t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Thursday 21 June 2007
The laminated paper cups for drinking water at the Beijing airport do not quite prepare you for the green revolution that China is definitely attempting, even if some may charge it with diluting its red one.
And use of plastic is not the only environment-unfriendly practice that the country is trying to curb. From carbon emissions to contaminated rivers, from fertilized desert land to a futuristic eco-city - there is no escaping images and illustrations of the environmentalist theme for any visitor to China, still an enigma to much of the world.
Going to my hotel from the airport (which won't accept the white Styrofoam water cups as an excuse for really eco-friendly receptacles) on June 6, I was greeted by a copy of the China Daily in my room, with the top front-page headline hailing the Chinese announcement of an "action plan to curb carbon emissions." There was no mistaking the official importance attached to the announcement, which came on the eve of the G-8 meeting in Berlin with climate change as a conspicuous item on its agenda.
The eight-point action plan, called the National Climate Change Program, is Beijing's answer to criticism from the developed West that the Asian giant, pursuing a path of rapid economic growth, is refusing cooperation against the climate threat. The Chinese non-cooperation, say the critics, makes the next stage of international action against global warming a nearly insuperable challenge.
Beijing, for its part, claims two merits in particular for its program. It has repeatedly stressed, through the Chinese media addressing millions, that this is the first program of its kind to have emanated from a developing country. It has also continued to point with pride to the concrete targets of the program, to be achieved in specified terms.
The program begins with the disarming admission that China is the world's second largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG), releasing a billowing 5.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2004. Chinese officials are at pains to attribute this to the size of the country's population and asks one to remember that the per capita carbon emission there is only one-fifth of the figure for the US. Even so, Chinese officials say China is ready to curb this unwelcome after-effect of its economic recovery and rise at a phenomenal rate.
The ambitious objective of the program is to reduce the emissions by about one-fifth of this record level in just three years from now. Diversification of energy sources and improvements in fuel efficiency are among the methods listed in the program to achieve a cut of 950 million tonnes in GHG emissions by 2010. China's declared aim is to cut its carbon emission per unit of GDP by 40 percent in 2010 down from 2,000 and by a whopping 80 percent in 2050 down from 2,000.
Persistent Western critics, speaking particularly for Washington, prefer to see the objectives as more unrealistic than ambitious and to attribute the program to an ulterior motive. As they project it, the Chinese made a "unilateral" announcement of the program mainly to avoid a commitment to any concerted international action on climate change.
Special objection has been taken to a statement by China's minister in charge of the State Development and Reforms Commission, Ma Kai, at a media conference in Beijing on June 5. Said Ma: "From the start of the Industrial Revolution in Europe to 1950, 95 percent of the world's carbon emissions came from developed countries. Advanced countries again accounted for 77 percent of the GHG emissions from 1950 to 2002. They have, therefore, the undeniable responsibility for the emissions."
Western analysts have interpreted this statement of a historical fact as a stand against any action by developing countries until there is clear evidence of the developed states, especially the US, moving first. One is never told why exactly this stand is extremely illogical and indefensible.
It is not only in the developed West, however, that doubts are raised about the Chinese plan. Those with some idea of the place for corporates and transnationals in the country's economic program may share some skepticism about the smooth implementation of the eco-plan.
Will the private players agree to bear their inevitable share of the costs? Ma has also talked of the need for fresh Chinese legislation to make the plan work. An idea of the likely response from the corporates, especially foreign, to such an initiative can be had from their obstreperous reaction to a draft Chinese law for special economic zones of their operation. (We will revert to the subject in one of this series of articles based on a 10-day China tour.)
It would be difficult, however, for any unprejudiced visitor to dismiss the plan as mere window-dressing for the outside world. It is hard to see China's current ecological concerns as only an extension of its external policy - such as the one expressed, for a striking example, in its blueprint for an eco-city.
Dongtan, to be built near Shanghai ("a Tokyo on Chinese territory" as a Western tourist put it), represents a major, mega-budget attempt at eco-conscious reurbanization. It is being built on Chongming Island, created by the silting of the Yangtze river, three kilometers from a marshy bird sanctuary known mainly for its black-faced spoonbills. A declared aim of Dongtan, being built with the collaboration of the UK's Arup Urban design, is to generate zero carbon emissions and to cut average energy demands by two-thirds. The new city will boast of an "energy center", which will cope with fuel needs from wind turbines, biofuels and recycled organic material. Much of Dongtan's waste will be reused, and human sewage will be processed for irrigation and composting.
Urban designer Braulio Morera, of the Arup team, has been quoted as saying: "We don't want to replicate a European city in China, or create an alienating futuristic environment. We want to reinterpret a Chinese city - and Chinese urban lifestyle - for the 21st century."
Bicycles, which still dominate the Beijing roadscape (with students and young office-goers apparently preferring them to a proliferating variety of automobiles), for example, will be a major feature of Dontan as well. But the vehicles will be powered by renewables. The eco-city will also have boats, powered by hydrogen.
The new ecological vision is being carried to villages too. The greening of the desert is an important part of a major project to resettle victims of recurring droughts in the Western province of Ningxia with a 30 percent Muslim population. We will return to have a closer look at the resettlement colony on the sandy banks of the Yellow River in the province bordering Mongolia. What may be noted here is the ecological enhancement of the unpromising terrain, achieved by an import of good earth, coaxing marketable crops of watermelons and grapes out of it.
The greening of the desert on a greater scale has been undertaken in inner Mongolia. The objective of a $7.7 million joint China-South Korean project here will be nothing less than to build a Green Great Wall, a bio-shield against raging yellow dust storms.
Eco-protection, the authorities are discovering, has to be extended to lush green regions of China as well. Just as I was leaving China, came the news that five officials had been handed punishments of varying degrees of harshness for a serious ecological offense.
The Taibu Lake, close to Shanghai, had undergone what the Chinese media called, an "algae crisis". With the lake (a home to lilies, water chestnuts and its own specific forms of aquatic life) covered by blue-green algae, the people of the area had been denied drinking water supplies for a whole week. The officials were punished for not stopping private firms from discharging their untreated sewage into the lake and causing the crisis.
The Chinese air passengers may be game for struggling with laminated paper water cups for the sake of a green China. Whether the capitalists, whom officials in China today prefer to call "private entrepreneurs", will extend similar cooperation remains to be seen.
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