The Chinese environment: prospects and hazards

Current interest in China is so great that it is now hard to say anything interesting - let alone new - about it. The Times ran Chinese supplements all last week. Every newspaper has a story about China almost every day: its policies, its business, its technology, its currency, its pollution, its policies across the whole range, and not least its prospects for the Olympic Games in 2008. Demonizing China has also become a popular way of distracting attention from short comings elsewhere, particularly in the United States.

Today I want to focus on the Chinese environment in the widest sense, look at the history and background, and think about the future with its many hazards. China faces, and has always faced, major environmental problems. At the eastern end of Asia, it has a continental climate with extremes of rain and drought, heat and cold. Water is a perennial problem. So are the huge dust storms that sweep across the country, shifting deserts and creating new ones. With its long low coastline, China is sensitive to even small variations in sea level which quickly affect wetlands and river deltas. It suffers from relatively frequent earthquakes, and even occasional hits from space (the last and most serious in the 15th century).

This combination of destructive natural forces has profoundly affected Chinese history and culture. Nature was there to be placated as well as so far as possible controlled or even mastered. Heaven and Earth were closely linked, and the line between the natural and the supernatural was blurred. Under whatever guise, life sustained but also punished humans. Even the behaviour of the weather was an aspect of human activity so there was morality in meteorology.

This respect for nature did not inhibit efforts to transform it, sometimes with disastrous consequences. As elsewhere in the world, the end of the last ice age marked major human expansion. Deforestation made way for agriculture. There was a bonanza as soils were exploited, wild animals and species were lost, and human numbers multiplied. This led to the growth of towns, cities and states, followed by increasing competition between them, often with use of such environmental weapons as demolition of dams and crop burning. Communities rose and fell.

Everywhere control of water was essential. What has been called hydraulic despotism may tell only part of the story, but communities and even states grew out of the need to manage this precious and often capricious resource. The struggle to run irrigation systems, limit marine incursions, maintain banks and walls, undertake dredging, cope with floods and storms, and adapt to ever changing weather was more difficult in China than elsewhere.

At the same time the importance of conservation was well understood. Throughout Chinese history, cutting trees and bushes for firewood was controlled, and animal and human excrement were returned to the soil for fertilization. In the countryside, where most people lived, life revolved round soil, wood, grass and water, and towns, as organisms absorbing materials and emitting wastes, depended on them.

The industrial revolution came relatively late to China, and its effects have been most marked in the last forty years. More perhaps than elsewhere, and certainly in a shorter time span, it has profoundly affected the Chinese relationship with the natural environment. With greater political stability, mass development, mass production, mass consumption, mass transport and mass discharge of wastes have transformed China.

Industrialization has winners and losers, as in 19th century Britain, with rising pollution of land, water and air. As elsewhere in such circumstances, the population has greatly increased. Between 1953 and 2001 it doubled to 1.3 billion, and the size of the urban population tripled to almost 500 million. Increase in the number of households has risen by 3.5 percent a year since 1990. According to Chinese sources, in the ten years between 1990 and 2001 consumption of petroleum increased by 100 percent, natural gas by 92 percent, steel by 143 percent, copper by 189 percent, and aluminium by 380 percent. The transport network of road, rail and air facilities expanded many times. Demand for water, energy and food rose steeply. In the words of the World Watch Institute of Washington DC,

"It is as if all of Europe, Russia and North and South America were simultaneously to undertake a century's worth of economic development in a few decades."

Not surprisingly the impact on the environment has been dramatic. Even if the rate of population increase has slowed, the rise in population has led to increasing emigration to the cities, and the growth of cities has led to ever greater strains on urban infrastructure. Transport is a particular difficulty, with official encouragement of car manufacture and potential use far exceeding the capacity of road systems. Chinese cities face the problems and prospects which are already favouring trains and bicycles in Britain, and even rickshaws in central London.

Demand for fresh water may be constantly increasing, but the vagaries of the weather have not increased supplies, and some provinces such as Guangdong, with a population of 110 million, have recently suffered a 40 percent drop in rainfall. Water tables have been falling, particularly in northern China, through exhaustion of aquifers and new irrigation schemes, and the Yellow River now reaches the sea only a few days a year.

There is also a long term factor. Global warming is reducing Chinese glaciers as a source of water. They could all be gone by the end of this century. This also has the effect of diminishing the reflectivity of the Earth to solar radiation, and thus increasing warming. So far as climate is concerned, the predictions of the Chinese National Academy of Sciences are far from encouraging. They suggest new patterns of rainfall, including less in certain areas of high population and more elsewhere. There should be no wonder that there are plans to build a major canal system to convey water from south to north.

The increasing demand for energy raises a host of environmental problems. China has large reserves of somewhat dirty coal, and still depends on them. But it has greatly increased its imports of other fossil fuels, and is now investing heavily in alternative energy sources. For example it is now building the world's first major pebble-bed nuclear reactor, and has some thirty other nuclear reactors on order. It has shown interest in developing a variety of renewable energy sources. It is trying, not always successfully to improve its energy efficiency. The Chinese have also spread themselves and their investments in energy sources all over the world: from Svalbard in the Arctic to Brazil and Mexico, to Zimbabwe and Angola, and to Iran and other countries in the Middle East.

Rising living standards are changing the Chinese diet. This too has environmental effects. There is a general move away from rice towards meat: not just pork, as in the past, but towards beef, lamb and chicken. Per capita consumption of meat, eggs and milk increased four fold between 1978 and 2001. This means different use of land, greater dependence on pesticides and artificial fertilizers, a big increase in agricultural waste, and a demand for feedstock, which cannot now be met from domestic sources. World grain prices have already been affected, and probably will be more in future.

The cumulative effect of these changes is beginning to affect the global environment in a variety of ways. There are those who want to demonize China, largely for its success in producing cheap manufactured goods, and for the management of its currency, not to mention its attitude towards what it sees as its wayward province of Taiwan. For the Chinese it is not just the recovery of Taiwan that is at stake. There is the fear that if Taiwan achieves independence, other parts of China may want to follow suit.

Another foreign complaint about China is the volume of pollutants China emits into the atmosphere, in particular carbon dioxide as the major greenhouse gas. As a country particularly vulnerable to climate change (a point reiterated by the Chinese National Academy of Sciences), the Chinese government, although not formally bound by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, has made strenuous efforts to reduce its emissions, largely through increased industrial efficiency. The result was an absolute as well as per capita reduction in the last few years. But they are now rising again, and may eventually equal if not exceed those of the principal villain in this respect, the United States.

Another global environmental hazard are the sandstorms which may have their worst effects in north-eastern China, but still spread to Japan, to Hawaii, and even to the western seaboard of the United States. Soil deterioration and erosion in China inevitably affects all China's neighbours. In addition, although the Chinese government has recently reduced its own timber cutting, Chinese demand for timber is strong and increasing, and China is a major importer of timber, some of it apparently illegal, from other parts of South-East Asia. The effects of changes in biodiversity, and in particular the import or export of alien species, has been fully explored in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report, and all this directly involves China.

There are also the less tangible effects of Chinese technological experiments which could easily spread to other parts of the world: for example experiments in genetic modification of food plants, in nanotechnology and in the nuclear field. For good or ill, technology is no respecter of frontiers. The President of the Royal Society, Lord Rees has calculated that, whether due to inadvertence, criminality or other factors, the prospects for our civilization surviving the end of this century are no more than 50 percent.

No-one is more conscious of this intimidating complex of problems than the Chinese themselves. Over the last 15 years, as a member of the independent China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, I have been the witness of the growing concern of the Chinese leadership, and the efforts which have been made not only to take limited action, but also - perhaps more important - to think differently about the environment. Here is the greatest contrast between the positions of the Chinese and US Administrations.

Thinking differently is well illustrated by the search for a better methodology for measuring economic progress than that represented by the classic - and highly misleading - Gross Domestic Product / Gross National Product mechanism. Successive Chinese governments have spoken of the need for a "socialist market economy" in which the framework is set by the public interest, with the free market functioning within it.

These thoughts were well expressed at a meeting of the Chinese government on Population, Resources and Environment on 12 March 2005. On that occasion the General Party Secretary Hu Jintao and the Prime Minister Wen Jiabao both spoke of the need to adopt a "new development mode" or "new economic growth mode" within the overriding objective of achieving an all-round harmonious society or xiaokung. Already the idea of "green clean growth" or "green GDP" is being tested in a number of Chinese provinces. It means bringing in the externalities or hidden costs of change, and giving priority to human welfare and well-being rather than mere productivity. Some of these ideas are being explored in the World Bank and elsewhere.

Acting differently is already well advanced. On 5 June last year the Chinese government published a White Paper entitled Environmental Protection in China 1996-2005. It contains a detailed account of relevant legislation, the prevention and control of industrial pollution, measures to cope with water problems, re-afforestation and conservation, and Chinese participation in international bodies and commitments. Perhaps most important, it admitted that the problems were very serious, and the condition of the country still "grave". It still is.

A lot of these issues have come up at the China Council. One of its strengths is access to the Chinese leadership. Over the years I have had the opportunity to speak and listen to a succession of Chinese Presidents and Prime Ministers, and am always impressed by their knowledge and grasp of environmental issues (better than most of their Western counterparts), and of the enormous political issues involved both nationally and globally. Here are some significant mile posts:

• 1980s onwards: drastic action to cope with population increase with the policy of one child/one family. Population is now likely to rise to 1.5 billion and then decline gradually;
• 1998: Zhu Ronji (Prime Minister) accepted full Chinese responsibility for the Yangtze floods, and forbad timber cutting on the Upper Yangtze as a result;
• 2003: Hu Jintao (President) set in motion the creation of a model eco-city - Dongtan - near Shanghai. Ove Arup is deeply engaged;
• 2005: Wen Jiabao (Prime Minister) spoke of the difficulties of communicating environmental policy top downwards;
• 2006: Qu Geping (former Director of the State Environment Protection Agency) spoke of the difficulties of local enforcement, and of the creation of centrally based watchdogs to monitor and compel local compliance with environmental law and regulations.
• 2006: Wen Jiabao spoke of The Three Transformations which were necessary: to bring together economics and environmental protection; to put growth and such protection on an equal basis; and to use administrative, legal and market mechanisms to protect the environment with all the implications for pricing.

None of these problems can be solved quickly. There is a continuing tension between those who press for economic growth in the familiar sense, and those who press for better environmental protection and the long-term sustainability of society. There is likewise tension between the national government and local governments and communities. There has been a lot of local discontent and even rioting over projects imposed from above (as in Tiger Leaping Gorge). The environmental movement is already strong and growing in the Chinese grassroots.

Then there are problems over respect for environmental laws and regulations. The price structure is often perverse. For example some people in China and others elsewhere think that access to water is a basic human right, and for that reason water should almost be free. The result is that there is little incentive to look after it properly and avoid waste. It has been calculated that a ton of Yellow River water for use in irrigation costs less than one-tenth of a small bottle of spring water, thereby removing any incentive to conserve it. Those in cities can often afford to pay more for their water, and so win an advantage over those who may need water more. All this is now changing.

There are many reasons for hope. As a relatively late comer to the industrial world, China has the opportunity to leapfrog over the mistakes of others. It is also recovering its self-confidence after its century of troubles, and the balance of power in the world is changing as a result. The most recent dramatic example was the destruction of the old Chinese satellite. Certainly the days of the single super-power dominating the world are already numbered in both and political and economic terms. It has been calculated by Goldman Sachs that the proportion of the world economy represented by China and India in 1825 was around 40 percent. By 2025 that proportion may be restored.

Within China the environmental cost may be high, even unworkable. But the government seems well aware of the risks and hazards, and knows better than its critics that it has to do a lot more to look after the only China, indeed the only Earth, there is. They may turn out to be pioneers in doing so. As in technology, the rest of the world may soon be learning as much from the Chinese as the Chinese learn from the rest of the world.