Cleaner Greener China

What do you think of first when you hear the word “sustainability”?

Do you think of solar panels?  hybrid cars?  Clean Coal? air pollution?

If you are in the US or EU, chances are that you think of those issues (which are legitimate) as that is what the green movement has been able to push into the psyche of consumers.

With 1.3 billion citizens to manage, for China though it is the issues of food and water.  they are not the sexy venture capitalist topics, but for China’s 1.3 billion citizens it is simply about having access to resources … and that those resources are clean (clean enough).

So when reading 40% of China’s territory suffers from soil erosion and Land erosion ‘threat to food supply’, it becomes adundantly clear that China’s food and water problems are going to be a large large problem:

If soil erosion continues at this rate, grain production on the 14 million mu of farm land in northeastern China, one of the country’s most productive areas, will be reduced by 40 percent in 50 years, experts warned.

and

In the southwest, over the next 35 years, about 100 million people will be at risk of losing their land, if desertification continues at the same rate.

the solutions will be complex, will involve the topics of land, water, industrial, and people management, and for those involved in cleantech the opportunities will be vastly larger than a signle wind farm or solar field.

Policies and Issues Energy, land, sustainable development, water