(October 4, 2011) Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent, by James Boyce and Leonce Ndikumana.
Africa’s odious debts: a new book reveals links between foreign loans and capital flight
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Chinese activists protest secret arrest law
The wife of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, whose detention sparked an international outcry, has urged lawmakers to reject draft legislation that would cement in law police powers to hold dissidents in secret locations without telling their families. And Hu Jia, recently released from imprisonment on charges of subversion, has called for the “KGB secret police-style Red Terror methods” to be rejected.
China’s biggest relocation project yet: GlobalPost
A massive forced relocation is underway in Shaanxi: 3 million residents – double the number displaced by the Three Gorges Dam – will be moved from mountains and farming villages, in part, to make way for China’s South-North Water Diversion Project, reports Kathleen E. McLaughlin at GlobalPost. Migrants don’t even get full compensation for their lost homes. Instead, they’re only given about 10% of the cost – and forced to make up the rest by taking out government loans.
The UN’s Clean Development Mechanism ‘show’
The UN’s “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM), which was essentially a fig leaf for wealth transfers from industrialized nations to poor developing nations, isn’t working according to plan.
Liu Zhi: “Chaos reigns in China’s river valleys”
(September 29, 2011) Liu Zhi from the Beijing-based Transition Institute looks at China’s costly and chaotic dam-building spree, and the legal and economic reasons behind the bad investments.
Carbon credits and fraud: indifference keeps this pair keen
(September 29, 2011) This opinion piece by Viv Forbes of Australia’s Carbon Sense Coalition gets to the heart of the carbon market dilemma and its intrinsic vulnerability to fraud: essentially, no one cares. The carbon credit buyer wants “the bit of paper which allows him to keep operating” and the seller “just wants the money,” and anyone who should be monitoring for scammers doesn’t want to look too closely: they want the money, too.
Shale gas in China
(September 28, 2011) Shale gas is a burgeoning (if controversial) industry in the United States, but in China, which may have reserves to rival the U.S., development is only beginning. Liu Zhi, of Beijing’s Transition Institute, discusses the potential and the problems of China’s shale gas industry.
China to build sixty new hydro projects in five years
An article by China Energy News Net reveals that China’s next Five-Year Plan will put huge emphasis on hydropower, with plans to build major projects on most of the large rivers originating in the Tibetan plateau and to use 100% of eastern/central China’s hydropower potential.
Weibo Watch: Issue 7
This week on Weibo Watch: rock desertification is turning a huge swath of southwest China barren; villagers in Guangdong fight illegal, environmentally damaging mining; citizens in Zhejiang, protesting an energy company’s carcinogenic pollution, face official denial and police detention; restaurants stop selling shark fin; and an NGO walks along the highly polluted Xiang River.
Weibo Watch: Issue 6
This week, netizens take on polluting phone manufacturers, document Beijing’s traffic troubles, successfully shut down a hunting festival and investigate sales of mysterious “grey swan” meat for the Mid-Autumn Day Festival.
Three Gorges Dam faces Yangtze flood crest
(September 21, 2011) The Three Gorges Dam faced a test as torrential rain upstream caused the year’s largest flood crest.
For development, China moves millions: GlobalPost
Around 1.5 million people were moved to make way for the Three Gorges Dam: some were wooed by promises of new homes, land, and better lives, and others were forced. Ten years on, Kathleen E. McLaughlin of GlobalPost investigates the results of the relocation. Many migrants languish hundreds of miles from their hometowns, without farmland or new jobs, facing mounting debt and with little chance of legal redress.
Zeng Jinyan: Middle class parents in China looking for a better education for their kids
(September 16, 2011) On the western outskirts of Beijing, middle class Chinese parents and teachers have chosen a site to construct and decorate a school, called Spring Valley. They do most of the work themselves maintaining traditional Chinese culture and practices, but applying a local version of the famous Waldorf education model.
Shennongjia exposes reckless development of China’s water resources
This Guardian article describes the case of Shennongjia, a region choked with dams, which caused a scandal in the Chinese media when the extent of official corruption and mismangement became clear.
Weibo Watch: Issue 5
(September 15, 2011) In this installment of Weibo Watch: hundreds of rivers and dams dry up, Poyang Lake continues to shrink, Beijing Zoo’s new amusement park draws an angry response, and complaints about mining in Tibetan culture’s holy mountains fall on deaf ears.
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
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Probe International 