Beijing water experts spurn tap water in private, public confidence plummets

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(February 6, 2013) When Zhao Feihong, an expert on water quality in Beijing, revealed last month that she didn’t drink the city’s tap water herself, and had not for the past 20 years, the news shredded what little public confidence remained in the capital’s drinking water supply. Hasty reassurances from city authorities in an effort to calm renewed concern, only served to heighten suspicion. Many believe that if someone in Zhao’s position, as well as her husband – another water expert and a public official – did not consider Beijing’s tap water fit to drink, why should they?

Corruption, bribery, baksheesh! Rooted in government

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(February 6, 2013) Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has announced get-tough-on-corruption amendments to the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA). Pat Adams, head of Probe International in Toronto, sees the announcement as Canada’s response to pressure from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Canada is supposed to report back on deficiencies in its anti-corruption laws by March of this year. This appears to fix the deficiencies,” she says.

SNC-Lavalin corruption case: new court date set but plea for speedy trial dismissed

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(January 28, 2013) India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told its special court last month that two of the accused in the notorious SNC-Lavalin hydro-dam graft case were “interfering” with the court’s decision to secure the presence of Klaus Triendl, the former vice-president of Canadian engineering giant SNC-Lavalin and the sixth accused in the case. The two accused in question had requested the charge sheet be divided in order to facilitate the speedy trial of those who had already answered the summons of the court in connection with the case. The court has since dismissed their plea, however, saying there was no reason to think that the presence of Triendl could not be obtained within a reasonable time and set April 24, 2013 as the new date to hear the corruption case.

Liu Futang’s verdict causes worry amongst China’s green activists

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(January 22, 2013) The conviction and sentencing of high-profile Chinese environmental activist Liu Futang is seen as a setback for China’s green movement. Considered political payback for Liu’s efforts to expose the environmental downside of government-backed projects, Liu’s trial has cast a shadow over the country’s new leadership and their commitment to green issues, reports Chinadialogue.net in this article surveying fallout from the verdict.

Residents struggle in China’s “model community” as millions set to be resettled

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(January 22, 2013) China’s largest-ever forced relocation effort, in the northwestern gateway province of Shaanxi, is set to transform the lives of more than 2.8 million people over a period of 10 years. The massive migration, even by China’s standards, is currently underway in part to make way for another of the country’s vast infrastructure projects, the enormous south-north water transfer scheme; in part due to environmental degradation – geological instability caused by deforestation, and in part as a result of socioeconomic inevitability – a formidable long-range political objective to urbanize impoverished, rural populations. Drawing on his conversations with migrants, writer Andrew Stokols in this update for Chinadialogue.net, observes the human cost of China’s quest for modernity which has left many migrants struggling to meet new expenses and feeling stung by a loss of independence, purpose and stability.

Immunity from scrutiny: Canada’s Access to Information Act hobbles democracy

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(January 7, 2013) Canada’s Access to Information Act perversely gives Export Development Canada (EDC) the legal power to keep records of its operations secret, charges Probe International. In its submission to the Office of the Information Commissioner’s review of Canada’s 30-year-old Access to Information Act, Probe International declares it is time to reform the Act and remove EDC’s extraordinary privileges.

Show us the dam money: Fights over post-Three Gorges subsidies

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(December 28, 2012) The fight for a slice of the central government’s subsidy pie continues in the Three Gorges Dam region as local governments compete for funding to address the economic and environmental problems caused by the mega-dam’s construction. This impact update by Taiwan-based news site, Want China Times, reports that these problems remain unresolved and that residents, forced to relocate for the dam, continue to be dogged by an economic malaise. With or without subsidies, local governments are ploughing ahead with projects to build infrastructure and industrial parks. Meanwhile, usurped residents say the government should give them the subsidy money in cash, directly. Cash pay-outs that bypass local government officials would likely be money better spent: Probe International has published scores of reports over the years detailing the ways in which compensation funds for relocated residents, and past projects designed to support their transition, have proved useless at best or have disappeared into corrupt officials’ pockets at worst. For so many reasons, Probe International has concluded the Three Gorges Dam project represents a money drain that will never be plugged.

Deutsche Bank staff jailed in carbon trading fraud crackdown

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(December 21, 2012) As carbon credit fraud continues to escalate, five employees at Germany’s biggest money lender have been accused of money laundering or obstruction of justice in relation to a carbon trading scheme. In related news, the UK’s Financial Services Authority is now asking anyone who has invested in carbon credits to fill in an online survey, in an effort to better illuminate the problem of fraud. Meanwhile, a new interactive map has been launched by the International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP) and Ecofys to show the status of emissions trading schemes around the world.

Trouble on the Yangtze

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(December 19, 2012) A central government plan to dramatically increase China’s reliance on non-fossil fuels will derive two-thirds of that target from hydropower – “an increase on par with adding nearly one Three Gorges Dam a year,” reports Jane Qiu for Science magazine. In her article on over-development of the country’s river pulse, the once mighty Yangtze, Qiu looks at the threat China’s damming fever poses to river habitats and species, the calamity potential of dam construction in quake-prone regions and mounting criticism of China’s biased environmental impact assessment process.