Cleaner Greener China

As China has developed, its need to scoop up the world’s natural resources to fuel its needs has affected nearly every market in the world.

China’s appetitite for wood is something that has been nearly as contriversial as its appetite for oil as large areas of Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Burma, and South American countries have cut down to feed the various wood product industries….furniture, flooring, finishing, MDF, Pulp & paper.

As a visitor to the Zhangjiagang port last year I saw this first hand as the hardwoods were laying on the dockside getting ready to become furniture and flooring, and while studying the softwood market 2 years ago for a Korean comoddity group I learned that 97% of all softwoods come by train over the Russian boarder.. and much of that wood is also coming from disputed areas under disputed conditions.

So, to see Greeenpeace out protesting this is no surprise to me.  What is a surprise is that it took the PNG government 3 days to negotiate the end of the protest:

Following the Greenpeace action, the ship’s owners, Turama Forest Industries promised to review a logging agreement for the Turama Extension, a concession covering 1.7 million hectares in Papua New Guinea.

Greenpeace stated that it will monitor the review process to ensure it follows Papua New Guinea forestry laws and delivers a just outcome for local people.

going forward, I believe that more pressure will fall on China to take a harder line against those who are importing illegal timber products.  To date, they have largely turned a blind eye to the issue, but international pressure will continue to mount and China will take the necessary steps.

Greener NGOs, Policies and Issues environment, material usage

The WWF in China has been in China longer than any other environmental NGOs.  Originally invited by the Ministry of Forestry to assist on Pandas, they have grown across China and now manage a wide variety of programs related to the environmental conditions.

In their recent report, Ecological Footprint in China, WWF worked with the International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED)

Looking not just at the issues related to China’s development, one of the more interesting sections is in how China should look to develop a circular economy and the steps to doing so:

1. Compact: A strategy to control urban expansion ( Spatially compact city and Eco-functional city)
2. Individual: a strategy to promote responsible consumption
3. Reduce: a strategy to reduce China’s hidden consumption impacts
4. Carbon: a strategy to diversify the energy Footprint
5. Land: a strategy to increase land productivity
6. Efficiency: a strategy to gather information for moving toward a circular economy and society

To read the entire report, you can download the PDF HERE

Greener NGOs reports, sustainable development

After 2 weeks of walking past and admiring a new WWF campaign, I finally remembered to bring my camera.

What I like about it is that it takes three of the biggest energy wasting habits and has developed a simple campaign around this issues (air conditioning, lighting, and water).

Greener NGOs education, Energy, water

Prior to the games, I wrote the post Post-Olympics: Will China Continue to Green? where I asked threw out the question of whether or not China would continue to take steps forward in cleaning up its environmental issues.. or if it would slide backwards into old habits.

When thinking about this, I am forced to make some judgments as to the trajectory of recent data because there really is nothing historical to draw on when looking at where the merging of China’s develop civil society has met the downsides of development.  It simply did not exist 2 years ago.

Where the first publicly visible change occurred, and I covered this in a speech earlier this year, was when Tiahu Lake in Wuxi experienced a significant algae bloom that captured the attention of nearly everyone in China.  It was a point in time that we will look back in 15 years as a tipping point, or perhaps a turning point as citizens, NGOs, and SEPA were able to use this event to build their power base… citizens across the country wer forced to see the costs of development at a national level… and the central party - embarrassed by the incident - came down hard on local officials all over the country who were putting FDI before environment.

Going forward, where I think we are going to find hope is that the government has spent billions of dollars cleaning up the air in Beijing, a separate food chain for athletes was created, and millions of people who will remain to continue their lives will remember the blue sky days.

and they will expect the sky to remain blue.

What many in the media have missed is the fact that while things were not ideal, the environmentally were a quantum leap improvement from 5 years ago when the number of annual blue sky days could be counted on with fingers and toes.

Much like the internet, the ability of the government to control the inevitable is going to be very difficult.  They have exposed their people to the possibilities and shown them that the government can change things when motivated.

Where this is an opportunity for firms, some of which we have covered, is that Beijing cannot do this on their own.  they will need to learn from others like the US, UK, and Japan who have goen through their stage of rapid development and cleaned up.. and they wil need help in the way of technologies, training, and best pracice sharing from firms like GE, Eaton, and others who can bring in existing solutions as well.

CNBC put an article togeher called Smoggy Olympics Opens Door To Clean-Tech Bonanza just prior to the games that summarized this well, but like many I think they are still missing the greater context by which change will occur.  there has been a strong central party determined to balance things out, but it is only recently that local officials had to fear their own citizens… and that is where the changes will occur.  civil society.

Greener NGOs, Greener People, Greener Products, Policies and Issues environment, sustainable development