together by the invisible hand of the market.

There is no better way to deal with grassland deterioration, pests, food safety and the risk of avian flu than raising chickens on open grassland. In 2005, I carried out an experiment in Inner Mongolia’s Zhenglan Banner, and found that it is possible to raise 15,000 chickens on 300 mu (50 acres) of land. After expenses and labour, income from each mu (0.16 acres) was 50 yuan (US$6), over 50 times the income of traditional herding (one mu of damaged grassland in Inner Mongolia brings in less than 10 yuan.)

Raising livestock in crop-growing regions presents problems with the transportation, storage and the conversion of straw into feed. These problems can be resolved through new technology, using innovations in microorganisms, enzymes and processing to ferment and package straw into bales of fodder. The city of Laixi, in eastern China’s Shandong province, already collects all its straw for use and does not burn it. Raising chickens in herding areas will face no market problems if urban consumers will opt for free range chickens over caged birds. And if the price is similar, they will.

Equipment for converting straw into quality fodder. (Photo by Shan Dezhang)

The Chinese government should research the idea of moving livestock south and chickens north. Model projects should be established in the south and the north, using technology and the market to promote China’s economic growth and sustainable development.

Jiang Gaoming is a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Botany and a doctoral candidate tutor, vice secretary-general of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation’s China-MAB (Man and the Biosphere) Committee and member of the UNESCO MAB Urban Group. He is recognised for his introduction of the concepts of urban vegetation and using natural forces to restore China’s ecosystems.

The terrible cost of China’s growth (part one)

Gaoming Jiang — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:37:00 +0000

Rapid development has brought great gains to China. But pollution, the loss of land and the destruction of ecosystems will hold back the country’s future growth, write Jiang Gaoming and Gao Jixi.

China has seen rapid economic growth since the start of the reform era in 1979. Annual GDP growth averaged 9.6% between 1979 and 2004. In 2004, GDP growth reached 10.1%, an achievement that attracted global attention. Over this period the population has grown sharply; huge quantities of resources have been consumed; environmental pollution has worsened; ecosystems have been wrecked; and vast areas of land have been lost. This has given rise to all manner of environmental problems. The economy has grown, but the environment has suffered. Over the past 27 years, China has adhered to an economic model characterised by high levels of pollution, emissions and power consumption, combined with low levels of efficiency. It has repeated the “pollute first, clean up later” model that Western nations adhered to during their early stages of capital accumulation.

The Tang-dynasty poet Du Fu once wrote: “Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure,” yet we can only reflect that while our country endures, our hills and rivers have been devastated. Environmental degradation harms public health, affects social stability and holds back China’s sustainable economic growth. It is a major problem, one which threatens not only the development but also the survival of the Chinese people.

Decreases in cultivated land

Remote-sensing surveys show that China’s cultivated land area plummeted between 1988 and 2000, from 1,307,400 square kilometres in 1991 to 1,282,400 square kilometres in 2000 – from 1.8 mu (0.0012 square kilometres) per head to 1.5 mu (0.0010 square kilometres) per head. Construction accounted for 56.6% of the decrease, 21% of land was forested, 16% was flooded and 4% became grassland.

During the 1990s, the number of cities in China’s east increased from 315 to 521. Each year, an average of 767.42 square kilometres is built on, with this figure growing at an average of 5.76% every year. The land around Beijing has borne the brunt of this, with the city expanding by about 20 square kilometres per year. Besides urban construction, the effects of industry and mining account are also significant. Statistics from the provinces of Jilin, Jiangsu, Fujian, Henan, Hubei and Hunan show that land given over to mining development increased 1.96 times between 1986 and 2000, and the land area that was damaged increased by 4.71 times.

Over this period some cultivated land was added: 24.2% of it by reclaiming woodland, 66% from grasslands and 1.9% from bodies of water. But this was all obtained at the expense of natural ecosystems. Over the last 40 years, land reclamation has lead to the loss of 11,900 square kilometres of coastal shallows, with industry taking more than 10000 square kilometres of coastal wetlands. Half of China’s coastal shallows are now completely destroyed. And despite this, the trend of overall loss of cultivated land has not been reversed.

Where the loss of cultivated land is due to a change in usage, the soil itself at least remains, though sealed below concrete and asphalt. However, soil that is swept away by wind and water is lost forever. In 1999, 3.56 million square kilometres of land were affected by erosion due to wind, water and freeze-thaw cycles. Of this land, 82.53% lies in China’s west. The country has 1.74 million square kilometres of desert spread across 30 provinces, over 90% of which is in the west. An astonishing 1.6 billion tonnes of soil is swept into the Yellow River every year, approximately 400 million tonnes of which is deposited on the riverbed downstream, causing it to rise between eight and 10 centimetres annually. During the past 40 years, the riverbed in the lower reaches of the Yellow River has risen by two metres, and on average it stands three to five metres higher than the land that it flows through. In places it is as much as 10 metres higher. The Yangtze River basin also loses 2.4 billion tonnes of soil per year.

With the loss of soil, valuable nutrients are lost. In the Yellow River basin alone, about 40 million tonnes of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are lost annually – more than the total consumption of China’s fertiliser industry in 2003 (39.9 million tonnes). A conservative estimate, factoring in soil lost to water erosion in the Yangtze River basin and wind erosion in arid and semi-arid regions, puts annual loss at five times that figure. The lost nutrition is replaced artificially, atmospherically and with ore, resulting in serious environmental pollution. China’s government should take urgent and effective measures to prevent the further loss of soil.

Photo by vailpost

The threat to China’s forests

According to State Forestry Administration figures, forestry coverage in China rose from 12.98% in 1986 to 16.55% in 1999, a growth of 33%. But we need to be clear about what went into those figures. Many areas adjusted the canopy density rate used to define a “forest” downwards from 0.3 to 0.2. Bushes and shrubs were also added to the figures. It is possible that the amount of forest did not actually increase – only the figures did. In China no old-growth forest remains, and forests over a century old are extremely rare. Even if the above figures are accurate, China’s huge population means that the per capita average is extremely low – only 21.3% of the global average. In terms of volume, China has only 12.5% of the global per capita average of 72 cubic metres.

It should be noted that although central government’s investment in forestry has been gradually increasing, forest management policy’s disregard for the environment has led to a potential threat from weak and unsustainable single-species forests. Between the 1950s and 1990s, the forested area affected by disease and pests increased six-fold. This increase was greatest in the 1990s, 196% of the increase during the 1980s. If China’s vast subtropical mountainous areas were sealed off and human interference reduced, their broadleaf evergreen forests would recover. But tragically, paper manufacturers have felled natural forests in order to plant the invasive eucalyptus tree. Intervention by the authorities has been too weak to prevent this destruction, and some local forestry authorities have even profited from collusion with interest groups.

China’s water crisis

China consumed a total of 556.7 billion cubic metres of water in 2001, 13.2 billion cubic metres more than in 1998. Most of this increase came not from replenishable surface water, but from groundwater obtained by drilling – water that should be left for future generations. Water usage rates for major river basins such as the Huai River, Liao River and Yellow River have reached 60%; the rate in the Hai River is 90% and for the Hei River the rate is 110%. The internationally-recognised warning level is between 30% and 40%.

An inefficient use of water resources and a lack of water conservation awareness mean that even this massive overuse does not meet our so-called “needs.” A total of 60% of China’s 669 cities face water scarcity, and of these, 110 face serious water shortages. Around 60 areas suffer from lowered groundwater levels, with a zone measuring 30,000 to 50,000 square kilometres in the North China Plain being the world’s largest. Over-extraction of groundwater not only happens in China’s arid north, but also in the water-rich south. Subsidence affects 46 cities in 16 provinces, including Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanxi. In south China’s Suzhou, 180 square kilometres of land has subsided over 60 centimetres since 1949. In Wuxi, 59.5 square kilometres has subsided by the same amount, and 43 square kilometres in Changzhou.

The relatively water-rich Sanjiang Plain, in northeast China, has also seen a large-scale extraction of water and soil degradation, has led to the loss of wetlands. In the past decade, the northern part of the plain lost 105 square kilometres of wetland. The Songnen Plain and Liao River delta have lost 1,820 square kilometres and 230 square kilometres hectares respectively.

But China's water crisis is not a purely underground phenomena, it also manifests itself in the loss of glaciers on high plateaus. Glaciers are China’s “solid reservoirs” and an important source of water for arid regions. Global warming caused glaciers north of the Sichuan-Tibet highway in Nyingtri (Lingzhi) to shrink by 100 metres between 1986 and 1998. This retreat will directly impact the progress of the western branch of China’s South to North Water Transfer project.

The destruction of China's ecosystems

There are ten main types of land ecosystem in the world, and China has nine: tropical rainforest, evergreen broadleaf forests, deciduous broadleaf forests, conifer forest, mangrove forest, grasslands, alpine meadows, desert and tundra. The only ecosystem it lacks is the African savannah, though regions such as the Hunsandake, Keerqin, Mu-us and Hunlun Buir have the same structure and function. China is therefore the only country in the world which may feature all of the world's ecosystems.

But unfortunately, every one of these ecosystems is suffering. Aside from China’s well-documented loss of forests and expanding deserts, alpine meadows, temperate grasslands and mangrove forests are also being seriously degraded. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is one of the worlds largest, highest and most unique ecosystems. But long-standing over-grazing and misuse has caused serious degradation of its alpine meadows, mainly demonstrated by the drop in hay production from 300 kilograms per mu (667 square metres) in the 1960s, to 100 kilograms today. This destruction is also attested to in the region’s increasing mole-rat infestation: from eight to 10 mole rats per hectare in the past, to more than 30 today.

Ninety percent of China's usable grasslands display varying degrees of damage, and this area is expanding by 20,000 square kilometres per year. Of this lost grassland, 55% is being used for cultivation, and 30% has simply become unusable. The majority of grasslands in the west of China are over-used; in Xinjiang the rate of overuse is 121%, in Ningxia is 72% and in Inner Mongolia is 66%.

Mangrove forests are globally recognised as one of the world’s most productive and diverse ecosystems. China's mangrove forests are mostly located to the south of the Fujian coast and at one time covered 2,500 square kilometres. In the 1950s, they covered 500 square kilometres. Now they only cover 150 square kilometres. Since 1949, exploitation, felling and inefficient usage of coastal mangrove forests has brought unprecedented destruction, especially in the past 20 years.

The UN's Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) lists 740 endangered species. Of these, 189 are in China, around a quarter of the total. Between 4,000 and 5,000 of China’s plant species are endangered or approaching endangerment, from 15 to 20% of the country’s total number of plant species. Environmental changes and the fragmentation of habitats are causing this loss of biodiversity. For instance, in the natural forests of Nenjiang county in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province, endangered species were distributed across 240 different locations, with an average size of 0.8 square kilometres. By 2000 this had fragmented to 343 different locations with an average size of 0.68 square kilometres.

NEXT: How can China strengthen environmental protection?

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

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

The terrible cost of China’s growth (part two)

Gaoming Jiang — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:01:00 +0000

China's brewing ecological crisis requires new commitments from government, argue Jiang Gaoming and Gao Jixi. Improved environmental laws and new ways to evaluate officials are key.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red tide photo by thesix

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

What can be done?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The new Green Revolution

Gaoming Jiang — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:30:00 +0000

Many in China have heralded genetic engineering as a force for good in agriculture. In a new column for chinadialogue, Jiang Gaoming investigates, and finds that organic farming can prove a more efficient solution for the country.

The 1950s saw the birth of the first “Green Revolution”, with world agriculture’s move from tall- to short-stalk crop varieties and the use of pesticides, fertilisers and agricultural machinery. These changes allowed 19 developing countries to achieve food self-sufficiency. But since then, the global population has grown and pollution has worsened. The coming decades will see the world’s population increase from six to nine billion, and the achievements of the Green Revolution will be hard pressed to meet new food and environmental demands. As a result, the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization has called for a new, second Green Revolution.

But what will the weapons of this new revolution be? How can it meet the challenges of increasing food production against a background of shrinking arable land and freshwater resources; the need to protect the environment and public health from the effects of fertilisers and pesticides; and the effects of climate change on agriculture? Scientists have turned to genetic engineering, aiming to transfer advantageous genes to crops and increase harvests. And the media has called it the greatest hope of the new Green Revolution.

Scientists are now able to transplant genes from other species into crops, creating entirely new species and even halving plant growth cycles. US firms Dupont and Monsanto, along with Europe’s Novartis and others, have made massive investments in gene technology research. Pioneer, a US company, has decoded three-quarters of the 80,000 genes in maize, and expects to complete the remaining quarter within five years. Monsanto is attempting to identify and patent 15% of the maize genome.

Support for genetic engineering in China is steadily increasing, and the use of genetically-modified crops to increase harvests has been welcomed by the country’s agricultural industry. China has given priority to the development of pest-resistant cotton, yellow dwarf disease resistant winter wheat, bacterial blight-resistant rice and pesticide-resistant rice; as well as developing brown-rot resistant potatoes and new strains of maize. The country is also committed to developing technology such as genetically-modified “super” pigs, cows and sheep, animal embryo transfers, animal gender-selection technology, genetically-engineered immunisations and bioreactors.

The long list of new technologies shows that for Chinese scientists, the new Green Revolution is about increasing productivity based on the contributions of molecular biology. But they ignore an equally - if not more important – contribution: that from ecology.

China produces 480 million tonnes of grain every year. Of this, 180 million tonnes are used for human consumption, and 120 million tonnes (25% of the total) becomes livestock fodder. Of this fodder, 100 million tonnes is used to feed pigs, China’s second largest consumer of grain after people. Grain production is not the issue therefore; the question is about our sources of meat and milk. A Green Revolution based on ecology should not focus on the production of grain, but of straw. It should use ecological principles to solve food and environmental problems, not polluting methods such as fertilisers and pesticides. The Green Revolution must use existing species to increase humanity’s food supply, rather than manipulating genes.

The ecological solution is not to raise grain production directly, but to utilise the 50% of China's crop weight that is currently discarded, which is mostly straw, and use it to produce more food, animal fodder and fertiliser. This will greatly increase the productivity of China’s land. The large quantities of organic fertiliser that can be produced as a by-product will increase the harvests from large quantities of low-quality and medium-quality land, indirectly increasing grain production.

China has 1.831 billion mu (around 1,221,000 square kilometres) of cultivatable land, of which 155 million mu (around 133, 000 square kilometres) are salt-affected and 1 billion mu (around 667, 000 square kilometres) is arid. Genetic engineering will not be enough to grow grain in these regions. At the same time, China produces 600 to 700 million tonnes of straw every year, which represents a fresh weight of 1.8 to 2.1 billion tonnes. This could feed 180 to 210 million tonnes of livestock, which would provide, at a conservative estimate, 72 to 84 million tonnes of meat. Assuming five portions of grain are equivalent to one portion of meat, China’s annual straw production generates the equivalent of a further 360 to 420 million tonnes of grain, a figure twice current production levels. Animals and microorganisms can convert the currently-unused straw to food and grain, something that no technology can currently do. Of course, we cannot use all of this straw, but with technological advances, using half of it would be entirely plausible. Currently, 73% of China’s straw is burnt, discarded or used in other low-efficiency ways, so there is certainly a lot of scope for its increased use.

We must also turn to China’s mobile fertiliser factories: the country’s cows and sheep. The average cow produces 25 kilograms of dung per day, and 50% of China’s straw production could feed from 360 to 420 million head of cattle: a total of 3.28 to 3.83 billion tonnes of dung per year. This entirely organic fertiliser would contain between 5.67 and 6.62 million tonnes of nitrogen, equivalent to between 28.35 and 33.10 million tonnes of ammonium sulphate. This approaches China’s total annual fertiliser production of 33.90 million tonnes, but unlike chemical fertilisers, the use of this organic fertiliser will not harm the soil or cause pollution. Tests I carried out at Shandong Agricultural University show that if the amount of organic matter in the soil is raised from 1% to 5%, the amount of fertiliser used can be cut in half and still increase productivity.

Processed straw will feed cattle and the dung will produce biogas. The sludge from biogas production can then be returned to the fields as organic fertiliser. China already has this technology, but its use is seasonal and decentralised. Straw production is difficult to centralise, and should be collected and used locally on a local level. There is already the technology to convert straw into fodder for cows and sheep.

Malnutrition is a major issue in developing countries, and meat is much more nutritious than grain. Using straw to produce meat, milk and fertilisers provides countries with necessary nutrition and organic fertiliser for their soil. All nations, particularly developing ones, should launch a new Green Revolution in which ecology plays a leading role, both solve food security issues and improve the environment.

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

China must say no to imported waste

Gaoming Jiang — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:15:00 +0000

The UK sends almost two million tonnes of rubbish to China every year. By shipping its trash abroad, says Jiang Gaoming, Britain favours its local environment at the expense of developing countries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fighting poverty and saving the environment

Gaoming Jiang — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:05:00 +0000

Around 200 million people in China live in poverty, but the country’s relief programme is not working, warns Jiang Gaoming. Polluters and corrupt local officials are diverting money intended to avert hardship.

There has always been controversy over the link between environmental protection and economic growth, particularly in developing countries, where the need for growth can hinder environmental efforts. Many of China's environmental problems have their roots in poverty, and economic relief can help with environmental recovery. But poverty alleviation does not always work as it should.

Wuwei county, in east China’s Anhui province, has an annual income of 500 million yuan (around US$64.5 million); its economy has ranked in the province's top 10 for the last three years, yet it is still classed as a key county for national poverty-relief projects. Similarly, Fengtai county, also in Anhui, has had the largest income in the province for the past three years, and is still a focus of the province’s poverty alleviation programme.

Around 200 million people in China live in poverty, second in the world only to India, with most living in the rural parts of less-developed regions. Although China has seen rapid economic growth, it has been concentrated on the east coast, with the rest of the country left far behind. Some have said that in terms of development, China has “European” cities, but “African” villages.

Two decades of poverty alleviation have achieved significant results, but some areas constantly fall back into poverty – or even seem to worsen with increasing aid. If we want to know why, we must look at China’s poverty-relief policies.

Firstly, we should ask who actually needs this relief. The answer is, of course, the people who are actually poor – and China does not have many impoverished government officials. Travelling to poverty-stricken counties in north China’s Hebei province, it is common to be welcomed by cadres sporting gold jewellery, who will take you to sumptuous banquets in their luxury cars. No-one is more concerned with poverty alleviation than cadres in poor areas, but some seem to aim on getting rich first. They have been known to burst into tears on hearing that their counties are no longer to be classed as “poor”; some will go to any lengths hoping Beijing will keep the title. Clearly these cadres are not really interested in ending poverty. And while the people want to be better-off, but the officials want their hardship to continue, what hope is there of government funds being used efficiently?

Officials also attract investment in the name of poverty relief. In order to increase their tax base they will grant any requests that businesses make, sometimes even portraying local objections as betrayals of the local people – and their factory-building saviours. As a result, polluting industries can move from south to north and from east to west. But how many vulnerable ecosystems have been sacrificed? China’s west is hugely ecologically rich, but development in the east has relied on the west’s water and air, its biodiversity and its energy resources. In losing these precious resources, China ultimately harms itself.

Mismanaged poverty alleviation has given rise to recurring – even worsening – economic hardship, and has caused much environmental damage in poor areas.

Secondly, we must ask who poverty relief has made richer. Cannier business people see both the government determination to tackle poverty and the greed of local government leaders, and build factories in poor areas, knowing it will be welcomed by local officials. They choose poorer areas because their polluting industries are no longer welcome in more developed regions, because preferential policies are in place, because they will have local government support and because the costs of consuming environmental resources are low or non-existent. As a result, vast profits can be made by exploiting local resources. Businesses reach agreements with local governments, who then silence public opposition. Some business leaders even persuade provincial leaders to support projects which result in complete environmental ruin.

Business aims for profit maximisation and a quick return on investments, and will easily forget those in actual need of poverty alleviation. Many government-funded poverty-alleviation projects employ 90% of their workers from other areas, severely limiting their impact on the local economy. Area residents, who 10 years ago hailed a hydroelectric plant for the prosperity it would bring, today are left picking through the plant's garbage.

Projects that do not take the poor into consideration will not help economic rehabilitation; local governments will simply be left to cope with further environmental damage, as already-vulnerable ecosystems are destroyed.

Thirdly, we must ask what role the poor should play in poverty alleviation. Why are some areas still poor, despite almost 60 years of government poverty-relief policies? The problem is that the people’s own initiative has not been brought into play. We think of these places as lacking funds, but what they really lack is skilled people – and not just in terms of technical skills. Those who can move away do not return, leaving nobody to manage the land. Villages in poor areas are mostly populated by older people and women – all the able-bodied young men have gone to work in the cities. And it is not a trend that should be encouraged: migrants to the cities will see the surplus value of their labour enjoyed by others. Poverty relief would be better used to provide opportunities for those who choose to remain in their villages.

Continual changes in land policy have also caused too much uncertainty for people to rely on it for their livelihoods. Agrarian reforms in the early 1950s brought the people and the land together, but this did not last long. The subsequent move towards communes took the land out of their hands and resulted in food shortages. They were only reunited with the land again under the household contract responsibility system, which ensured an adequate food supply. History proves that China's rural residents can only pull themselves out of poverty when they manage their own land.

But the poor do not have control over their land: they have been subordinated to the businesses that aim to profit while paying lip service to poverty relief. Rural residents can sell off their land, trees and wildlife, but it will only leave them poorer. If they owned the land, a larger percentage of the money earned by these businesses would belong to them, and they would not need to sell off their resources. After all, when the environment is already depleted, who will invest?

Poverty has become a kind of resource. There is no shortage of money from national poverty alleviation funds, environmental management funds, disaster relief funds, money for education and for irrigation – not to mention money from NGOs, businesses and individual donations. But the poor themselves have no voice in how the money is spent, and many problems have arisen as a result. A change in the basic methods of poverty relief is needed; it must be questioned how the nation's money can best be spent.

Future poverty relief projects must include the active participation of the poor; they should not simply be implemented by government. The poor need to have a stake in the land, the environment and any projects that are launched in their name. Poverty alleviation policy should be designed to transform what are now passive recipients into stakeholders. This is the only way in which poverty relief can be effective, and the environment in poor areas can be saved from unfettered exploitation.

Homepage photo by Joel Meyerson

Global warming’s local solutions

Gaoming Jiang — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:47:00 +0000

Climate change is real, and fossil fuels are the principal cause. China must end its reliance on coal and shift to small-scale power generation from renewable sources, argues Jiang Gaoming.

This recent winter was one of the mildest China has ever seen. In many cities in the north, temperatures were much higher than usual and not a single snowflake fell. In east China’s Shandong province, as early as Chinese New Year, ears of wheat were becoming visible and willow trees started to turn green.

Global warming is now causing global concern. Scientists, politicians and more responsible businesspeople are searching for ways to reverse the effects of climate change. Richard Branson, a UK business leader, has put up a US$25 million prize for the first scientist to discover a method to remove one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

Scientists are clear on the root cause of global warming: the Industrial Revolution. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently concluded that it is at least 90% certain that human emissions of greenhouse gases are warming the planet’s surface. The extraction and burning of vast quantities of coal, gas and oil; destruction of vegetation in poorer regions of the world; and the reduction of the land's ability to absorb and fix carbon dioxide in many places have all caused this rise in greenhouse gases. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased from around 290 parts per million (ppm) before the Industrial Revolution, to around 380 ppm today. Of all the factors driving this rise, excessive and inefficient use of fossil fuels is the main culprit.

Take China's electricity industry. First developed in 1882, growth was slow until 1949, at which point capacity was only 1.85 gigawatts (GW), with 4.3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) generated. But by 1978, China's capacity was the seventh biggest in the world, and by 2000, China had overtaken France, the UK, Canada, Germany, Russian and Japan and was second only to the US in power generation. Eighty percent of this power is currently generated by burning coal. This caused concern in the past because of the acid rain caused by sulphur dioxide released when coal is burnt. And while this is still a problem, greenhouse gases should really cause alarm. It is now clear: fossil fuels are warming the planet.

The best way of stopping global warming is to gradually reduce the amount of coal and other non-renewable energy sources that we burn. The energy sector needs to adopt renewable sources of power: the use of biomass, methane and solid waste as fuel, small-scale hydroelectric projects, solar power, wind power, geothermal energy and wave power. This multi-faceted approach will allow each region, or even each village, to meet its own power needs, with surplus energy fed back into the power grid – and coal left safely in the ground.

Interest in renewable energy sources is also rising. In 2002, renewable energy use around the world was equal to the power generated by two billion tonnes of coal: 13.4% of the power generated by non-renewable sources. Electricity generated from renewable sources accounted for 17.9% of the total. The European Union now aims to increase the percentage of energy from renewable sources from 6% in 1997 to 12% in 2010, 20% in 2020 and 50% in 2050.

But China's power sector still remains in the coal era. Coal accounts for 60% to 70% of all non-renewable fuel sources, while renewable sources only account for 5% of total power generation. In the case of power shortages, the first solutions to be proposed are always increased fossil-fuel burning or large-scale hydroelectric projects (which are renewable, but have been largely abandoned by developed countries due to their huge environmental impact.) Not enough attention is paid to potential solutions, such as burning straw in rural areas, generating hydroelectricity in China’s west and wind and solar power in the northwest.

Annual straw production in villages in north and central China can be as high as 1,000 tonnes: enough to feed 1,000 head of cattle. These cattle would excrete around 25,000 cubic metres of dung, which produces methane that could generate 350,000 kWh of electricity every year – more than a single village can use, leaving a surplus of power. Even including agricultural uses, a village of about 1,000 people uses less than 60,000 kWh of electricity, meaning that methane production from one village could generate enough power for six villages. If a large number of villages were to establish small-scale methane-burning power projects, the excess power could be sold back to the national grid, which could be an important extra income for rural areas. One farm in Anhui is doing just this with the dung from its cows, and generates 22,000 kWh of electricity from up to 1,000 cubic metres of dung each day.

Similarly, there is great potential for small-scale hydroelectricity projects in the west of China. If the government reallocated funding that goes to large hydroelectric projects and used it to encourage business or individual investment in small-scale plants, local power needs would be met and surplus power could be sold back to the grid. Small-scale hydroelectric schemes provide power, protect the environment and offer locals a new source of income. At present, some are strongly advocating a large-scale hydroelectric plant on the Nu River, but they ignore the huge impact it will have on the environment and a world heritage site – for the sake of corporate profits. The government should take note.

In the cities, waste can be used to generate power. The city of Jinan, in east China, has a 3.5 megawatt power plant that burns methane produced by urban waste, generating 70,000 kWh each day. This is a model that future projects seeking to use urban waste can learn from.

China is the world's most populous developing country, and its government has a leading role to play in combating global warming. Investment in power generation should shift from a few large projects to a large number of small-scale power generation schemes, particularly in rural areas. This would not only meet China’s power demands, but also improve the environment, develop rural economies and help fight global warming.

Stopping the sandstorms

Gaoming Jiang — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:35:00 +0000

Beijing is choking as dust sweeps in from China’s arid, ecologically-degraded west. Jiang Gaoming investigates, and finds that efforts to restore the western grasslands are failing.

In Beijing, the weather forecast says that more sandstorms are on the way. The capital was hit by four sandstorms in March, and even Shanghai was recently smothered by dust clouds from the north. Television reports now describe these events as “sandy weather”, rather than “sandstorms”. But whatever you call them, they are becoming ever more frequent visitors to Beijing in springtime.

While everyone is cursing the weather, I find myself worrying: how many tonnes of soil are being lost? And how long will it be before there is nowhere in China for plants to take root? Academics argue to what extent these sandstorms are “imports” from Mongolia and the former Soviet Republics, or whether they are the “domestic” products of the arid deserts and damaged grasslands of China's west. But either way, there is no denying the degree of environmental degradation in western China over the last three decades. Regardless of whether the capital’s weather comes from beyond its borders, China needs to put measures in place to restore the grasslands and reduce the risk of sandstorms.

Sixty billion yuan has been invested in projects to control the sandstorms that are hitting northeastern China. Tree-planting projects have also been running for 30 years across north China. But why haven't they worked? And more importantly – what will?

To answer this question, let’s first consider the difference between trees and grass. Ecologists look at vegetation in terms of its quantity and the area it covers. In China’s deserts and grasslands, grass is by far the most common form of vegetation, followed by scrub and then trees. On the Xilinguole grasslands, for example, trees account for only 0.87% of the total vegetation. The current strategy – to plant trees to help with problems caused by a lack of grass – contradicts principles of ecological management. In fact, our repeated calls for change have now resulted in more attention being placed on scrub. Scientists agree that millions of years ago these areas were once covered with trees, but this is the distant past – no amount of spending will bring ancient forests back. In fact, grass is much more effective than trees at stopping sandstorms, and it does not need to be planted. Simply protect it, and it will grow. Trees use up groundwater, while grass uses only rainwater. Grass is denser and fixes the soil in place; it also keeps the ground moist by retaining precipitation, meaning there is no dust to blow away – something trees cannot do.

Secondly, we need to consider where we are focusing our sandstorm-control efforts. Currently, our work ends up being concentrated in areas that are easy to reach and monitor: regions that are accessible by road. Lots of money has been spent, with some good results. But nobody asks questions about the very remote, ecologically-degraded areas that are less accessible, but have more responsibility for sandstorms. I once asked a local forestry official why they were not using aerial sowing techniques to rehabilitate these areas. His answer was simple: “Who would notice?” Current schemes are designed to be seen by the officials who approve their funding. Do not get too excited by those recovered grasslands and forests you see alongside the highways; they only cover 10% of the total affected area. The other 90% causes the continuing sandstorms.

Thirdly, we need to look at the relationship between man and nature. Arid and semi-arid areas can only support one or two people per square kilometre. In China, population density in these areas is over 10 people per square kilometre. The original inhabitants were nomadic, and would move in search of grass and water, giving the grasslands a chance to recover. But now they have settled, increasing the pressure on the environment – and inevitably damaging it. Measures are needed to move this scattered population into towns and cities; funds for ecological management should be used to this end.

Fourthly, we must reconsider the relationship between ecological management and poverty relief. Sandstorms are caused by the consumption of grass by livestock, by the clearing of grasslands for crops and by deforestation. At present, sandstorm-control programmes have little regard for the lives of local people. The money that is being spent brings them scant benefit, and only helps the people that receive the funding directly. My rough calculations show that spending on major sandstorm control projects amounts to around 326 yuan (US$42) per mu (666.67 square metres). In the south of Inner Mongolia that works out to almost 500,000 yuan (around US$64,705) per household. If as little as one-tenth of that figure was actually spent on getting the locals to give up their livestock and plant trees, there would be no danger of sandstorms. And the locals would still end up better off – at present, none of this funding reaches them, and most struggle to earn 10,000 yuan (US$1,294) per year. In one part of Inner Mongolia, a fortune has been spent on restoring the grasslands, but no one can come up with the 10,000 yuan needed to retain it.

Finally, we need to ask questions about the relationship between China’s east and west. At present, much of China's livestock is in the west, in ecologically-vulnerable areas such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. Ideally, these animals would eat straw, which is a by-product of agriculture. But all of the straw is in the east, in provinces such as Shandong, Henan and Hebei, which have a far greater production capacity for animal fodder than the grasslands – 50 to 100 times greater, in fact. This holds back the development of livestock farming. Straw in the east is simply burnt off, while degraded ecosystems in the west struggle to support livestock. The largest source of income for the west is funding for reforestation and environmental protection projects, with highly marked-up animal products coming second. These products cost five to 10 times as much to produce than they would in agricultural areas with better conditions. China’s west should not develop its animal farming further, or sooner or later the grasslands will be grazed bare, leaving the rest of the country to pick up the bill for its recovery.

Can China stop the sandstorms? If we do not take heed, maybe not. Of course, it may not be too long before all the soil is blown away. That would put an end to the capital’s sandstorms, but it might also put an end to Beijing.

Homepage photo by Ben