The constant stream of news coverage on China’s water crisis hasn’t dampened Beijing’s bid to host the 2022 winter Olympics and the production of a key, water-guzzling component of that bid: snow. The Economist reports.
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.
Looking forward to the moment when you return: Zhou Qinghui to Huang Kaiping
As China continues its crackdown on reform-minded scholars and civil liberties, the wife of yet another detained member of the respected Beijing-based think tank, Transition Institute, has spoken out in an open letter circulated online. Reaching out to her husband, Huang Kaiping, in the only way she now can, Zhou Qinghui recounts in vivid voice their first meeting, as fifth graders, up until the current day’s events, cast in shadow by the question mark of an uncertain future under a repressive regime.
Just one more foreign investor
Much has been written about China in Africa — China’s #1 spot as Africa’s biggest trading partner, its massive investment in infrastructure development across the continent, its hands-off approach to domestic politics — but is talk of China’s domination in Africa overdone? The Economist reports.
Silencing Guo Yushan
A US-based colleague of detained Chinese activist, Guo Yushan, reflects on Guo’s formal arrest earlier this month.
China’s water policies are exacerbating water stress, says new study
A new study of China’s approach to water scarcity, co-authored by a consortium of British, Chinese, and American universities, has deemed the country’s massive South-to-North Water Transfer project an example of “pouring good water after bad”.
China’s water crisis gives foreign firms an ‘in’
The Chinese government’s $97-billion pledge to clean up the country’s dire water situation has afforded foreign water firms market opportunities typically denied them in the past. Even so, roadblocks still prevail as China continues to put the breaks on importing the international expertise it needs to help with its water recovery.
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.”
Five years after the earthquake, Haiti remains on unsteady ground
Thousands of Haitians continue to live in tent camps five years on after a deadly earthquake brought an already struggling nation to its knees. This update by Jacob Kushner for the GlobalPost gets at the core of the country’s ongoing struggle for stability despite donor aid in the billions: as long as Haiti remains without property rights, the rule of law and a constitutional government, chaos will hobble recovery.
China’s polluters hit with biggest-ever fines but the future still looks dirty
Two days before the country’s new environmental law took effect, six polluting companies in east China’s Jiangsu Province were walloped with the most costly penalties ever imposed by a Chinese court. Is […]
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?
Harsher laws will not curb incentives to pollute
Chinese environmentalists explain why the incentives that work in favour of pollution, rather than its prevention, will remain, despite new legal powers. Radio Free Asia reports.
Sustainable mining and quarrying
The Toronto-based environmental and public policy research institute, Environment Probe, takes on the Mining Association of Nova Scotia, which cautions against local decision making. Probe recommends empowering affected individuals and communities to determine whether and how proposed projects will go ahead. To further ensure that mining and quarrying are sustainable, Probe recommends making mining companies bear all their environmental risks and costs.
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?
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
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