China: The World's Largest Polluter

POLLUTION:CHINA'S REMARKABLE economic rise over the past 30 years has come at an alarming price in environmental terms, but the world's fastest-growing major economy is working hard to clean up the devastating pollution of its rivers, lakes and skies.

As became apparent at the failed Copenhagen climate summit, China is not only an economic powerhouse, its now the world’s largest polluter, emitting more carbon than the United States, from whom it assumed the mantle in 2007. The country is forced to live with the consequences of rapid industrialisation, most of it driven by burning fossil fuels.

The skies of its cities are white with hazy pollution, typhoons are worsening, deserts creep ever closer to the cities and farmlands. In Beijing and Shanghai, pollution-related poor visibility forces the airports to close and, at times, you cannot see across the other side of the street because the pollution is so bad.

By some estimates, only 1 per cent of China’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air that would pass European Union safety standards.

Environmentalists say the most pressing pollution problem is water pollution – 70 per cent of the country’s rivers, lakes and reservoirs are not safe for humans to use.

According to the most recent National Environmental Situation Report from the country’s ministry of environmental protection, about 45 per cent of China’s river water is polluted and, of this, 21 per cent is heavily polluted. Some 40 per cent of the lakes monitored are heavily polluted. The culprits are industrial effluent, urban sewage and agricultural run-off. However, Beijing seems more serious than ever before about addressing the problem of pollution.

There has been a lot of focus on China’s pledge to cut the intensity of carbon emissions per unit of its GDP in 2020 by 40 to 45 per cent against 2005 levels. The Chinese government’s Herculean effort to redirect the country’s economy towards a more balanced, sustainable and environmentally-friendly model is one of the most significant environmental events currently happening on the world stage, said Ma Tianjie, senior toxics campaigner for Greenpeace.

Huge wind farms are appearing on the vast open stretches of land in Xinjiang province.

In December, Chinese solar cell maker Solarfun announced it was building a 100-megawatt solar power plant in Jiayuguan City in Gansu. There is a growing focus on largescale hydropower. The Chinese government is investing a huge amount of resources to tackle pollution problems in China. In 2006, it spent 1.22 per cent of GDP in investments to control pollution. Binding reduction targets have been included in the central government’s 11th five-year plan to control the discharges of key water pollutants, such as chemical oxygen demand (COD) and sulphur dioxide.

China’s vice-minister of environmental protection Li Ganjie said in December that if it achieves a reduction in these pollutants, this would result in a reduction of 250 million tons in carbon dioxide emissions.

Energy and industrial restructuring is a major method for coordinated efforts on pollution and greenhouse gas control, Li told the Xinhua news agency.

In 2008, China’s discharge volume of COD and sulphur dioxide was down by 6.61 per cent and 8.95 per cent respectively from the previous year. In the first half of 2009, the discharge volume of the two pollutants posted a fall of 2.46 per cent and 5.4 per cent respectively from the same period of 2008.

That has laid a solid foundation for achieving the pollution reduction targets set in the five-year plan, said Li.

Wang Yongchen, one of China’s most famous environmental activists, is a senior environment reporter for China National Radio and founder of Green Earth Volunteers, a Chinese environmental NGO, as well as a contributor to Isabel Hilton’s online environmental publication China Dialogue. She came to fame when she organised a high-profile campaign to stop dam projects on the Nu River.

Wang sees the task of combating pollution in China as a largely collaborative effort.

“I am optimistic about China’s environment future, but dealing with pollution and reducing emissions requires the involvement of government policy, the efforts of NGOs, expert involvement in the form of technology, for the people to get involved and the media to give it coverage,” says Wang.

“I am confident that with all sides’ active participation and efforts, China can address its pollution problems.

“As it stands, China is not leading the world in combating pollution. But people need to look to their own situation around them. For instance, we don’t have to change a plate for a new course during dinner. Reducing the rate of changing plates, using less washing-up liquid, these are all little measures we can take for our environment,” she says.

These targets are distributed in every province and municipality, which in turn allocates them to individual industrial sources. Also, a large number of urban sewage treatment facilities are being constructed to deal with rampant water pollution.

“In the past several years, thousands of inefficient, highly polluting industrial facilities in sectors such as iron and steel, cement and electricity were shut down,” says Ma Tianjie. “The heavy metal industry, which caused serious pollution incidents this year, is undergoing major restructuring. Actions on such a massive scale are largely unseen in other countries.”

The reasons for China choosing to try to stop pollution are largely pragmatic.

For example, China has been aggressive in backing renewable energies because the price of oil and coal is prone to spiking. If sustainable energy can be produced in a cost-effective way, the government will happily back it, and the central government has set a target of generating 15 per cent of all electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

China is keen to reduce its dependence on coal, which currently accounts for 69 per cent of the primary energy in China – 42 per cent higher than the world’s average.

Huang Min, founder of the Himin Solar Energy Group in Dezhou, used to work in the oil business but since his conversion to the benefits of renewable energies, he is on a quest to convince his fellow Chinese and the broader international community of the need to go green in China. “All companies and all provinces in China must pay attention from now on,” says Huang. “China is not going to be focused just on GDP, but also on GDP and saving energy and reduction emission.”

While the government and the private sector are committed to curbing pollution, there are challenges to implementing the rules. Law enforcement on a local level is often challenging. In Chinese there is a saying: the mountains are high and the emperor is far away. While the central government puts emphasis on environmental protection and a more developed balanced development model, implementation of such policies on the local level is often weak.

Local environmental protection bureaus often lack the capacity and resources to conduct routine monitoring and inspection of pollution sources. Intervention by local governments, which remain focused on economic growth at all costs and bringing in revenues, also weakens environmental law enforcement.

And there is a problem when the polluters do not disclose information, making it difficult for local polluters to protect themselves against pollution, says Greenpeace. “Without the pollution information, it is hard for them to monitor local polluters and keep them accountable for what they are discharging,” says Ma.

When Greenpeace examined some of the China’s biggest companies, belonging to the elite groupings of Fortune 500 or Fortune China 100 firms, they found many were ignoring requirements on publishing pollution data. Among the companies on the list were international firms such as Shell and Nestlé, while China’s top firms such as Sinopec, Aluminum Corporation of China and Dongfeng Automobile were also on their list.

That said, China has made some remarkable advances in monitoring the polluters and shutting them down. In July, China’s environmental watchdog blacklisted eight cities for outdated sulphur removal processes at municipal sewage treatment plants and five power plants for fabricating smoke-gas monitoring data.

The eight cities were banned from any new construction projects that produce COD or sulphur dioxide unless they show significant advances in fixing the problem, a sign the government is prepared to back the rules with enforcement.

CHINA - THE FACTS

- Chinese energy supply creates 25 per cent more emissions per energy unit than the US

- China's carbon intensity per GDP is 20 per cent higher than the US

- From 1991 to 2002, China reduced its CO2 emissions per unit of GDP twice as fast as the US. Between 2002 and 2006, this trend reversed but China still reduced its economy's carbon intensity faster than the US between 1991 and 2006

- China has set national goals for renewable energy (15 per cent by 2020) but the US has not set renewable energy targets at Federal level. Instead, 28 states have set renewable portfolio standards with variable levels and target years

- Chinese fuel economy standards are significantly stricter than those of the US. Chinese cars have already reached the level of efficiency the US aims to achieve by 2016, under president Barack Obama's newly established fuel economy standards

- China has directed a bigger share of its stimulus money into green jobs and clean tech industry development

- The Chinese government tends discuss emissions in terms of per capita emissions

- In 2007, CO2 emissions per person in the US were almost four times higher than China in the energy industry sectors

- US citizens have six times more cars per person than China

- The US has emitted seven times more CO2 emissions per person than China since 1990

- The US ranks 12th in the global human development index; China ranks 81st

- The purchasing power of a Chinese citizen's income is, on average, 12.8 per cent of that of a US citizen

- In 2008 the US had almost eight times higher GDP per capita compared to China