A smog documentary that went viral in China over the weekend and riveted the nation with its TED Talks meets Al Gore blend of compelling data and engaging instruction, managed to both survive China’s censors and get “the chop”.
Will China’s dams control the Mekong’s flow?
Low water levels and stranded boats on the upper Mekong River — although, nothing new for a February in recent years — are once again stirring concerns over China’s dam-building program to the north. What is new is the apparent readiness of Chinese authorities to give an account of their actions to rectify the situation. The Lowy Interpreter reports.
Taking the long view
Late last year, Mu Lan, the editor of Probe International’s Three Gorges Probe news service in Chinese, followed the central leg of China’s massive South-to-North Water Diversion Project with his camera as it made its way from Hubei Province to Beijing, the project’s ultimate destination.
Policy: Four gaps in China’s new environmental law
China’s new environmental protection law is not enough without robust implementation mechanisms, accountability regimes and institutional arrangements. This report for the science journal Nature identifies four gaps that will cause challenges for the new law.
China’s environmental enforcement glitch
Declaring “war on pollution” is just the first step, writes Elizabeth Economy in this terrific piece for ChinaFile on the need for Beijing to invest more in the fundamentals of environmental protection: the enforcement of regulations and the necessary human and financial resources to those on the front-line of clawing back blue skies and clean water for China.
12 dams that changed the world
This spotlight on mega-dams of note, profiled by International Rivers’ Peter Bosshard for The Guardian, lists more banes than boons with a quest Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, famously described as the “disease of gigantism.”
This could get complicated
Increasing demand for natural catastrophe insurance has provided the world’s largest reinsurer, Munich Re, with its biggest market in the Asia Pacific region: China. But how will Munich Re classify disasters, such as earthquakes, in a country where seismic events are a growing subject of debate as to how many are natural and how many are man-made?
China’s water revival
Chinese citizens and industry are both willing to do their part to help turnaround the country’s water crisis, according to a new survey, but they don’t see how without a mechanism that allows the government, industry and end users to work together. Could that missing mechanism be market discipline, rule of law and citizen empowerment?
China farmers washed away as Beijing taps water from south
Many of the more than 300,000 Chinese moved to make way for the country’s monumental South-North Water Diversion project have been left unemployed in leaking, shoddy houses, while few say they have […]
China turns to drastic measures to avoid water crisis
China will soon turn on the taps of the world’s biggest water-diversion project.
The hanging Jinsha River and earthquakes
Beijing-based media group, Caixin, reports on Chinese geologist Fan Xiao’s research supporting a link between a 6.5-magnitude earthquake in China’s Yunnan Province in early August and the filling of dam reservoirs in the area. Several Probe International studies are cited.
Concern mounts in China over Yangtze diversion project
China’s ambitious South-to-North Water Diversion project officially begins flowing next month and the impacts of the costly geo-engineering giant are starting to be felt in the regions tapped to redistribute water to the country’s parched north. “This project from the beginning has been as controversial as the Three Gorges,” says Probe International fellow and leading Chinese environmental journalist, Dai Qing.
Yunnan earthquake raises fears on hydropower projects
Geologists express concerns that massive hydropower construction in the region may have contributed to seismic activity. Beijing-based media group, Caixin, interviews Chinese geologist Fan Xiao whose research supports a link between Yunnan’s 6.5-magnitude earthquake in early August and the filling of dam reservoirs in the area.
China Three Gorges subsidiary banned from World Bank projects
The World Bank bars China International Water and Electric Corporation (CWE), a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG), from its projects for three years for misconduct in Africa and Southeast Asia. South China Morning Post reports.
Landslide destroys dam in Three Gorges region
Geologists predict more frequent catastrophes in China’s Three Gorges Dam region, after landslides wipe out a hydropower plant. Fan Xiao and Yang Yong, the authors of several reports for Probe International, speak to thethirdpole.net about a disaster-prone region made more perilous by intensive hydropower development and call for new risk assessments to be carried out.
