(August 16, 2012) The aftermath of a terrible storm that brought China’s capital to a standstill in July, has left Beijing pockmarked by sinkholes. The city’s ancient, leaking infrastructure and its grossly deficient drainage system could not modify the impacts of the severe deluge but at the heart of the sinkhole scourge is yet another structural failing: Beijing’s dysfunctional and unaccountable civil administration.
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The perverse rewards of carbon credits
(August 15, 2012) The UN’s carbon trading scheme to reduce global concentrations of greenhouse gases has provided a handful of factories in developing nations with a perverse incentive to massively increase them.
Chinese Paddlefish’s worst predator: the Chinese Communist Party
(August 14, 2012) Having survived dinosaurs and the Ice Age, China’s legendary Paddlefish has met its gravest threat – Chinese Communist Party officials intent on building dams on the Yangtze to inflate their economic achievements, but that block fish migratory routes.
Thai lawsuit filed to block Laotian dam on Mekong
(August 13, 2012) Thai opponents of the proposed Xayaburi dam for the Mekong River in Laos are taking their case to court. A group of Thai villages have filed a lawsuit to block a state-run company from buying electricity generated by the dam in a bid to halt the project, opposed by downstream nations, altogether and set a precedent for future cross-border projects.
Another public uprising forces hand of government
(July 31, 2012) A large public demonstration in the city of Qidong over a planned industrial waste pipeline has led to its shutdown by city officials. The Qidong protest, prompted by environmental concerns, follows other demonstrations against projects elsewhere.
A hard rain’s a-gonna fall – people power the real story in Beijing
(July 30, 2012) As Beijing’s dramatic flood disaster unfolded, the people of Beijing did not wait for the government to step up—which, by all accounts, it did not—citizens instead relied on people power: a growing phenomenon, animated by social media, that portends winds of change for China’s political elite.
China’s bridges and dams crumble under corruption
(July 19, 2012) From falling bridges to construction site mudslides, the collateral damage from China’s building spree mounts up.
No city is safe for potable tap water
(July 17, 2012) No city in China provides safe tap water to all of its residents, claims a new report by Caixin Online. Water treatment is too costly for city budgets, say some officials; others say even when properly treated, water pollution and old pipes compromise tap water.
New wave of Three Gorges-sized dams raise old fears
(July 6, 2012) Experts fear a proposed dam cascade slated for the Jinsha River, a tributary of the upper Yangtze River, could spell disaster. Reports on dam construction in western China’s seismic hazard zones and the risks of over-damming, released by Probe International earlier this year, are highlighted.
Dam madness
(July 4, 2012) As the fierce struggle between China’s hydropower industry and environmental conservationists rages anew, what has become clear in the meanwhile: the country’s rivers cannot sustain the current pace of development.
U.K. carbon credit tax scammers get stiff sentences
(June 19, 2012) Three men have been sentenced to lengthy prison sentences for running a carbon credit tax racket that cheated U.K. taxpayers out of 39 million pounds ($US60 million) in just 69 days.
Weibo Watch: Issue 11
(June 13, 2012) In this instalment of Weibo Watch: In March, Beijing announced it would build Asia’s largest trash incineration plant. In Yunnan, April was an especially cruel month: 273 rivers dried up, leaving people to weep as they tended to their fields. Meanwhile, the monitoring of PM2.5 fine particulate air pollution has stepped up in China as pressure mounts to reduce particulates and the causes of air-borne pollution.
Is China’s water safe to drink?
(May 17, 2012) News of a nationwide survey on the precarious safety of China’s drinking water has brought an already volatile issue to the forefront of public concern, in part because the survey was never made public.
Three Gorges Dam: Another 110,000 to join exodus out of harm’s way
(May 17, 2012) The latest phase of the Three Gorges Dam relocation effort is expected to move 110,000 out of the Three Gorges Dam danger zone to safer ground (earlier estimates put that number at around 100,000). A new report by Beijing’s Caixin Online looks deeper at the area’s growing instability, the disagreements over who pays for what, and how residents are coping as the earth shifts, literally, beneath them.
A new threat to safety along the Yangtze River
(May 11, 2012) Chinese hydropower magnates plan to build 25 new dam reservoirs on the Yangtze’s upper reaches despite warnings of seismic risks from dam-building overload in the area, and in spite of recent evacuation efforts due to the threat of geological disaster at Three Gorges.
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon
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