February 2007: China's Environment and Situation of Water
With a record high of US$177.47 billion in trade surplus last year, China is one of the world's economic powerhouses.[1] However, this economic growth comes at the expense of the environment and public health. Researchers estimate that pollution in China causes more than 300,000 premature deaths every year.[2]
In addition to human costs, pollution has brought economic losses at an estimated 10 percent of China's GDP.[3] According to the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), China will need to spend a projected 1.6 percent of its GDP, totaling about 1.3 trillion yuan (US $167 billion) to clean up the environment and prevent further degradation between 2006 and 2010.[4] Extensive environmental damage has also fueled rising social unrests. In 2005, SEPA reported that severe pollution prompted 51,000 public disputes,[5] while the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has identified pollution as one of four social problems linked to social disharmony.[6]
This HRIC trends bulletin provides
- An overview of the extent of China's environmental degradation, and
- Examines the growing water crisis and its far-reaching effects on society and public health.
CHINA'S ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
China's environment is deteriorating on all fronts—air, land and water—and negatively affecting biodiversity and the health and quality of life for individuals.
- Air pollution: China ranks first in the world for sulfur dioxide emissions, while acid rain caused by sulfur dioxide has worsened along the industrialized east coast.[7] SEPA statistics show that 11 major cities suffer from mild to severe levels of air pollution for more than ninety days from January to September of 2006, harming the physical and mental health of 15 million residents.[8] It is the second largest global greenhouse gas emitter in terms of volume by country.[9]
- Loss of farmland: China has lost 27.5 percent of its land because of desertification, affecting the livelihood of about 400 million residents.[10] In total, around one-tenth of China's farmland (920 thousand square kilometers) is contaminated by pollution.[11]
- Toxic waters: Over 70 percent of China's rivers and lakes are polluted.[12] In October 2006, the United Nations Environment Program labeled the estuaries of Yangtze and Pearl rivers as marine "dead zones." This means that China's two major waterways have areas where most life cannot grow and the habitat will not recover.[13]
- Biodiversity: Fifteen to 20 percent of higher plant varieties in China are endangered, threatening the existence of 40,000 related species.[14] In December 2006, the Yangtze Baiji river dolphin was declared "effectively extinct."[15] Their extinction underscores the dire state of Yangtze water quality, exemplifying the problems caused by the pollution of China's waterways for biodiversity.[16]
GROWING WATER CRISIS
Lack of water can lead to droughts, crop failures, famine and loss of life. Usually, water shortages are not caused by drastic events, but results from a gradual process of contamination from the environmentally-irresponsible use of water. The Chinese government's lack of sustainable water management policies has contributed to water pollution that significantly harms public health, water shortage and contamination, and loss of community livelihood and local income. Successful and participatory water management in China is obstructed by a lack of meaningful public consultation. This lack of meaningful participation often leads to local petitions and public protests.
Polluted water and impact on public health
Nearly a quarter of China's total population, including more than 300 million rural residents, lacks access to clean drinking water.[17] They are susceptible to over 50 kinds of disease generated or spread through drinking water in China,[18] including diarrhea, which alone is responsible for 11.8 percent of under-five child mortality.[19] As reported in a 2004 national conference on rural water issues, the rural prevalence rate for diarrheal diseases could be reduced by half if residents had access to clean water.[20]
Water pollution is also exacerbated by poor sanitation and inadequate waste water treatment facilities. A large divide remains in access to improved sanitation between China's rural and urban areas. According to most recently available data from the World Health Organization, only 29 percent of the rural population has sustainable access to improved sanitation, comparing to 69 percent in urban areas.[21]
In areas with chemical factories, waste water is often directly discharged into rivers, creating "cancer villages," where cancer rates are abnormally high.[22] SEPA figures show that 81 percent of China's 7,555 chemical and petrochemical plants are located along rivers and lakes, or in densely-populated areas; they pose serious risks to the environment, given that nearly half of these processing plants are found to cause major environmental risks.[23]
Water shortage and contamination
Over 400 Chinese cities are facing water shortages (with 136 experiencing severe shortages), and SEPA figures show that groundwater is now contaminated in about 90 percent of the nation's cities.[24] Between 50 to 90 percent of urban underground water is contaminated by agricultural runoff, industrial and municipal waste water, and, in some municipalities, even toxic mine tailings.[25]
Similarly, coastal water is polluted from waste water that is discharged directly into the sea. According to the State Oceanic Administration, five percent of China's total sea area is polluted. Between 2001 and 2005, there were 453 reported cases of red tides, contaminating over nine million hectares of sea area, making the water uninhabitable for coastal species and organisms.[26]
Negative impact on community livelihoods
Worsening water shortages in both cities and rural areas have driven up water prices, forcing farmers to abandon their farmland, especially in water-scarce regions.[27] Land degradation and the over-extraction of underground water have caused the abandonment or partial depopulation of 24,000 villages in northern and western China.[28] Agricultural production has been severely affected as polluted waters poison crop output. Each year, about 12 million tons of crops have to be destroyed because of heavy metal contamination, costing farmers 20 billion a year.[29]
Toxic water also affects fishermen, who say their average incomes have dropped as a result of spills and industrial waste from upstream factories pouring into fish pens. In the summer of 2006, an unprecedented discharge of industrial sewage from the upper reaches of the Canglangqu River, and a massive red tide later in the Bohai Bay, forced villagers into unemployment and debt.[30] In January 2007, a group of fish farmers in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, claimed that they had lost 170 million yuan (US $21.8 million) as result of pollution of their fish ponds from nearby industrial factories. They then won a landmark ruling against their provincial police for its failure to investigate and act on the farmers' complaint.[31]
Lack of public consultation in water management
Whereas water is used locally and regarded as a communal resource, China's water management institutionally lacks avenues for public consultation to reflect local needs. For instance, the massive 'South-to-North Water Diversion' project has come under intense criticisms for its lack of consultation with the 400,000 displaced residents.[32]
This lack of meaningful consultation, however, is not only widespread at the community level but also reflects an institutional deficiency. For example, China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) was initially not included in the preparatory discussions on the South-to-North Water Diversion, and was allowed to participate only after construction began in March 2004.[33]
INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC FRAMEWORK
In recent decades, international efforts have aimed to balance economic development and environmental protection. In 1992, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development from the Earth Summit highlighted the responsibilities of governments "to equitably meet development and environmental needs of present and future generations" (Principle 3).
Furthermore, international law recognizes that all people have the right to water, stemming from the international human right to health and to an adequate standard of living. These rights are protected in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights,[34] as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR),[35] which has been ratified by 155 countries, including China in 2001. The ICESCR committee states that parties to the Covenant must adopt effective measures to realize, without discrimination, the right to sufficient, safe, acceptable, accessible and affordable water.[36] Yet this remains out of reach for much of China's population.
In response to the continuous ecological degradation caused by its rapid economic growth that infringes on individuals' human rights and harms the environment, the Chinese government has included a number of ambitious environmental targets in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). President Hu Jintao in December 2006 urged local authorities to put energy and resources into conservation and shut polluting enterprises by stating: "Development and conservation are equally important and conservation should be put first."[37]
For the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games, China has committed to a "Green Olympics," giving top priority to environmental protection, including preventing air pollution and protecting drinking water sources. A reported $7 billion has been spent on environmental clean-up for the Olympic Games, and the government has committed to replacing coal with clean energies.[38] However, the overall preparation for the Olympics has been plagued by corruption, forced relocations, and lack of transparency and independent monitoring mechanisms.
RECENT WATER POLLUTION INCIDENTS
- November 13, 2005: A chemical plant blast dumped 100 tons of benzene into Jilin Province's Songhua River, a waterway that is shared by Russia before flowing into the Sea of Okhotsk.[39]
- February 14, 2006: A chlorine plant spilled 2,000 tons of alkaline into the Wuding River near Xi'an, Shaanxi Province.[40]
- April 8, 2006: 200 villagers launched a violent protest in three factories and a water treatment plant in Fujian and complained that the buildings polluted their water supply and damaged crops.[41]
- June 28, 2006: Villagers in Guangxi were dispersed violently for trying to stop the expansion of a manganese electrolyte plant which had dumped waste directly into the Heishui River, their only water source.[42]
- July 1–3, 2006: Two branches of Xi River in Hubei were polluted by magnesium and other chemicals by factories that discharged industrial waste water directly into the river. Villagers reported similar situations in the past, resulting in an increase in the deaths and illnesses of villagers from liver illnesses.[43]
- October–November 2006: On October 22, 2006, industrial dye from a central heating station was discharged from a public sewage outlet, creating a kilometer-long putrid red stretch of the Yellow River in Lanzhou, Guansu Province. Ammonia and nitrogen levels were four times the norm. A similar spill occurred again in the same part of the river in late November 2006.[44]
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
For further reading:
Dai, Qing. Yangtze! Yangtze! London: Earthscan, 1994. Available at: http://www.threegorgesprobe.org/pi/documents/three_gorges/Yangtze.
Dai, Qing. The River Dragon Has Come! The Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China's Yangtze River and Its People. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998.
Guissé, El Hadji (Special Rapporteur on the Right to Water, of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights). Relationship Between the Enjoyment of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Promotion of the Realization of the Right to Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation E/CN.4/Sub.2/2002/10. 54th Session. June 25, 2002. Available at: http://www.ohchr.org, via search engine.
Loh, Christine and Raufer, Roger, "The Emissions Game: How markets can help save the planet," CLSA Asia Pacific Markets, January 2007. Available at: http://www.civic-exchange.org/publications/2007/ET.pdf.
Turner, Jennifer. "New Ripples and Responses to China's Water Woes." The Jamestown Foundation: China Brief (online edition), Volume 6, Issue 25, December 19, 2006, http://jamestown.org/publications_details.php?
volume_id=415&issue_id=3960&article_id=2371757.
Yang, Chuanmin and Fang Qianhua. "A Village of Death and Its Hopes for the Future." China Rights Forum, No. 1 (2006): 25-29. Available at http://hrichina.org/public/PDFs/CRF.1.2006/CRF-2006-1_Village.pdf
Yardley, Jim. "A Troubled River Mirrors China's Path to Modernity." The New York Times (online edition), November 19, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/world/asia/19yellowriver.html.
Yu, Jie. "The Environmental Yellow Peril." China Rights Forum, No. 1 (2006): 41-43. Available at http://hrichina.org/public/PDFs/CRF.1.2006/CRF-2006-1_Yellow.pdf
//
ENDNOTES
[1] "China's Trade Surplus Jumps," Reuters via CNN.com, January 10, 2007.
[2] Leta Hong Fincher, "Worldwatch Institute: 16 of World's 20 Most-Polluted Cities in China," Voice of America, June 28, 2006, http://www.voanews.com.
[3] Shi Jiangtao, "Green Crisis Wipes 10pc off GDP," South China Morning Post, June 6, 2006.
[4] Shi Jiangtao, "Beijing's Cleanup Bill to Cost 1.6pc of GDP - Environmental Official," South China Morning Post, June 19, 2006.
[5] "'Unexpected' Pollution Comes As No Shock," People's Daily online, October 16, 2006, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn.
[6] Nankivell, Nathan, "China's Pollution and Its Threat to Domestic and Regional Stability," The Jamestown Foundation: The China Brief, Vol. 5, Issue 22 (October 2005), http://www.jamestown.org.
[7] "Strictest Environmental Protection System Calls for the Strictest Enforcement Environmental Laws (最严格环保制度”呼唤“最坚决环保执法)," CCTV.com, August 4, 2006.
[8] "Serious Pollution is on the Rise for the First Nine Months of 2006 (环保总局公布2006年上半年及第三季度我国环境质量状况 局部污染严重 主要污染物排放仍呈升势)," State Environmental Protection Administration, November 21, 2006, .
[9] United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Global Environment Outlook Year Book 2006: An Overview of Our Changing Environment (Nairobi: UNEP, 2006), 16. Available at http://www.unep.org.
[10] "Deserts Shrinking by 7,858 sq km Annually," Xinhua News online edition, May 30, 2006, http://news.xinhuanet.com.
[11] "China Needs 50 Years to Clean Polluted Farmland (中国现有水土流失需半个世纪治理)," Radio Free Asia, July 5, 2006.
[12] Chinese Ministry of Water Resources, cited in the World Health Organization, WHO Representative Office in China, "Environment and health in China today," July 6, 2006.
[13] Kristine Kwok, "Pearl and Yangtze Estuaries 'Dead'," South China Morning Post, October 21, 2006.
[14] Xie Chuanjiao, "Project Boosts Environment Protection," China Daily [via People's Daily], November 18, 2006, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn.
[15] "Pollution Leaves Beloved Dolphin Of Yangtze 'Functionally' Extinct," The Washington Post, December 14, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com.
[16] "River dolphins in freshwater battle against extinction, WWF warns," World Wide Fund China, March 22, 2005, http://www.wwfchina.org/english/loca.php?loca=299.
[17] A monthly report on water quality released by China National Environmental Monitoring Center in June 2006 showed that drinking water quality in 16 out of 113 key cities assessed was below national standards. Of drinking water sources, 74, or 20.1 percent of the total surveyed, fell short of quality requirements, while 527 million tons of drinking water, or 32.3 percent of the total, was unsuitable for drinking. See Liu, Yingling, "China's Drinking Water Situation Grim; Heavy Pollution to Blame," China Watch via Worldwatch Institute Website, August 3, 2006, http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4423.
[18] Zhai Haohui, "Ensuring Safe Drinking Water for Rural Areas Under A Sustainable & Human-Oriented Policy," a speech addressed at the High-Level International Conference on Millennium Development Goals, Beijing, March 25, 2004, http://www.mwr.gov.cn/english1/20040806/38392.asp.
[19] Data taken from WHO Statistical Information System (WHOSIS), http://www.who.int/whosis/en.
[20] "Infection of Diarrhoeal Diseases Drops 47% After Access to Clean Water (吃上洁净水后 农村肠道传染病等发病率降低47%)," Sohu.com, November 29, 2004, http://news.sohu.com.
[21] Data from 2002 taken from WHO Statistical Information System (WHOSIS), http://www.who.int/whosis/en.
[22] "Cancer Village Highlights Chinas Water Woes," Agence France-Presse via Terra Daily, March 20, 2006, http://www.terradaily.com; see also, "Cancer Deaths Haunt Villages," People's Daily , September 1, 2004, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn.
[23] "Half of China's Chemical Plants Endanger Environment," Xinhua News online edition, July 11, 2006, http://news.xinhuanet.com.
[24] Yan, Zhan, "China's Groundwater Future Increasingly Murky," Worldwatch Institute, November 28, 2006, http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4753.
[25] Turner, Jennifer, "New Ripples and Responses to China's Water Woes," The Jamestown Foundation: China Brief, Volume 6, Issue 25 (December 19, 2006), http://jamestown.org.
[26] "14 Mln Hectares of China's Costal Sea Areas Polluted," Xinhua News online edition, October 13, 2006, http://news.xinhuanet.com.
[27] "Water Shortages Are Potential Threat to China's Growth, Stability," Voice of America, March 18, 2005, http://www.voanews.com.
[28] Lestor Brown, cited in Turner, Jennifer, "New Ripples and Responses to China's Water Woes," The Jamestown Foundation: China Brief, Volume 6, Issue 25 (December 19, 2006), http://jamestown.org.
[29] Chow Chung Yan, "Warning of Ecological Disaster over Farmland Pollution," South China Morning Post, July 19, 2006.
[30] "Pollution Engulfs Bohai Bay Fishermen," South China Morning Post, January 3, 2007.
[31] Eighty-two farmers won a ruling against provincial police at the Shangchen District Court in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. They alleged that pollution from factories in the Wenzhou industrial zone caused 170 million yuan (nearly US$21.8 million) in damages to more than 367 hectares of fish ponds between 2003 and 2004. The court ordered Zhejiang police authorities to determine why the Wenzhou Public Security Bureau did not act on the farmers' complaints. While the outcome of the court-ordered investigation is still pending, the fact that a local court has ruled against a provincial authority could be precedent-setting. This follows related legal victories against the SEPA and the Wenzhou municipal government last year. Ewing, Kent, "The Long March to the rule of law," Asia Times Online, January 12, 2007, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IA12Ad03.html; Irene Wang, "Ignored farmers win case against police Landmark court ruling seen as progress for judicial system," South China Morning Post, 8 January 2007.
[32] The project was approved by the State Council in August 2002, aiming to bring divert water from the south to China's drought-ridden north. The project is costly, required investment of about 486 billion yuan (about 59 billion US dollars), twice as much as the cost of the Three Gorges Dam project. It involves more than 100 counties in seven provinces and municipalities.
[33] "Drowning Culture," Hong Kong Standard, May 20, 2006, http://hk-imail.singtao.com.
[34] UDHR article 25.
[35] ICESCR articles 11 and 12.
[36] Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 15 (2002).
[37] Shi Jiangtao, "Conservation Comes First, Hu Warns Local Officials," South China Morning Post, December 27, 2006.
[38] U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Commercial Service, Beijing Olympics 2008, http://www.buyusa.gov/china/en/olympics.html".
[39] "The Songhua River Spill Field Mission Report," United Nations Environmental Programme, December 2005.
[40] "China Spill May Affect Groundwater, Official Says," Bloomberg News, February 14, 2006.
[41] "200 Angry Villagers Loot Leather Plants," South China Morning Post, April 12, 2006.
[42] "Guangxi Pollution Protesters Go on Trial," Human Rights in China, December 4, 2006, http://hrichina.org/public/contents/31781.
[43] "The Plan to 'Move Water from South to North' Appears to Have Worsened Water Pollution (南水北调水源成“纳污河”)," The Beijing News, August 22, 2006.
[44] Zhuang Pinghui, "Yellow River Turns Red from Heating System Discharge," South China Morning Post, October 24, 2006; "China's 'Sorrow' River Flows Red from Pollution," Reuters via Yahoo! News, November 22, 2006.
