Saturday, August 9, 2008
Vietnam Water: August 9, 2008: Floods in northern Vietnam devestate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7551529.stm
BBC NEWS
Dozens killed in Vietnam floods
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
People struggle in the flooded terrain
At least 62 people in northern Vietnam have been killed by flash floods and landslides caused by a tropical storm.
Dozens of people are missing and entire villages have been cut off in Lao Cai, the worst-affected province.
A rescue effort led by the army is under way but is being hampered by the severe weather.
Tropical storm Kammuri, which came in from the Gulf of Tonkin and made landfall on Friday, hit China with rain and winds earlier in the week.
Officials in the mountainous province of Lao Cai, which borders China, told news agencies that tens of thousands of people had been stranded after roads were washed away.
Further landslides have been predicted, sparking fears that the death toll could rise.
Mud and water
The government said that more than 60 people were missing in several northern provinces, including Lao Cai. Hundreds of houses have been destroyed.
In Yen Bai, an official told Associated Press that some people were killed in their homes as they slept.
"The water and walls of mud came at night when everybody was sleeping," Luong Tuan Anh was quoted as saying. "They could not run to safety."
Kammuri is the ninth tropical storm of the year.
Earlier in the week, China evacuated nearly 400,000 people and called thousands of vessels back to port as the storm lashed its southern coast.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7551529.stm
Published: 2008/08/09 15:08:30 GMT
China Water: August 9, 2008: Cloudbusting for the Olympics.
A New Zealand paper reported on cloudbusting in regards to the Beijing Olympics.
I've shared on this before. See my post from June 14, 2008 for more information.
For this article, see: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10526191
World Story
Cloud-busting barrage
5:00AM Sunday August 10, 2008
By Paul Lewis
Beijing has spent an astonishing $20 billion to beautify the city and clear the air but the smog remains persistent. Photo / AP
Beijing has spent an astonishing $20 billion to beautify the city and clear the air but the smog remains persistent. Photo / AP
Olympic Games
In the hills around Beijing, an army waits. Armed with 37mm anti-aircraft guns they wait not for aircraft nor invaders. The enemy is clouds.
They are clouds carrying rain. Beijing did not want rain to spoil the opening ceremony nor other key events of the Olympics. So they shoot the clouds.
Not with artillery shells, mind. With chemicals, designed to get the clouds to drop their rain before they hit the Olympic venues, or to remain dry and pass harmlessly overhead.
Yes, China even tries to control the weather and, even though there is some scepticism about success rates, they have made a whole industry out of it, involving volunteer gunners and 40-year-old anti-aircraft artillery.
Herald on Sunday efforts to visit one of the cloud-shooting facilities were denied, but a lot is known about the Chinese programme run by the wonderfully named Weather Modification Division of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau.
The authorities allowed the name of one of the gunners to be published (but not photographed) - Zhang Geng, a 40-year-old farmer from the village of Beixing in the Fragrant Hills.
He waits for his phone to ring with news from the bureau that likely looking clouds are on the way.
Then he meets seven other members of the shooting team at his gun. Four carry the shells and rockets to the guns, two load and two fire.
They are not alone and, like everything else in China, the numbers are staggering.
Over the past five years, China has spent about $700 million on shooting clouds. With good reason.
Depending on the chemical contents of the shells Zhang and other gunners fire into the clouds, they either produce rain or persuade the clouds to retain their loads. China needs water, and lack of it can hamper economic growth.
Over the five years from 2000-05, according to state news agency Xinhua, shooting the clouds has produced 275 billion cubic yards of water - enough to fill China's huge Yellow River twice over.
So there is ample economic incentive for the cloud-shooting programme, even before factoring in the country's image as it desperately tries to show its best face during these Olympics.
There are up to 50,000 people employed in the rainmaking and rain-stopping programmes across China, and 6500 gun emplacements and 4000 rocket launchers are used nationally.
They have been successful too - China claims that rainfall has increased across the country by 10-25 per cent because of the programme.
But there is a drawback to the rain game.
Rainfall helps to clear the eye-smarting smog which blankets the city from time to time, so measures which are aimed at preventing rainfall may not help clear the airborne fug.
Beijing has spent an astonishing $20 billion to beautify the city and clear the air but the smog remains persistent - in spite of the government English language newspaper China Daily carrying a dubious story that the city's air does not pose any health risk for athletes.
China may yet introduce further emergency measures to cut air pollution during the three weeks of the Games, including taking 90 per cent of Beijing's cars off the streets at peak times, and closing more factories and building sites.
Maybe, too, people like Zhang Geng will be asked to train their guns skyward and shoot the clouds to make rain, helping to clear the smog.
Herald Marketplace
I've shared on this before. See my post from June 14, 2008 for more information.
For this article, see: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10526191
World Story
Cloud-busting barrage
5:00AM Sunday August 10, 2008
By Paul Lewis
Beijing has spent an astonishing $20 billion to beautify the city and clear the air but the smog remains persistent. Photo / AP
Beijing has spent an astonishing $20 billion to beautify the city and clear the air but the smog remains persistent. Photo / AP
Olympic Games
In the hills around Beijing, an army waits. Armed with 37mm anti-aircraft guns they wait not for aircraft nor invaders. The enemy is clouds.
They are clouds carrying rain. Beijing did not want rain to spoil the opening ceremony nor other key events of the Olympics. So they shoot the clouds.
Not with artillery shells, mind. With chemicals, designed to get the clouds to drop their rain before they hit the Olympic venues, or to remain dry and pass harmlessly overhead.
Yes, China even tries to control the weather and, even though there is some scepticism about success rates, they have made a whole industry out of it, involving volunteer gunners and 40-year-old anti-aircraft artillery.
Herald on Sunday efforts to visit one of the cloud-shooting facilities were denied, but a lot is known about the Chinese programme run by the wonderfully named Weather Modification Division of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau.
The authorities allowed the name of one of the gunners to be published (but not photographed) - Zhang Geng, a 40-year-old farmer from the village of Beixing in the Fragrant Hills.
He waits for his phone to ring with news from the bureau that likely looking clouds are on the way.
Then he meets seven other members of the shooting team at his gun. Four carry the shells and rockets to the guns, two load and two fire.
They are not alone and, like everything else in China, the numbers are staggering.
Over the past five years, China has spent about $700 million on shooting clouds. With good reason.
Depending on the chemical contents of the shells Zhang and other gunners fire into the clouds, they either produce rain or persuade the clouds to retain their loads. China needs water, and lack of it can hamper economic growth.
Over the five years from 2000-05, according to state news agency Xinhua, shooting the clouds has produced 275 billion cubic yards of water - enough to fill China's huge Yellow River twice over.
So there is ample economic incentive for the cloud-shooting programme, even before factoring in the country's image as it desperately tries to show its best face during these Olympics.
There are up to 50,000 people employed in the rainmaking and rain-stopping programmes across China, and 6500 gun emplacements and 4000 rocket launchers are used nationally.
They have been successful too - China claims that rainfall has increased across the country by 10-25 per cent because of the programme.
But there is a drawback to the rain game.
Rainfall helps to clear the eye-smarting smog which blankets the city from time to time, so measures which are aimed at preventing rainfall may not help clear the airborne fug.
Beijing has spent an astonishing $20 billion to beautify the city and clear the air but the smog remains persistent - in spite of the government English language newspaper China Daily carrying a dubious story that the city's air does not pose any health risk for athletes.
China may yet introduce further emergency measures to cut air pollution during the three weeks of the Games, including taking 90 per cent of Beijing's cars off the streets at peak times, and closing more factories and building sites.
Maybe, too, people like Zhang Geng will be asked to train their guns skyward and shoot the clouds to make rain, helping to clear the smog.
Herald Marketplace
China Water: August 9, 2008: Water diverted for Olympics.
Although this dates from February, it seems relevant today.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080228-china-water.html
National Geographic News: NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/NEWS
China Diverting Major River to "Water" Beijing Olympics
Kevin Holden Platt in Beijing, China
for National Geographic News
February 28, 2008
Landlocked Beijing has begun tapping a lattice of reservoirs, rivers, and canals across eastern China to provide plentiful water for this summer's Olympic Games.
As part of the initiative, more than 150 million cubic meters (39.6 billion gallons) of water are being diverted from the Yellow River through a network of canals stretching across three provinces to refill a lake south of the historically drought-stricken Chinese capital.
A parallel project is diverting water to the east coast resort of Qingdao, which will host the Olympic sailing competitions.
"Athletes from all over the world will come to China to join the Olympic Games [in August]," said Huang Feng, a researcher at the Yellow River Conservancy Commission, which is in charge of the river's diversion.
"So Beijing is implementing its master plan to provide the very highest quality of water."
Only the Beginning
The current rerouting is just the precursor to a 60-billion-U.S.-dollar hydro-engineering project expected to see three human-carved rivers carry water from southern China to the arid north.
The water transfer project is designed to divert more than 40 billion cubic meters (10.5 trillion gallons) of water each year from China's longest river, the Yangtze, and its tributaries.
But observers say the move will likely spark bitter disputes between those losing and gaining access to a precious resource.
Sandra Postel is director of the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst, Massachusetts.
In 2000 "thousands of farmers in the Yellow River Basin of eastern China clashed with police over a government plan to recapture runoff from a local reservoir for cities, industries, and other users," she noted.
What's more, about 300,000 Chinese are slated for resettlement to make room for new diversion channels.
(Watch related video about conflicts arising in villages affected by the recently completed Three Gorges Dam [November 27, 2007].)
"There is certainly potential for more disputes within China over land, water, and pollution" as the project gains momentum, Postel said.
Historical Water Woes
Bordered by the rapidly expanding Ordos and Gobi deserts, Beijing has been historically plagued by thirst (see map).
The north's Yellow River, a lifeline of Chinese civilization since Neolithic times, has become so overused that it sometimes runs dry before reaching its estuary on the east coast.
In the last 50 years a population explosion, an industrial revolution, the rapid expansion of cities, and the spread of irrigated agriculture have fueled the region's water shortages.
(Read "China's Instant Cities" in National Geographic magazine [June 2007].)
This push for economic growth has devastated China's environment and waterways. The World Health Organization estimates that polluted drinking water kills nearly a hundred thousand Chinese citizens each year.
To help bring more and better quality water into the north in time for the Olympics, the government revived plans first proposed by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1949 to crisscross China with a matrix of human-made waterways.
Yang Xiaoping, a scientist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the project calls for three new waterways to run along the east, center, and far west of the country.
In addition to new construction, the project will incorporate sections of the imperial Grand Canal built during the Sui Dynasty, which lasted from A.D. 589 to 618.
The Grand Canal stretches more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) between the southeastern city of Hangzhou and the North China Plain and was built to ferry rice northward from more fertile regions.
Portions of the ancient canal will be modernized and expanded as it is transformed into the world's longest aqueduct, said Huang of the Yellow River Commission.
Ultimately the canal will become part of the project's eastern route, transporting water from the Yangtze through a tunnel burrowed beneath the Yellow River and on to northern China.
The 745-mile-long (1,200-kilometer-long) central route will also be channeled underground as its passes the Yellow River toward Beijing.
Effects Downstream
But the most difficult part of the water diversion project, will likely be the western route, experts say.
This route will transfer water from the upper reaches of the Yangtze into the upper reaches of the Yellow River—a plan that depends on a series of canals and tunnels being carved along one edge of the Tibetan Plateau in western China.
James Nickum, a professor at Tokyo Jogakkan College, recently conducted a study of the diversion project for the United Nations Development Programme.
"The very expensive and technically challenging western route involves working on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau—3,000 to 5,000 meters [9,800 to 16,400 feet] above sea level—and overcoming some major engineering and climatic challenges," Nickum said.
For one thing, the route would require tunnels to be chiseled through the earthquake-prone Bayankala Mountains, Nickum said.
Chen Xiqing, an expert on hydrology at Hohai University in Nanjing, said China's increasing openness—fueled by the country's Internet revolution—could also make this section problematic.
"As an environmental coalition becomes stronger in China, it is putting more pressure on the government and pushing for more citizen participation in environmental problem-solving," Chen said.
"My guess is that this western route will become more and more difficult to complete as people have more freedom to speak out on water rights, the environment, and local ecosystems."
And conflicts over China's hydro-engineering projects in Tibet could spill across borders.
Aaron Wolf, professor of geography at Oregon State University, said that "all of the countries in Asia downstream of rivers originating in Tibet are wary of China's water development plans."
Tibet's Yarlung Zangbo River becomes the Brahmaputra when it enters India, while its Lancang River feeds into the Mekong, which flows through Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
(Related photos: "8-Foot Giant Catfish Caught in Cambodia" [November 19, 2007].)
Postel, of the Global Water Policy Project, predicts that conflicts over water could ricochet across Asia.
"By 2015 nearly three billion people—40 percent of the projected world population—are expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to mobilize enough water to satisfy the food, industrial, and domestic needs of their citizens," she said.
"This scarcity will translate into heightened competition for water between cities and farms, between neighboring states and provinces, and at times between nations."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080228-china-water.html
National Geographic News: NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/NEWS
China Diverting Major River to "Water" Beijing Olympics
Kevin Holden Platt in Beijing, China
for National Geographic News
February 28, 2008
Landlocked Beijing has begun tapping a lattice of reservoirs, rivers, and canals across eastern China to provide plentiful water for this summer's Olympic Games.
As part of the initiative, more than 150 million cubic meters (39.6 billion gallons) of water are being diverted from the Yellow River through a network of canals stretching across three provinces to refill a lake south of the historically drought-stricken Chinese capital.
A parallel project is diverting water to the east coast resort of Qingdao, which will host the Olympic sailing competitions.
"Athletes from all over the world will come to China to join the Olympic Games [in August]," said Huang Feng, a researcher at the Yellow River Conservancy Commission, which is in charge of the river's diversion.
"So Beijing is implementing its master plan to provide the very highest quality of water."
Only the Beginning
The current rerouting is just the precursor to a 60-billion-U.S.-dollar hydro-engineering project expected to see three human-carved rivers carry water from southern China to the arid north.
The water transfer project is designed to divert more than 40 billion cubic meters (10.5 trillion gallons) of water each year from China's longest river, the Yangtze, and its tributaries.
But observers say the move will likely spark bitter disputes between those losing and gaining access to a precious resource.
Sandra Postel is director of the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst, Massachusetts.
In 2000 "thousands of farmers in the Yellow River Basin of eastern China clashed with police over a government plan to recapture runoff from a local reservoir for cities, industries, and other users," she noted.
What's more, about 300,000 Chinese are slated for resettlement to make room for new diversion channels.
(Watch related video about conflicts arising in villages affected by the recently completed Three Gorges Dam [November 27, 2007].)
"There is certainly potential for more disputes within China over land, water, and pollution" as the project gains momentum, Postel said.
Historical Water Woes
Bordered by the rapidly expanding Ordos and Gobi deserts, Beijing has been historically plagued by thirst (see map).
The north's Yellow River, a lifeline of Chinese civilization since Neolithic times, has become so overused that it sometimes runs dry before reaching its estuary on the east coast.
In the last 50 years a population explosion, an industrial revolution, the rapid expansion of cities, and the spread of irrigated agriculture have fueled the region's water shortages.
(Read "China's Instant Cities" in National Geographic magazine [June 2007].)
This push for economic growth has devastated China's environment and waterways. The World Health Organization estimates that polluted drinking water kills nearly a hundred thousand Chinese citizens each year.
To help bring more and better quality water into the north in time for the Olympics, the government revived plans first proposed by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1949 to crisscross China with a matrix of human-made waterways.
Yang Xiaoping, a scientist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the project calls for three new waterways to run along the east, center, and far west of the country.
In addition to new construction, the project will incorporate sections of the imperial Grand Canal built during the Sui Dynasty, which lasted from A.D. 589 to 618.
The Grand Canal stretches more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) between the southeastern city of Hangzhou and the North China Plain and was built to ferry rice northward from more fertile regions.
Portions of the ancient canal will be modernized and expanded as it is transformed into the world's longest aqueduct, said Huang of the Yellow River Commission.
Ultimately the canal will become part of the project's eastern route, transporting water from the Yangtze through a tunnel burrowed beneath the Yellow River and on to northern China.
The 745-mile-long (1,200-kilometer-long) central route will also be channeled underground as its passes the Yellow River toward Beijing.
Effects Downstream
But the most difficult part of the water diversion project, will likely be the western route, experts say.
This route will transfer water from the upper reaches of the Yangtze into the upper reaches of the Yellow River—a plan that depends on a series of canals and tunnels being carved along one edge of the Tibetan Plateau in western China.
James Nickum, a professor at Tokyo Jogakkan College, recently conducted a study of the diversion project for the United Nations Development Programme.
"The very expensive and technically challenging western route involves working on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau—3,000 to 5,000 meters [9,800 to 16,400 feet] above sea level—and overcoming some major engineering and climatic challenges," Nickum said.
For one thing, the route would require tunnels to be chiseled through the earthquake-prone Bayankala Mountains, Nickum said.
Chen Xiqing, an expert on hydrology at Hohai University in Nanjing, said China's increasing openness—fueled by the country's Internet revolution—could also make this section problematic.
"As an environmental coalition becomes stronger in China, it is putting more pressure on the government and pushing for more citizen participation in environmental problem-solving," Chen said.
"My guess is that this western route will become more and more difficult to complete as people have more freedom to speak out on water rights, the environment, and local ecosystems."
And conflicts over China's hydro-engineering projects in Tibet could spill across borders.
Aaron Wolf, professor of geography at Oregon State University, said that "all of the countries in Asia downstream of rivers originating in Tibet are wary of China's water development plans."
Tibet's Yarlung Zangbo River becomes the Brahmaputra when it enters India, while its Lancang River feeds into the Mekong, which flows through Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
(Related photos: "8-Foot Giant Catfish Caught in Cambodia" [November 19, 2007].)
Postel, of the Global Water Policy Project, predicts that conflicts over water could ricochet across Asia.
"By 2015 nearly three billion people—40 percent of the projected world population—are expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to mobilize enough water to satisfy the food, industrial, and domestic needs of their citizens," she said.
"This scarcity will translate into heightened competition for water between cities and farms, between neighboring states and provinces, and at times between nations."
Personal update, the Olympics and thoughts on the environmental future of China.
It's been a bit since I've worked on this blog. Why? I've been busy. I started a new job, and it's here in the United States. For better or worse, it has nothing to do with either China or water, but is in an organization large enough so that I may eventually move up or over to a position where I can pursue these interests. I hope so anyway, but I've got to prove myself at the position where I am at first.
First question, with all that money that is allegedly to be made doing business in China, why aren't I over there right now, enjoying the Olympics?
Three quick answers, 1) the pollution makes me sick. To clarify, I don't mean that in the sense of morally outraged, I mean that it makes me feel physically bad and does things to my body that I don't like and that make exercise problematic, 2) ethics of working in business in a nation that is exploiting its workers, denying them rights and simultaneously taking jobs from nations with higher standards of not just living, but also workers rights and pollution controls, and 3) my age. (I am not as young as I used to be and would like to achieve some financial stability and security instead of continuously risking my health and future on quixotic endeavors, both here and abroad.) Therefore, I am now gainfully employed in the United States, in a job that does not terribly excite me but has great potential for the future.
So what's going to happen to China water blog?
First, as always, please feel free to contact me. Quite frankly, I'd value some feedback and attention.
Secondly, I intend to continue pursuing the topic, only there's no way that I will do so daily as I have in the past. Also, I hope to explore some aspects of water and water in China more in-depth than I have in the past. Hopefully this will result in higher quality reporting, but it will also reduce the quantity of output.
Thirdly, with only so much time in a day, I expect to be pursuing other interests as well. Some of these will be China related, some will not.
Regardless, I think past posts have shown that there is a big problem waiting to happen when the world's most populous nation and fastest growing economy is running out of water, and it is.
I do think the Chinese are quite aware of this problem. They have, after all, been quite concerned with water issues for over 2000 years, as evidence by a long history of civil engineering involving both canals and irrigation. Furthermore, Hu Jintao has a background in water issues himself, as do a surprising number of Chinese government officials.
The problem with addressing China's water and pollution problems though, lies in China's unique situation. As we can see from the now on-going olympics, China is under a great deal of tension. These Olympics have been marked by more protests, both violent and non-violent, and human rights issues than any that I can recall.
Gee! Just think, they place the Olympics in a nation with a long history of human rights abuses and then, gosh! --for some reason people start complaining about human rights abuses! Who ever would have figured? (And somehow the sight of thousands upon thousands of people marching and dancing in synchronized faux-cheerfulness did not quite still my concerns any. Gabrielle D'Annunzio would have loved it though.)
Of course, the list of human rights problems in China is long.
The Tibetan protests both at home and abroad were widely reported.
Not so widely reported were the struggles and violence from the Uighurs, China's largest Muslim minority in Xinjiang to the north of Tibet.
(see, here, or here or here for one incident. See here for another.)
For background and a summary of the Uighur situation see from Human Rights Watch see here. For the Amnesty International Version go here . For the Council on Foreign Relations report, go here .
Which is not to mention, Falun Gong, the religious group that has been involved in protesting the Beijing Olympics, also for human rights abuses, and, quite frankly, I'm sure if I were to scour around I could find more issues and more links involving China's intolerable human rights abuses. (i.e. Several of the minorities in Yunnan complain of mistreatment and repression, the Chinese Catholics are not allowed contact with the Vatican and missionary activities, union organization, environmentalist protests are all restricted and often punished in a heavy handed, repressive manner that would not be tolerated in the West.)
Why?
Simply because you have the largest population of any nation in the world, crammed into a tiny space (remember most Chinese live in a relatively restricted area of China simply because those are the only areas where one can grow food and get water. Few live in areas like Tibet or Xinjiang where resources are more scarce and population density must be considerably less.) In this tiny space, resources are stretched and distribution is also stretched. Should widespread civil unrest occur, millions will die from both starvation and violence.
The Chinese government is an atavism, a Communist relic that has gained legitimacy by encouraging its citizens to engage in Capitalism. As long as the appearance of wealth and the appearance of increase of wealth continues then the citizens will allow the government to rule. The Chinese, after all and as evidenced by much of SE Asian history, are among the most business-minded peoples in the world.
However, should the wealth appear to stop coming, then problems will occur. Citizens will see no reason at all to tolerate this government. They will agitate. Social unrest will occur.
Should the social unrest become large enough, millions will die from both violence and shortages.
Therefore, if the government of China should take a firm hand on the issue of pollution and water issues, and restrict businesses overly much because of it, then the profits, at least in the short term, will decline.
Then the government of China will lose support, because its primary support now rests on its alleged economic successes. The degree of loss of support cannot be predicted but its probably safe to say that the more important people who feel their wealth is imperiled then the less support the government will have.
Should the government of China of lose sufficient support, civil unrest will occur and, guess what, millions will die from violence and food shortages.
Therefore the government of China, for several reasons, will continue to both encourage acquisition of wealth, often to the detriment of environmental interests, and keep a handle on social unrests as well as the groups that, rightly or wrongly, promote social unrest.
Why? Because there's just too many people living in too small a space, trying to use too little stuff.
Is there a solution to this conundrum? Maybe, the Chinese are, after all, trying to get as much control as possible over overseas resources, particularly in Africa. Then again, with rising fuel and shipping costs, it's going to become increasingly difficult to get all this stuff back to China (which is not to mention that this proposed solution might not be in the best interests of the African people.)
First question, with all that money that is allegedly to be made doing business in China, why aren't I over there right now, enjoying the Olympics?
Three quick answers, 1) the pollution makes me sick. To clarify, I don't mean that in the sense of morally outraged, I mean that it makes me feel physically bad and does things to my body that I don't like and that make exercise problematic, 2) ethics of working in business in a nation that is exploiting its workers, denying them rights and simultaneously taking jobs from nations with higher standards of not just living, but also workers rights and pollution controls, and 3) my age. (I am not as young as I used to be and would like to achieve some financial stability and security instead of continuously risking my health and future on quixotic endeavors, both here and abroad.) Therefore, I am now gainfully employed in the United States, in a job that does not terribly excite me but has great potential for the future.
So what's going to happen to China water blog?
First, as always, please feel free to contact me. Quite frankly, I'd value some feedback and attention.
Secondly, I intend to continue pursuing the topic, only there's no way that I will do so daily as I have in the past. Also, I hope to explore some aspects of water and water in China more in-depth than I have in the past. Hopefully this will result in higher quality reporting, but it will also reduce the quantity of output.
Thirdly, with only so much time in a day, I expect to be pursuing other interests as well. Some of these will be China related, some will not.
Regardless, I think past posts have shown that there is a big problem waiting to happen when the world's most populous nation and fastest growing economy is running out of water, and it is.
I do think the Chinese are quite aware of this problem. They have, after all, been quite concerned with water issues for over 2000 years, as evidence by a long history of civil engineering involving both canals and irrigation. Furthermore, Hu Jintao has a background in water issues himself, as do a surprising number of Chinese government officials.
The problem with addressing China's water and pollution problems though, lies in China's unique situation. As we can see from the now on-going olympics, China is under a great deal of tension. These Olympics have been marked by more protests, both violent and non-violent, and human rights issues than any that I can recall.
Gee! Just think, they place the Olympics in a nation with a long history of human rights abuses and then, gosh! --for some reason people start complaining about human rights abuses! Who ever would have figured? (And somehow the sight of thousands upon thousands of people marching and dancing in synchronized faux-cheerfulness did not quite still my concerns any. Gabrielle D'Annunzio would have loved it though.)
Of course, the list of human rights problems in China is long.
The Tibetan protests both at home and abroad were widely reported.
Not so widely reported were the struggles and violence from the Uighurs, China's largest Muslim minority in Xinjiang to the north of Tibet.
(see, here, or here or here for one incident. See here for another.)
For background and a summary of the Uighur situation see from Human Rights Watch see here. For the Amnesty International Version go here . For the Council on Foreign Relations report, go here .
Which is not to mention, Falun Gong, the religious group that has been involved in protesting the Beijing Olympics, also for human rights abuses, and, quite frankly, I'm sure if I were to scour around I could find more issues and more links involving China's intolerable human rights abuses. (i.e. Several of the minorities in Yunnan complain of mistreatment and repression, the Chinese Catholics are not allowed contact with the Vatican and missionary activities, union organization, environmentalist protests are all restricted and often punished in a heavy handed, repressive manner that would not be tolerated in the West.)
Why?
Simply because you have the largest population of any nation in the world, crammed into a tiny space (remember most Chinese live in a relatively restricted area of China simply because those are the only areas where one can grow food and get water. Few live in areas like Tibet or Xinjiang where resources are more scarce and population density must be considerably less.) In this tiny space, resources are stretched and distribution is also stretched. Should widespread civil unrest occur, millions will die from both starvation and violence.
The Chinese government is an atavism, a Communist relic that has gained legitimacy by encouraging its citizens to engage in Capitalism. As long as the appearance of wealth and the appearance of increase of wealth continues then the citizens will allow the government to rule. The Chinese, after all and as evidenced by much of SE Asian history, are among the most business-minded peoples in the world.
However, should the wealth appear to stop coming, then problems will occur. Citizens will see no reason at all to tolerate this government. They will agitate. Social unrest will occur.
Should the social unrest become large enough, millions will die from both violence and shortages.
Therefore, if the government of China should take a firm hand on the issue of pollution and water issues, and restrict businesses overly much because of it, then the profits, at least in the short term, will decline.
Then the government of China will lose support, because its primary support now rests on its alleged economic successes. The degree of loss of support cannot be predicted but its probably safe to say that the more important people who feel their wealth is imperiled then the less support the government will have.
Should the government of China of lose sufficient support, civil unrest will occur and, guess what, millions will die from violence and food shortages.
Therefore the government of China, for several reasons, will continue to both encourage acquisition of wealth, often to the detriment of environmental interests, and keep a handle on social unrests as well as the groups that, rightly or wrongly, promote social unrest.
Why? Because there's just too many people living in too small a space, trying to use too little stuff.
Is there a solution to this conundrum? Maybe, the Chinese are, after all, trying to get as much control as possible over overseas resources, particularly in Africa. Then again, with rising fuel and shipping costs, it's going to become increasingly difficult to get all this stuff back to China (which is not to mention that this proposed solution might not be in the best interests of the African people.)
China Water: August 9, 2008: National Geographic Magazine says Chinese air pollution worst in the world.
It's been a bit since I've worked on this blog. Why? I've been busy. I started a new job, and it's here in the
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070709-china-pollution_2.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070709-china-pollution_2.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070709-china-pollution_2.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070709-china-pollution_2.html
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Chinese pollution map
This comes from the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.
http://www.ipe.org.cn/english/
It's interactive and very interesting although large portions are only in Chinese.
http://www.ipe.org.cn/english/
It's interactive and very interesting although large portions are only in Chinese.
China Water: August 3, 2008: Academic exchange between Nanjing and Nebraska about water.
It seems like not too long ago, that I shared information on a similar academic exchange in Minnesota. Of course, it would make sense that such exchanges would be taking place and on a growing scale.
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2008/aug08/aug4/Watersciencefocusofcollabor.cfm?title=Water%20science%20focus%20of%20collaboration%20between%20UNL,%20Chinese%20university
Water science focus of collaboration between UNL, Chinese university
Nebraska
With its focus on water science and engineering, Hohai University in Nanjing, China, is a natural partner institution for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, say scholars who are laying the foundation for long-term collaboration.
In the past year, UNL and Hohai researchers in computer science, water, and public policy have visited each others' campuses, with seed funds from the National Science Foundation in the United States, and its Chinese equivalent, the National Natural Science Foundation of China. A UNL delegation went to Nanjing in April for a two-week workshop, after hosting a team from Hohai in October.
According to the project report, by 2025, as much as two-thirds of the world's population may face water shortages, which can lead to economic crises, disease, famine, and death, if people don't take action in time. Policy changes and water management will need to be informed by monitoring and early warning systems that track and model water usage and availability.
"Our long-term goal is to develop a cyber-infrastructure for global water research," said Ashok Samal, a computer scientist at UNL who is one of the principal investigators of the NSF-funded project, "US/China Digital Government Collaboration: Building a Collaboratory in Hydroinformatics and Water Policy."
"The U.S. and China, being two of the world leaders as well as being two of the largest consumers of water, should play leading roles in this endeavor," Samal said. "Hohai has huge breadth. It's a full-service water university." Many of China's leading civil engineers and water scientists, such as the team that designed and built the Three Gorges Dam, are graduates of Hohai.
Because of Hohai's unique focus on water, "UNL is a natural counterpart," said Xun-Hong Chen, professor of hydrogeology at UNL's School of Natural Resources. "Water is an area of excellence at UNL."
Chen has worked with Hohai previously and helped the UNL group forge connections. Two of the Hohai team members had been his postdoctoral students.
While in Nanjing, SNR assistant professor John Holz, who specializes in water quality, met with about 40 graduate students from Hohai University and described how to apply to UNL. The Chinese government has committed to funding a certain number of Hohai students to study in the United States each year.
"Some have already been in touch," Holz said. "This gave Hohai students an exposure to UNL and put us in a positive position for recruitment."
In addition to Samal, Chen and Holz, the UNL delegation included Donald A. Wilhite, director of the School of Natural Resources; Alan Tomkins, director of UNL's Public Policy Center; Sarah Michaels, professor in the Department of Political Science; Leen-Kiat Soh, associate professor of computer sciences; and Deepti Joshi and Peng Du, UNL graduate students in computer sciences.
Chinese representation at the workshop included many researchers and graduate students from Hohai University, as well as officials and researchers from China's Ministry of Water Resources, Bureau of Hydrology and Water Survey of Jiangsu Province and non-governmental organizations.
The goals of the April workshop were to catalog hydrological data collection methods; to summarize ground and surface water modeling methods; to discuss decision-making policies related to water resources; and to examine what computational techniques are needed for data mining and fusion.
Future partnership activities are likely to include:
--Short courses taught at Hohai by UNL and Hohai faculty, giving UNL students a chance to work at Hohai University's laboratories.
--Hohai graduate students funded mostly by the Chinese government coming to study water-related topics at UNL.
--Visiting scholars from China at UNL.
--Projects focusing on issues of water quality and water supply.
--New uses of computing technology to enable citizens, scientists and policy makers to incorporate the best available information into decision making.
Samal envisioned applying what are now cutting-edge uses of Web technology, such as "volunteer geographic information computing," in which people all over the world can add data and information to a central database on water.
It could also incorporate information about water, going back several hundred years. The question, Samal said, is, "How do we combine information of different qualities, resolutions, and time periods, to answer some interesting questions?"
7/14/08
4 Star NE\5-B
Date: 7/31/08
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2008/aug08/aug4/Watersciencefocusofcollabor.cfm?title=Water%20science%20focus%20of%20collaboration%20between%20UNL,%20Chinese%20university
Water science focus of collaboration between UNL, Chinese university
Nebraska
With its focus on water science and engineering, Hohai University in Nanjing, China, is a natural partner institution for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, say scholars who are laying the foundation for long-term collaboration.
In the past year, UNL and Hohai researchers in computer science, water, and public policy have visited each others' campuses, with seed funds from the National Science Foundation in the United States, and its Chinese equivalent, the National Natural Science Foundation of China. A UNL delegation went to Nanjing in April for a two-week workshop, after hosting a team from Hohai in October.
According to the project report, by 2025, as much as two-thirds of the world's population may face water shortages, which can lead to economic crises, disease, famine, and death, if people don't take action in time. Policy changes and water management will need to be informed by monitoring and early warning systems that track and model water usage and availability.
"Our long-term goal is to develop a cyber-infrastructure for global water research," said Ashok Samal, a computer scientist at UNL who is one of the principal investigators of the NSF-funded project, "US/China Digital Government Collaboration: Building a Collaboratory in Hydroinformatics and Water Policy."
"The U.S. and China, being two of the world leaders as well as being two of the largest consumers of water, should play leading roles in this endeavor," Samal said. "Hohai has huge breadth. It's a full-service water university." Many of China's leading civil engineers and water scientists, such as the team that designed and built the Three Gorges Dam, are graduates of Hohai.
Because of Hohai's unique focus on water, "UNL is a natural counterpart," said Xun-Hong Chen, professor of hydrogeology at UNL's School of Natural Resources. "Water is an area of excellence at UNL."
Chen has worked with Hohai previously and helped the UNL group forge connections. Two of the Hohai team members had been his postdoctoral students.
While in Nanjing, SNR assistant professor John Holz, who specializes in water quality, met with about 40 graduate students from Hohai University and described how to apply to UNL. The Chinese government has committed to funding a certain number of Hohai students to study in the United States each year.
"Some have already been in touch," Holz said. "This gave Hohai students an exposure to UNL and put us in a positive position for recruitment."
In addition to Samal, Chen and Holz, the UNL delegation included Donald A. Wilhite, director of the School of Natural Resources; Alan Tomkins, director of UNL's Public Policy Center; Sarah Michaels, professor in the Department of Political Science; Leen-Kiat Soh, associate professor of computer sciences; and Deepti Joshi and Peng Du, UNL graduate students in computer sciences.
Chinese representation at the workshop included many researchers and graduate students from Hohai University, as well as officials and researchers from China's Ministry of Water Resources, Bureau of Hydrology and Water Survey of Jiangsu Province and non-governmental organizations.
The goals of the April workshop were to catalog hydrological data collection methods; to summarize ground and surface water modeling methods; to discuss decision-making policies related to water resources; and to examine what computational techniques are needed for data mining and fusion.
Future partnership activities are likely to include:
--Short courses taught at Hohai by UNL and Hohai faculty, giving UNL students a chance to work at Hohai University's laboratories.
--Hohai graduate students funded mostly by the Chinese government coming to study water-related topics at UNL.
--Visiting scholars from China at UNL.
--Projects focusing on issues of water quality and water supply.
--New uses of computing technology to enable citizens, scientists and policy makers to incorporate the best available information into decision making.
Samal envisioned applying what are now cutting-edge uses of Web technology, such as "volunteer geographic information computing," in which people all over the world can add data and information to a central database on water.
It could also incorporate information about water, going back several hundred years. The question, Samal said, is, "How do we combine information of different qualities, resolutions, and time periods, to answer some interesting questions?"
7/14/08
4 Star NE\5-B
Date: 7/31/08
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