(September 15, 2011) In this installment of Weibo Watch: hundreds of rivers and dams dry up, Poyang Lake continues to shrink, Beijing Zoo’s new amusement park draws an angry response, and complaints about mining in Tibetan culture’s holy mountains fall on deaf ears.
(September 13, 2011) China’s programme to shore up its thousands of aging reservoirs is undermined by corruption, rushed repairs and inadequate funds, leaving towns, lives and land at risk.
(September 12, 2011) This week on Weibo Watch: controversy brews over a beer company’s plans to trek through a fragile nature reserve.
(September 5, 2011) City-dwellers in China say they have an urban water crisis with shortages and pollution posing the gravest threats, a new survey reveals.
(September 2, 2011) Weibo Watch: Issue 3 looks at China’s Eco-Water Tours; industrial stink, dangerous dams and drains that are completely fake.
Even a gag order can’t silence dissident artist Ai Weiwei on the dark subject of human rights in China.
(August 31, 2011) Financial rewards for bypassing dam safety procedures have
created an unrestrained dam-building boom in China that is threatening lives and the
environment.
(August 30, 2011) In the latest installment of Weibo Watch, China’s netizens debate a Shanghai government plan to relocate 76 chemical factories to undisclosed locations in the next year; an opinion piece looks at why Environmental Protection Departments in China have become ‘Dissolving Departments;’ meanwhile a Yunnan newspaper reports that 5,000 tons of chromium waste has been dumped in several sites.
(August 26, 2011) China’s precarious dam reality has moved out into the open.
(August 24, 2011) One of China’s premier investigative news agencies reveals China’s dams “are like ticking time bombs:” beset by disaster, flaws, poor construction, neglect, and fraud.
(August 23, 2011) Weibo Watch summarizes the week’s environmental news, direct from the hearts and minds, and the keyboards, of China’s netizens as they work for change in the way decisions are made in their communities across China.
(August 18, 2011) “The Yangtze River will run dry” because engineers have gone wild, building so many dams that the amount of water needed to fill all the reservoirs along the Yangtze would exceed the flow of the river. So says “A Mighty River Runs Dry,” a new study by geologist Fan Xiao of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in China. Because there isn’t enough water in the Yangtze to fill all the dams to their designed capacity during the impoundment period each year, “an enormous waste of money” will result, with potentially staggering losses to China’s economy, 40 per cent of which comes from agriculture, fishing, industry and shipping along the Yangtze.
(August 16, 2011) Burma’s pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, has called for a reassessment of Burma’s massive 6,000 MW Irrawaddy Myitsone dam project.
(August 4, 2011) In its quest to promote green energy and reduce the world’s carbon footprint, the United Nations has so distorted the economics of power production that it is set to subsidize over three dozen coal plants in India with some $5.3 billion in “carbon credits.”
(July 29, 2011) Since the construction of the Gezhouba and Three Gorges dams, Yangtze River’s fish stocks have been declining. The government’s solution – the “Fisherman on Land” program – has forced “boat families,” who once earned a living from the fish bounty of the Yangtze, to move ashore and find work in factories.
Patricia Adams
Dai Qing
Fan Xiao
Lawrence Solomon
Mu Lan
Probe International
Lisa Peryman
Probe Media
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