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Environmental Issues in China

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Environmental Issues in China. Major Problems China is Facing. Population. Energy use ... Some issues... stringent review of their environmental impact. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Environmental Issues in China


1
Environmental Issues in China
2
Major Problems China is Facing
  • Population
  • Energy use
  • Food Production
  • Water Pollution, shortages.
  • Coal Pollution
  • Air Pollution

3
  • Well discuss
  • Energy, growing society
  • Food production, water shortages, feeding China
  • Population as it relates to all of these problems
  • Dr. Bray will cover
  • Air pollution
  • Water pollution
  • Deforestation
  • Other issues

4
In reality
  • No country in history has emerged as a major
    industrial power without creating a legacy of
    environmental damagewhich can then take decades
    and lots of public concern to be addressed.
  • It was the case for the U.S., European countries,
    and other MDCs. In the U.S., environmentalism and
    environmental laws came about in order to deal
    with the big mess we created in the first place
    (water, air, and land pollution).
  • So, whats the big deal if China is now doing
    the same?
  • Scale pollution affects
  • millions of people. Pop. size
  • Everyone is watching
  • Global problems
  • (i.e., global warming)

5
Some issues
  • China is doing what the U.S. and European nations
    diddeveloping, demanding vehicles, using more
    energy, and consuming and polluting accordingly.
  • In China, the difference between the rich a poor
    is tremendousmuch of the country is still faced
    with LDCs problems such as poor water quality,
    malaria, malnutrition. Yet the affluent are
    purchasing more than one vehicle, consuming more
    meat, and mimicking the EU and U.S.
  • China has surpassed the U.S. as the largest green
    house gases emitter. This was not predicted until
    2010
  • Coal is the major culprit, and provides about
    two-thirds of Chinas energy needs. China has
    abundant supplies and already burns more coal
    than the United States, Europe and Japan
    combined.
  • Now McDonalds have drive-thrus in major cities
    what will that do to air pollution, water,
    agriculture, and overall health of population?

6
Cheap Energy good energy?
  • Electricity is the fastest- growing part of
    Chinas energy demand
  • Growth of electricity is projected to continue at
    no less than 7 through the year 2000 and beyond
  • Chinas total electrical generating capacity has
    to double every decade to keep pace
  • There are plans to build thirty to sixty new
    electricity power plants every year for the
    foreseeable future
  • 75 of these plants will be coal- fired, most of
    the rest are nuclear

7
Cheap Energygood energy?
  • Coal reserves are enormous. For China, this is
    important because it can develop without relying
    on foreign countries to supply energy needs.
  • Overall, it is not a clean source and the
    environmental and health impacts are great.
  • Last year, China burned the energy equivalent of
    2.7 billion tons of coal, three-quarters of what
    the experts had said would be the maximum
    required in 2020. To put it another way, China
    now seems likely to need as much energy in 2010
    as it thought it would need in 2020 under the
    most pessimistic assumptions.
  • The ravenous appetite for fossil fuels traces
    partly to an economic stimulus program in 1997.
    The leadership, worried that Chinas economy
    would fall into a steep recession as its East
    Asian neighbors had, provided generous state
    financing and tax incentives to support
    industrialization on a grand scale.

8
Cheap Energy good energy?
  • Are they mining efficiency?
  • Chinese buildings rarely have thermal insulation.
    On average, twice as much energy is used to heat
    and cool as those in similar climates in the
    United States and Europe. A vast majority of new
    buildings 95 percent do not meet Chinas own
    codes for energy efficiency.
  • New buildings require China to build power
    plants, which it has been doing prodigiously. In
    2005 alone, China added 66 gigawatts of
    electricity to its power grid, about as much
    power as Britain generates in a year. Last year,
    it added an additional 102 gigawatts, as much as
    France.
  • Coal-fired plants are quick and cheap to build
    and easy to run. While the Chinese government has
    set goals for increasing the use of a long list
    of alternative energies including wind,
    biomass, hydroelectric, solar and nuclear they
    all face obstacles, from bureaucracy to
    bottlenecks in manufacturing.
  • The problem is particularly acute because
    governments across Asia, from China and India to
    Indonesia and the Philippines, are turning mainly
    to coal to meet their soaring electricity needs
    and prevent blackouts, even though coal produces
    more global warming gases than any other major
    source of electricity.

9
Solutions?
  • Plans have slowed to expand the use of natural
    gas, which burns more cleanly and produces less
    greenhouse gas than coal or oil. It has proved
    costly and difficult to build pipelines .
  • The future of hydroelectric power in China is
    clouded by severe environmental problems at the
    Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.
  • One of the strangest features of Chinas energy
    policy is the paucity of environmental controls
    on coal-fired plants, because rules governing
    them were written long ago. Renewable energy
    projects actually face a more stringent review of
    their environmental impact.

10
Solutions?
  • Move factories outside of the city centers. NIMBY
    issues
  • Wash the coal that factories and power plants use
    before burning it. Clean coal technology however
    the amount of CO2 released is the same
  • Install sulfur dioxide scrubbers in power
    plants.
  • Install electrostatic precipitators to remove
    small cancer causing particles from coal smoke.
    Particulates create health problems locally and
    globally.
  • Improve efficiency so less coal is burned.

11
Obstacles to solutions
  • Chinas yearning for economic growth
  • We must reduce the health affects of coal
    burning while we increase the production of
    coal.
  • The government only directs 6 to 10 of its
    energy budget to efficiency
  • Some people in China assume the market will take
    care of everything.

12
Politics in China
  • Authoritarian government makes it hard to shift
    into environmental action.
  • The focus is on growth. There is concern about
    health and the environment there are some
    targets for cleaner air and water, however it is
    still inexpensive for industry to pollute and
    there are no tax or market-oriented policies in
    place that help discourage pollution.
  • There is corruption, and if a coal mine is shut
    down, it often reopens thanks to officials
    looking to profit.
  • China does not want to stop growing its economy
    and argues that the boom is in part due to demand
    for cheap products from countries like the U.S.
  • Therefore the argument is that environmental
    problems are not their own doing, but that of
    MNCs opting to operate in China. The pollution
    remains local, but the good and profits are
    shipped elsewhere.
  • Chinas position is that the U.S. and Britain
    polluted their way to the top, and caused global
    warming. Industrialized countries only worried
    about environmental problems when they were
    wealthy enough to do something about themnot ye
    the case for China.

13
Water and Food Production
  • 60,000 people a year die from diarrhea, bladder
    and stomach cancer, and other diseases caused by
    water-borne pollution. China suffers more deaths
    from water pollutants than from coal mine and
    vehicle accidents combined.
  • Compared with the United States, China has 1/5
    the water supply, but almost 5 times as many
    people. China has about 7 percent of the worlds
    water resources and roughly 20 percent of its
    population.
  • It also has a severe regional water imbalance.
    About 4/5 of the water is in the South, while ½
    the population lives in the North. Northern
    parts of China are under such water stress that
    there is a threat of it becoming the worlds
    biggest desert.

14
Water and Food Production
  • Farmers in the north once used shovels to dig
    their wells. Now, many aquifers have been so
    depleted that some wells in Beijing and Hebei
    must extend more than half a mile before they
    reach fresh water.
  • Industry and agriculture use nearly all of the
    flow of the Yellow River, before it reaches the
    Bohai Sea.
  • About 5/6 of the wetlands have dried up,
    according to one study. Scientists say that most
    natural streams or creeks have disappeared.
    Several rivers that once were navigable are now
    mostly dust and brush.

15
Addressing the problem?
  • Chinese leaders have undertaken one of the most
    ambitious engineering projects in world history,
    a 60 billion network of canals, rivers and lakes
    to transport water from the flood-prone Yangtze
    River to the silt-choked Yellow River. But that
    effort, if successful, will still leave the north
    chronically thirsty.
  • But water remains inexpensive. Chinese industry
    uses 4 to 10 times more water per unit of
    production than the average in industrialized
    nations, according to the World Bank.
  • In many parts of China, factories and farms dump
    waste into surface water with few repercussions.
    Chinas environmental monitors say that one-third
    of all river water and lakes are not even good
    enough for industrial or agricultural use.

16
If there is no waterwho will feed China?
  • China has lost some forty million hectares of
    arable land since the late 1950s. This amounts
    to nearly one- third of all the land currently
    under cultivation.
  • If China were to rely heavily on irrigation, then
    it should be able to feed between 1.3 and 2.0
    billion people. But things are drying up

17
Grain Consumption
  • A dietary shift towards more meat would increase
    Chinas total grain demand.
  • This places more pressure on existing
    agricultural land, water supply, and
    pollutionkeep in mind, its about feeding 1.3
    billion people, not a small town.

18
Food Shortages
  • The future gap between supply and demand in China
    will be closed only by importing food.
  • It is estimated that China would need to import
    175 billion tons of grain by the year 2025
  • The current level of global grain exports is 200
    billion tons
  • The global community may not be able to supply
    the amount of grain that China will need in the
    future

19
Threats to Sustainable Agriculture
  • Long term collective investments have declined in
    rural China
  • Get rich quick and every peasant for himself.
    Peasants cannot afford to use organic fertilizer
    anymore, they intensify production and aim for
    immediate returns.
  • Typically this results in more water needed,
    greater soil degradation, and overall future
    diminished cropsvicious cycle.
  • In twenty years when they may need it most, the
    water and soil will have been poisoned beyond
    repair.

20
Mitigating the Food Crisis
  • China has limited the loss of arable land,
    reclaimed idle land, and increased crop yields
  • Better seeds, irrigation, and other technical
    improvements
  • The government now insists on maintaining 95
    self- sufficiency in grain production
  • Implement more real prices for water to
    discourage waste

21
Sound Familiar?
  • In 1963, a flood paralyzed the Northern region,
    prompting construction of a flood-control system
    of dams, reservoirs and concrete spillways. Flood
    control improved but the ecological balance was
    altered as the dams began choking off rivers that
    once flowed eastward into the North China Plain.
  • The new reservoirs gradually became major water
    suppliers for growing cities like Shijiazhuang.
    Farmers, the regions biggest water users, began
    depending almost exclusively on wells. Rainfall
    steadily declined in what some scientists now
    believe is a consequence of climate change.
  • Before, farmers had compensated for the regions
    limited annual rainfall by planting only three
    crops every two years. But underground water
    seemed limitless and government policies pushed
    for higher production, so farmers began planting
    a second annual crop, usually winter wheat, which
    requires a lot of water.

22
Sound Familiar?
  • The rising water demands in the North China Plain
    make it unfeasible for farmers to continue
    planting a winter crop. The international
    ramifications would be significant if China
    became an ever bigger customer on world grain
    markets. Some analysts have long warned that
    grain prices could steadily rise, contributing to
    inflation and making it harder for other
    developing countries to buy food.
  • Scientists say converting farmland into urban
    areas would save enough water to stop the drop in
    the water table, if not reverse it, because
    widespread farming still uses more water than
    urban areas. Of course, large-scale urbanization,
    already under way, could worsen air quality
    Shijiazhuangs air already ranks among the worst
    in China because of heavy industrial pollution.
  • Keep in mind that around 1900, Shijiazhuang was a
    collection of farming villages. By 1950, the
    population had reached 335,000. This year, the
    city has roughly 2.3 million people with a
    metropolitan area population of 9 million.

23
Is there a right answer?
  • Population will keep growing, and growing, and
    growingthough it may stabilize, it is still a
    lot of people trying to own a car.
  • China simply wants to develop to end poverty and
    feed its people. The goal of developing countries
    is to become developed.
  • With such a growing economy, can you blame them
    for enjoying McDonalds and not worrying about
    where the meat comes from and what that means for
    the environment?
  • These issues are relevant because most of the
    worlds population falls under a similar category
    as China. They are on the verge or in the middle
    of economic growth, with large populations, and
    cheap and dirty energy is the most readily
    available means for development.
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