ChinaDialogue Latest Articles
China and the world discuss the environment



Keeping it in the family (Jul 4)
Family ownership can imbue a firm with a sense of purpose and values its rivals may lack. John Elkington, turning to China’s emerging entrepreneurs, says it’s time to consider best practice in this much-overlooked sector.Rarely do women pursue me in the way they did recently in São Paulo airport. Heading home after an intensive week in Brazil, my luggage was too tightly packed to fit a large transparent bag, in which were embedded 12 multi-coloured miniature flip-flops. This mini-footwear display turned out to be a female magnet – several women stopped me to ask where I had got them. I explained that they were a gift from a local company, a container for a set of documents I had requested about their thinking around corporate responsibility and sustainability. My admirers seemed fascinated when I told them the company that had given the bag to me, less so when I mentioned what the contents were. My reactions, however, were precisely the opposite. The crucial role that family-owned f...


In China, the death of a mountain town (Jul 3)
Landslides and mudslides in the Beichuan region added to the high death toll in May’s earthquake. Now, writes Taige Li, familiar warnings are being heard. Will historic errors be repeated?The most shocking of the many tragedies of the Sichuan earthquake on May 12, 2008, was that of the town of Qushan, the county seat of Beichuan.
The quake left the town virtually flattened. Official statistics put the dead and missing at 13,000 – out of a population of only 40,000. The town is no longer habitable, and a memorial is to be built on its ruins. Beichuan, the only Qiang-nationality autonomous county in China -- and under the jurisdiction of Mianyang municipality -- suffered not just from the tremors themselves but also from the landslides and mudslides triggered by the quake. If these geological-disaster risks had been considered when the county seat was located here or as it expanded, the destruction may not have been so total.  Beichuan before the earthquake
Beichuan lies in the n...


Which way forward for Chinese NGOs? (Jul 1)
New regulations on open government information have ushered in a new environment for the country’s NGOs. chinadialogue asked He Ping how green groups can best use their increasing influence.China’s domestic non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have seen huge changes in their operating environment since the implementation of new laws on open government informationon May 1, 2008. Consequently, chinadialogue’s Beijing branch had many questions to ask. How can environmental NGOs play a role in society? What differences do Chinese groups have with their overseas counterparts? Which fields can and should they enter? How can student groups sustain themselves? To help answer these issues, chinadialogue talked to He Ping, president of the Washington-based International Fund for China’s Environment.

chinadialogue (cd): As someone who works with environmental NGOs, what positive developments have you seen regarding Chinese green groups in recent years? He Ping (HP): Their growth has been ra...


How China’s rise spells trouble (Jun 30)
Steadily increasing demand for meat from a growing middle class in the planet’s most-populous nation is helping to destabilise world food prices. Jonathan Watts reports. Normal 0 7.8 磅 0 2 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable { mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt;"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-"Times New Roman";} Before lunch Zhang Xiuwen asks his family to give thanks. The table in their small Beijing flat is set with a simple meal: garlic pork in vinegar, fresh tomatoes, leavened bread, potato, cauliflower, and fried egg with cucumber. But for Chinese migrants such as Zhang and his wife, it is a feast that they could only have dreamed about when growing up in a poor country village.
Ten years ago, Zhang swapped the mountain skyline of his rural home near Shangri-La in south-western Yunnan province fo...


Writer in the spotlight: Alan Weisman (Jun 27)
Envisioning a post-human planet healing itself, The World Without Us is “an experiment in thinking”. Its author tells Kate Cheney Davidson how the book evolved – and hails a “courageous” China.Alan Weisman’s environmental reporting has taken him to the farthest corners of the earth. From Amazon rainforests to the Korean demilitarized zone to New York City’s vast underground rail system, the American journalist has gone in search of places where humans have had their greatest, and their least, impact on the natural world. In his latest book, The World Without Us, Weisman travels to where no one has gone before – to an imagined time when the earth, suddenly rid of humankind, begins to heal itself.
The bestseller, which has now been translated into 30 languages, including Chinese, has been called one of the most provocative “thought experiments” of our time. chinadialogue’s Kate Cheney Davidson caught up with Weisman to talk about the genesis of The World Without Us and what it says ...


Trading water in thirsty China (Jun 26)
A new scheme hopes to alleviate water poverty in an arid area of southwest China. Zhou Jigang, Peng Guangcan and Ceng Zhen report on the promises and perils of water trading.On April 1, 2008, the Tongliang county water authority in Chongqing, southwest China, approved Zhu Jiaping’s application for water usage. With stamps from the town of Pulu and three villages within its borders, the document gave Zhu the legal right to use water from limestone caves at Xinlian village. Zhu’s company planned to use the water to raise giant salamanders. New regulations on the allocation of water rights in the county meant his application had to explain the potential impact of his company’s water usage on local stakeholders. Liu Shangwu, a water management official, explained that three nearby villages had to agree that the application did not impact on their water security. Otherwise it would not have been approved.  The procedures were complicated, but Zhu believed it was worthwhile. A written ag...


After catastophe, asking the right questions (Jun 25)
A year of deadly disasters has tested the Chinese people, writes Tang Hao. From regulations on school buildings to emergency response mechanisms, there are important lessons to be learned.The year almost seems to have been designed to test the Chinese people; 2008 has been a year of disasters. We have seen blizzards, public disorder, deadly train crashes and an earthquake. In China, there is an air of solemnity and pain. Premier Wen Jiaobao addressed an elementary school in the Sichuan quake zone and described a process of rejuvenation through disaster, which would demonstrate the determination and spirit of the Chinese people. If the nation can reflect on the causes of catastrophe and work to resolve them, if the people can retain their reason and hope in the face of tragedy, and if society can stick to its path despite these obstacles, then disaster can present an opportunity for rebirth. The best way to remember the people who were lost is to learn from the tragedy and undertake...


What the next American president must do (Jun 23)
After years of US inaction, the new president will have to move quickly to address global warming. Elizabeth Kolbert surveys the views of various non-partisan groups and provides a blueprint for what needs to be done. The next president of the United States will take office on January 20, 2009. By that point, half of the two years allotted by last December’s Bali conference “road map” for negotiating a new international climate treaty will have passed. Meanwhile, of the decade that NASA climate scientist James Hansen has said remains for avoiding a commitment to “dangerous” warming, four-tenths will have ticked by. (Hansen laid out this timetable in 2005.) Normal 0 7.8 磅 0 2 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable { mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt;"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-"Times New Roman";} All ...


“I'd lost the strength to carry on” (Jun 20)
With Marina Silva’s resignation as Brazil’s environment minister, the Amazon has lost a great champion. Why did she quit, and what does the rain forest’s future hold? Tom Phillips hears her story.Marina Silva will never forget the day the bulldozers rolled up on her family's doorstep. It was the beginning of the 1970s and in the isolated Amazon community of Bagaço, where she was born, young Marina, then about 12, looked on curiously as work began on a major highway to link the Brazilian rainforest with the rest of the country. Shortly afterwards, her relatives began to die. First two younger sisters, then her uncle and finally her cousin: all victims of a malaria epidemic imported by the road builders. “I don't know if I was conscious that the road was bringing all that, but it made me write on my own flesh the consequences of what it meant to mess around with nature without giving the slightest attention to the need to look after it,” she remembers. Fast-forward to January 2003. F...


Debate: can we turn off the air conditioning this summer? (Jun 19)
If Chinese citizens turned their cooling off three minutes early, carbon emissions could be radically reduced. Zhang Haidi, recalling the beauty of floral window boxes, says it’s a small sacrifice.The narrow streets of Bamberg, a charming old town in the German state of Bavaria, are hard to forget. I am particularly fond of the windows, many of which are decorated with window boxes of flowers displaying a profusion of colours.  And then I think of Jinan, the eastern Chinese city where I lived for many years. The number of cars in Chinese cities has rocketed in recent years, with roads becoming ever more congested. The buildings alongside those roads have become taller and more numerous – and instead of window boxes full of flowers, the only decoration on the outside of Chinese buildings tends to be air-conditioning units.
As summer approaches, the news media carry reports of air-conditioning manufacturers’ sales promotions, with hundreds of new systems being sold in a single day, ...