(October 18, 2011) From next year on, water quality will become a form of criteria used to evaluate the performance of local officials in Xichuan county of central China’s Henan province. The whole range of ecological indices to be adopted for official evaluation include the quality of water entering Xichuan, the establishment of tree plantations, the control of soil erosion and treatment of garbage and waste water, as well as the number of polluting enterprises that have been shut down.
In China, hydroelectric output dropped by 20% from a year earlier. Authorities are now warning of winter power shortages in hydropower-rich southern and central regions due to low water storage, leading to questions about the reliability of China’s hydropower assets.
(October 18, 2011) The Miyun Reservoir happens to be the major water supply for Beijing and the county is an important ecological shield. To protect the ecology of the area, no major industrial projects have been allowed in and around the Miyun area. In addition, farmers who live upstream from the reservoir are not allowed to use chemicals and fertilizers in crop production. So says China Daily.
To most observers, Chinese officialdom has supported the Three Gorges Dam without fail. But a closer look reveals growing worries about the dam which has become a symbol of all that is wrong with China’s rise. Here we present Chinese officials’ admissions of problems at Three Gorges, from the sensational mea culpas of senior officials to the subtly expressed worries of eminent scientists.
Myanmar’s announced cancellation of the Myitsone dam on the Irrawaddy River has brought long-standing tensions with China into the open – including setting off conflicts with the Kachin Independence Organization in the north of the country. “It may be that the Myanmar government sees Chinese investment, in particular the Myitsone dam, as a destabilising force,” said Patricia Adams.
(October 8, 2011) The Burmese president announced that the controversial Chinese-financed Myitsone dam on the Irrawaddy River would be suspended. Now the Chinese government is threatening legal action if the rights and interests of its state enterprises aren’t protected.
Three years after the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, geologist Yang Yong investigates the proliferation of hastily approved mining and industry projects putting the area at risk of further geological disasters.
Patricia Adams of Probe International says worse things are happening to China’s air than increased CO2 emissions: “Nitrogen oxides and mercury are also emitted when hydrocarbons are burned and those emissions are truly troubling.”
(October 6, 2011) Golf, the “green opium”, is getting more and more popular in China as a symbol of wealth. New courses continue to be built, despite an official ban, exacerbating China’s urban water shortages.
The deaths of 23 Honduran farmers protesting the seizure of their lands by UN-approved palm oil plantations calls for Honduran carbon credits to be thrown out of the EU’s emission trading scheme, shows the dark side of carbon credit bonanza.
Kyoto has cost the world’s governments and companies at least $150-billion in research, subsidies, compliance costs and lost economic activity. Yet there is no proof it has saved even a tonne of carbon emissions.
(October 4, 2011) Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent, by James Boyce and Leonce Ndikumana.
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.
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” (CDM), which was essentially a fig leaf for wealth transfers from industrialized nations to poor developing nations, isn’t working according to plan.
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
Other News Sources
Probe International 