Week 10: Environmental Health

This week’s topic of environmental health in China was more discussion-based than previous weeks and thus we were able to draw out several themes from the presentations. These themes included rural-urban disparities in health and health care and the burden of chronic disease in China. We began with a very brief overview of the Chinese health care system, then discussed common pollutants in China and their effects on human health. We very roughly divided our presentations by water versus air pollution. Sulfur dioxide, acid rain, and cancer were three topics that we explored more in depth.

The gap between quality of life in rural and urban areas is a topic that has been discussed throughout our course, but in this class we examined disparities in health. In 2005, the New Rural Co-operative Medical Care System provided more affordable health care for rural inhabitants, but also gave steeper discounts for people who elected to go to clinics in rural areas. This discourages rural residents from seeking care in urban hospitals, which often have better resources and can provide better care. Additionally, rural industry, because it is often subject to fewer enforced regulations than urban industry, generates rampant pollution in the countryside. Rural residents often are forced to tolerate exposure to pollutants because they depend on the factories for the livelihoods. Additionally, because fewer epidemiological and medical surveys are conducted in rural areas, it is difficult to quantify location-based differences in health.

Interestingly, China is more like a developed country in the sense that chronic disease is the most common cause of death. Developing country problems like water-borne diarrheal diseases are in fact relatively scarce, even in the sub-tropical regions of southern China. Disease is still a huge problem in rural areas, but it seems to stem from different sources that one would expect, Pollution is obviously a key factor in chronic disease, and particulate matter is the largest contributor to chronic respiratory diseases. Water and air pollution are difficult to control, and several maps we examined in class displayed pollution’s indiscriminate crossing of borders in China, even traveling to Japan and Los Angeles. Cancer is a growing problem in China, evidenced by the expose on “cancer villages” by a Chinese investigative journalist and the growing number of epidemiological studies on this subject. Will China follow the Kuznets Curve and drive back disease as income steadily grows? Professor Karp pointed out that as China adopts Western eating habits, chronic cardiovascular disease and obesity may emerge as new killers. The fact that chronic disease and cancer are already prevalent in still-developing China does not seem to bode well for future epidemiology, as cancer and other such diseases are often slow to emerge, only appearing decades after an exposure. What will the epidemiology of cancer in China look like in 50 years?

Powerpoint

Week 9: Urbanization

Urbanization in China is a fascinating topic with respect to environmental protection for reasons. On one hand, urbanization is considered by Chinese government as part of the solution for environmental degradation because of the low ecological footprint of urban citizen, which is argued by some scholars. The recent Shanghai Expo expresses the message of building green cities. On the other hand, as we have seen in this lecture, urbanization is accountable for some of the environmental problems in China. The fact that urbanization is a double-edge sword makes it a particularly interesting issue to discuss in this class.

Although China has the largest urban population in the world, its urbanization level is actually lower than the world average. However, it is urbanization level is growing at a rapid pace, from lower than 20% in 1978 to more than 40% today, and it is expected to continue at this rate for the next few decades. However, internal migration is China is limited because of the hukou system that binds individual to his/her birth place. This has several important implications on the characteristics of China's urbanization, and it leads to some social problems in China such as the discrimination against migrant worker in cities.

Urbanization is most dramatic in the region that is also the agricultural base in China. As a consequence, growing cities are eating up farm land around them, exerting a big pressure on agricultural land in China, which is already a scarce resource as we have discussed in previous lectures. Chen's paper offers a good look on this issue. The paper also elaborate on the abuse of land in the process of urbanization, which is evident in the comparison between development area and old town. The characters of those development areas seem to suggest that China is implementing the US model in building new cities, which can be an interesting hypothesis for future studies.

In my lecture I tie up our reading with some background information on land management in China because of its high relevance for our discussion. The discussion on land property in China is of great importance, especially in a comparison between China and the US. The Land Administration Law is the most important central policy on land management, and it reveals how cities in China actually acquire land from its rural surroundings. An overview on the LAL also reflects upon some of the themes we have observed again and again in the course, such as the conflict in interests between the central government and local governments, the lack of an independent legal system, and the widespread existence of government failure.

Slides: http://groups.google.com/group/chinaenvirogisp/web/Urbanization and Land Management in China.ppt

Week 8: Water Pollution

Water has been the hot topic for the past couple weeks (accordingly so as both Weeks 7 & 8 focus on water issues in China), and it continued this week with a conversation on water pollution. Water was one of the first resources protected in modern Chinese environmental legislation, yet this early acknowledgment by the Chinese government of the importance of water plays against an astonishing irony at how bad the overall quality of water is in contemporary China. Week 8 addressed this water pollution problem.

With my presentation focusing on the current and future management practices for water pollution, I built upon last week's World Bank paper on the world's water and then added to that papers from Greenpeace China and the Wilson Institute.

The World Bank stated that the lack of transparency and public participation remain issues that are not helping abate water pollution. This is especially true for China, whose governments are quite reluctant to pubicly release water resource and pollution information. Perhaps in part due to such hush efforts, the Chinese public have not really participated in addressing water pollution issues and participation remains low.

Greenpeace China has an excellent report on water pollution in the Pearl River Delta, "Poisoning the Pearl". Detailing the structure of water pollution standards in China, Greenpeace China found that the current Chinese water pollution regulatory framework fails to regulate many hazardous pollutants, whose concentrations need not be large to affect ecosystems. The enforcement of those laws that do remain is not effective. Finally, the "end-of-pipe" solutions that the Chinese government has in place to address water pollution are backwards, expensive, and ineffective. In conclusion, Greenpeace China recommended a holistic approach to combating water pollution and suggested an entire lifecycle approach beginning with the manufacture of products and pointed to the 2002 Cleaner Production Promotion Law written by the Chinese legislature as a great step towards this holistic thinking.

Finally the Wilson Institute paper on China's water pollution laws mentioned legislative compromises that have hurt China's ability to fight its water pollution in its 2008 Water Pollution Control Law as a "result of compromise with other ministries and the business community". The compromise in question was dropping the very effective "penalty per day" for continuing violations. Though a step in the right direction, the law will not be revised again for at least another eight to ten years.

Week 8.ppt

Week 8 Response: Water Pollution

What industries and infrastructures have led to dire water pollution concerns across China? Last week’s discussion on water resources naturally delved into pollution issues, covering broad concerns and nationwide pollution statistics. This week our discussion aimed to study water pollution in China in more depth, analyzing pollution regulations and examining the problem from a case-study perspective. After an overview of water pollution regulation in China, we focused on three case studies in order to analyze the root causes of water pollution: aquaculture, e-waste, and the pollution of Lake Tai.

China’s environmental concerns began to emerge on a national scale not long after the Reform and Opening Up in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. In order to cope with the environmental consequences of modernization, China needed to adopt a new regulatory system and create an infrastructure to handle rampant pollution and environmental degradation. Along with industrialization, the Reform brought along an influx of Western ideologies, from capitalism to democracy. The environmental regulatory framework that began to emerge in China in the 1990’s was largely based on Western environmental policies. But the question remains – are these Western policies suitable for China’s environmental problems? Does their translation into the Chinese governmental system decrease their efficacy? What role do regulation and infrastructure play in determining environmental problems like water pollution?

Studying e-waste in China is an excellent way to examine these questions. E-waste export is a modern phenomenon, and e-waste recycling has emerged as a highly lucrative and informal industry in China. E-waste recycling in China is a point source of water pollution, from leaching of toxics in the recycled parts to ash from the burning of the electronics. E-waste is extremely difficult to regulate in China, despite recent efforts of Chinese ministries and even international laws such as the Basel Amendment, due to the irresistible combination of cheap labor and high demand. One large ideological obstacle is that Western-style regulatory policies in China do not incorporate Chinese views on e-waste. Chinese people tend to view e-waste as a resource rather than true waste – recycling rates are low in China because people are reluctant to pay for a recycling service when it seems to them that they should be paid for their valuable recyclable waste. Recent policies such as the Technical Policy on Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment (2006) adopt a Western view of e-waste and overlook its value as a commodity in China’s lucrative e-waste recycling market.

Aquaculture is another large industry in China that has a significant impact on water pollution. China provides 70% of the world’s aquaculture products, and demand for Chinese aquaculture will continue to increase as depletion of marine fisheries continues. During the discussion, I mentioned that I believed aquaculture may have a greater potential for effective regulation and improved environmental standards than many other polluting industries in China. International markets place pressure on China to produce clean and uncontaminated fish – the US FDA annually rejects hundreds of shipments from China due to pharmaceutical contamination. China also places an emphasis on technological improvement of aquaculture. The Fisheries Bureau in China works with several supporting institutes to encourage research and innovation in the field of aquaculture, providing a framework for industry improvement. Additionally, aquaculture in rural China is managed through a collective system that also leaves room for privatization, a flexible hybrid of management that allows maximal benefit to rural communities through. Aquaculture not only brings jobs and money to rural regions, but also provides an important source of protein, which is often very difficult to obtain in rural areas.

Our class began and ended with a discussion of research integrity in China. We looked over a New York Times article, “Rampant Fraud Threat to China’s Brisk Ascent”, that succinctly addressed China’s status in the international academic arena. Given that many of our sources for this class are from Chinese institutions, the class must be careful to assess each reading and understand the goals of the institutions from which they were produced. For example, the article on Lake Tai from this week’s reading contrasted with other prominent international opinions on the serious pollution of Lake Tai. The Chinese article promoted increased public education and eco-tourism as a way to protect Lake Tai, while international papers tend to emphasize market-based solutions and institutional reform, highly Western ideas that do not necessarily align with Chinese regulatory ideals. This week, analyzing water pollution through case studies provided critical insight on the ideologies and infrastructures in China that play a role in regulating pollution.

Powerpoint

Week 7: Water Resources

China's Water Resources

Is the liquid gold of the future not the poisonous sheen of oil but instead the promise of pure, potable water? Much of the world currently faces water scarcity to some degree – in fact, one out three¹ people worldwide – and with the uncertainties of the future, such as climate change, urbanization, and the ever-growing population, the possibility that water shortage will be exacerbated into a crisis is real. This week, we discussed China’s water resource situation in depth. China is potentially “ahead of the game” when it comes to a water crisis: some have been hailing the water resource situation of Northern China as a serious problem since the 1990’s. “Water scarcity” is defined as less than 1000m³/year per capita; Northern China has barely 757m³/year per capita, and in some parts, as low as 300m³/year per capita. However, the true scarcity of China’s water resources is reflected by more than these numbers. Other factors affect the water that is truly available for human usage: water quality, access to water, rights to water, et cetera.

In class, we examined both some of these drivers of scarcity and the effects that they are having in China. For my presentation, I tried to categorize the drivers into primarily into natural and human-related. I believe that there are several ultimate human-related drivers: economic growth, population growth, industrialization, and urbanization. These lead to the prominent proximate driver: increased demand for water. Poor management, or ineffective management is another human-related factor driving the scarcity of water in China that is extremely important and perhaps in a classification all of its own. Despite this attempt to separate causes, I find that the interactions of the effects start to make it a superfluous exercise. Natural drivers of scarcity include the natural distribution and availability of water across the geographic landscape in China, which is extremely variable in both time and space. China includes both deserts and areas of high rainfall as well as being subject monsoon periodicities on both annual and interannual time scales. Yet these natural cycles are changing. The very recent Piao et al (2010) article in Nature that we read attempted to predict the future of the water availability for China’s future in a warming climate. I was disappointed by the lack of conclusive statements that they made, yet skeptical that they could draft any reasonable predictions, given the ways that the Chinese are currently altering the natural hydrology of their landscape. We have talked about a few examples of this: the 3 Gorges Dam, groundwater withdrawal compacting aquifers, even the South-to-North transfer of water or the city of Harbin seeking a new water source geographically farther away than the Songhua river. All of these complicate the predictions of how water will be available across China.

Considering the complications involved with sorting out causes, I will turn instead towards our discussion of potential solutions. How is China going to move towards a future of water management? Some things about the Chinese water resources have changed in ways that may be irreversible, such as the construction of the 3 Gorges Dam, and what is actually important is now how China proceeds forward. The World Bank proposes that China’s government performs an extensive overhaul on the management system and philosophy within the country. Water governance, like other environmental policy, is decided on national levels and left to local bodies to be implemented and enforced. However, a single water source may end up under the jurisdiction of multiple ministerial bodies. Clearing up the bureaucratic uncertainties with a more streamlined protocol would improve the ability of China’s government to meet its goals regarding water management. Additionally, the current spatial scale of administration may be inappropriate and more consideration of river-basin scale management is required. These suggestions from the World Bank are easy for us to agree with. However, other suggestions offered for improvement are more controversial. Is a water privatization system (as proposed by the World Bank) the best way to proceed to increase efficiency of water usages, decrease demand, encourage improvements of water-related infrastructure and reduce pollution? Or can the Chinese government make better choices with enforcement of the current system of “command-and-control”?

Unfortunately, our class is far from having the answers to the above questions. Instead, our limited discussions of national problems and policies as well as the case studies that we broached have only just gotten our feet wet, so to speak. Wumeng’s current event topic today, pollution in the Songhua river, was an excellent way to review many of the issues we discussed yesterday. The Songhua river is the major water source of three northern provinces in China, yet pollution has been making it a less available water resource. In class, we watched a CCTV news report on the issue and how, despite the severity, the government was stepping in to fix it. Not only is greater pollution of small (likely TVE) industries going to be curbed, but the city of Harbin is creating access to a purer, but more remote water source. Fixes that, looking at the state of the river and the drinking water supply today, have not been as successful as the government or the people would have hoped for. Additionally, this issue brushed upon the international affairs associated with water politics as the Songhua river leads into Russian territory. Clearly, the current methods are not as effective as they need to be to really solve these problems and change is required. But to what extent should China maintain its’ strong governmental control and to what extent should it allow other forces, such as NGO’s or market-based strategies, to enact change?

¹ World Health Organization. Accessed Oct 19, 2010. http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/water/water_facts/en/index.html

Week 6: Sustainable Agriculture

Ecological Agriculture, Green Food, and Organic Agriculture in China

This week in class we talked about sustainable agriculture: what it means in China, how the Chinese are implementing or working on creating a more sustainable food supply, as well as its position in the hierarchy of environmental issues. I mainly talked about Richard Sanders’s article, “A Market Road to Sustainable Agriculture?” and made some additional notations, while Vishal discussed a couple of the other articles. Unfortunately, we did not get around to the posing or discussion of many questions this week, but I will here summarize the main thrust of what I covered in class, as well as some issues that arose that relate to our course in general.

Richard Sanders points out that the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, such as the Household Responsibility System (in which farmers have land use rights but not ownership), led to a more polluted environment in many regions, especially in rural areas (thereby affecting the state of cultivated or arable land). For instance, as land was deserted or neglected by farmers—who now had the choice of what to do with their land—going to work in the growing number of factories, the importation of chemicals into the countryside to make up for the lost labour (both in terms of hours put into the land, as well as in term of pairs of hands) increased. Like in many of the environmental histories we’ve discussed so far in our class, in the case of agriculture, modifications that led to the diminishment of poverty also led to the degradation of natural resources: up until 2003 (the last year of values given in the article) and likely after, the amount and proportion of chemical fertilizers applied to farmland continually and rapidly increased. And in the decade prior to 2003, this increase was accompanied by almost no change in the grain yields and a decrease grain harvest per ton of chemical fertilizer! China has an addiction to chemical inputs for agriculture, much greater than that the US or the world average (in 1997, China applied an average of 271kg of fertilizer per hectare of land, whereas the US applied 111kg and the world averaged 94kg [see Gale table in slideshow]). China has been working to combat this excessive and improper use of chemicals in agriculture since the late 1970s through a series of government programs of varying success. The most popular program thus far, though—the Ministry of Agriculture Green Food initiative of AA standard—allows for the restricted use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Full organic has barely made a dent in the total hectares cultivated in China (see “Current Situation” slide in slideshow), and the organizations charged with promoting organic or even “impure” organic are tiny (ex. the China Organic Food Development Centre [OFDC], relegated the leading role for the development of organic agriculture, had a staff of 15 in 2002).

Sanders recommends continued institutional support of organic in China, but is the support in the manner China is currently providing enough? Should the government increase its aid, or does the government have bigger fish to fry and need to pursue the resolution or amelioration of other pressing concerns before organic? Is organic really even a viable option, or should the government concentrate more on just diminishing the rampant overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides? These questions are hard to answer, but the fact that the market for full organic in China is so small (due to per capita average incomes and an improving environmental consciousness but one that remains without an organized movement) suggests that affluence in China needs to increase before organic can really be economically viable by itself (most full organic in China is exported, but if growers/processors/enterprises were able to make a profit domestically there would be more of a financial incentive). And if China wishes to move closer to organic or at least have a few more Mha that don’t put the same amount of stress on the environment, soil that most farmers currently are putting on the land, the government probably needs to find some way to pump up backing.

Week 5: Transportation in China

This week's focus is on Industry & Transportation in China. As Wumeng has covered the Industrial Pollution half, I have covered the Transporation half. My presentation focused mainly on readings from Personal Cars and China and Zhao's "Whither the Car? China's Automobile Industry and Cleaner Vehicle Technologies."

Cars, cars, everywhere! Traffic jams abound on China's roads, even as those roads' construction encroach upon agricultural lands. Rising levels of smog in urban centers expose its urban populations to ever more pollution. Yet the Chinese appetite for cars and other motor vehicles continues to grow. As such, the increasing ownership and use of motorized vehicles in China hold multiple societal and environmental implications that transcend not only its urban locales but also its national borders.

Our selections from Personal Cars and China had much to say on the general impact of motorized vehicle emissions on the environment and on people's health. Generally, motorized vehicle emissions are a major contributor to air pollutants and air toxics and in some cases, such as for carbon monoxide, are the dominant source. It is troubling that over 7 different types of major air pollutants and over 4 different types of air toxics come from motor vehicle emissions. The health effect of these pollutants and toxics is highly significant to the urban populations that are exposed to these emissions, though understanding these effects is still complicated and not yet fully understood. What is understood is that groups at risk include the elderly, asthmatics, children, and people with preexisting heart disease. As environmental health is covered in Week 10: Pollution's Effect on Environmental Health, this is enough for now on general health.

Of the air pollutants which vehicle emissions are a major contributor, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have another tremendous impact: that on climate change. Globally, 17% of carbon dioxide emissions are attributable to transportation. For China specifically, Keith Bradsher from the New York Times writes that "the International Energy Agency predicts that the increase in greenhouse gas emission from 2000 to 2030 in China alone will nearly equal the increase in the rest of the world." These figures don't seem that far off considering China's current very low per capita vehicle to people ratio, which stood at 21 vehicles/thousand people in 2004. As such, there is far more room for growth for Chinese people to buy and drive cars. Going along with Bradsher's predictions, if there were parity in China's vehicle ownership per capita with the US's current vehicle ownership per capita, China's demand for oil would exceed worldwide production by 18%.

China's growing transportation sector also impacts the consumption of resources (steel, rubber, plastics, etc.) required to manufacture vehicles and the construction of roads and the subsequent land lost for agricultural land use purposes.

Unfortunately there was not much time for discussion as time was a bit packed, but it was fortunate for us to have Timmons' give a guest lecture along with updates on the international climate change scene from a legislative and cooperative standpoint.

Week 5: Transportation.ppt