ChinaDialogue Latest Articles
China and the world discuss the environment



Farmland security (Feb 3)
Crisis on the financial markets has brought investors flocking to agricultural assets. But the risks may help drive a more sustainable approach, writes Alejandro Litovsky.How agricultural land is owned, what is grown on it, and by whom, will probably determine much of the next century’s politics, profits and, possibly, revolutions.

Western investors tend to see land and commodity assets as a more secure alternative to the volatile stock and bond markets, and an opportunity to tap into lucrative biofuel and forestry markets. But for countries like Saudi Arabia, India and China, where water scarcity compromises food production, the acquisition of farmland to grow and import food has come to be seen as a matter of national security.

Both of these trends are resulting in large-scale acquisitions of land in regions where the soil is still fertile and water still available. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, in just 10 years, over 200 million hectares have been leased to investors for agricu...


China should bolster its African aid (Feb 2)
Chinese investments must bring lasting benefit to Africa’s people in the form of development and better governance. Otherwise the relationship risks souring, warns René N’Guettia Kouassi. 0 0 1 921 5251 University of Westminster 43 12 6160 14.0 96 800x600 Normal 0 false false false EN-GB JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-"Courier New";} China has become an indispensable partner in Africa. The inroads it has made have reached every corner of the African economy and society. No African country falls outside the scope of Chinese cooperation that now forms part of everyday African life.

Beijing’s reach is characterised by the brand new headquarters of the African Union Commission in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Aba...


Thorns in the African dream (1) (Feb 1)
Chinese companies are facing problems on the ground in Africa as they ignore local politics and stir hostilities. Wang Xiaojuan opens a two-part article.The importance of Africa to China is easily understood: it offers a huge market, rich supplies of natural resources and raw materials and cheap labour. Thirty percent of China’s oil imports come from Africa, and Chinese investment in the continent is growing at a rate of 40% a year.

Africa also offers China the chance to upgrade and relocate industry. The enormous demand for new infrastructure on the African continent is allowing transfer of significant over-capacity in China’s steel and concrete industries. At the same time, China is supplying capital for African development. And the arrival of Chinese firms presents an alternative to the old colonial nations – giving African nations more room to negotiate.

These mutual benefits have led to a blossoming relationship. Since 2000, Sino-African trade has grown by an average of 32% a...


Thorns in the African dream (2) (Jan 31)
To meet its duties as a rising power, China must evolve a more nuanced approach to international development – just putting up the cash is not enough, concludes Wang Xiaojuan.As Chinese companies have continued to expand overseas, their projects in Africa have come in for frequent criticism from international and local NGOs. Complaints include a lack of concern for the local environment, poor transparency in major projects and a failure to protect labour rights. 

Many Chinese firms do not take these criticisms seriously, even finding them ridiculous: what are countries with 80% poverty rates and average lifespan of less than 50 years doing talking about environmental protection and transparency? For these African countries, economic growth should be the most important consideration, they argue, and Chinese investments will help boost GDP.

China’s understanding of development comes from its own experiences, and is rooted in an outdated view of development economics. However, in int...


“We should look behind the curtain” (Jan 30)
State-owned companies are pushing for a “Great Leap Forward” in dam building. But Chinese NGOs can hold them to account, environmentalist Yu Xiaogang tells Isabel Hilton. 0 0 1 1048 5980 University of Westminster 49 14 7014 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-style-parent:""; font-size:11.0pt;} Yu Xiaogang is director of the NGO Green Watershed, based in the city of Kunming, in south-west China. A veteran environmentalist and past winner of the Goldman Prize, an award for grassroots green campaigners, he has been at the forefront of China’s debate on dam building. At a recent meeting in Delhi, Yu Xiaogang sat down with Isabel Hilton to explain his concerns about powerful special interest groups in China who, he claims, exercise undu...


China's carbon tax is very real (Jan 27)
An incendiary Wall Street Journal article has accused Beijing of trying to dupe the world with a smokescreen carbon levy. The author is plain wrong, write Alvin Lin and Yang Fuqiang.The news that China may very soon introduce a carbon tax has caused a stir. Of the many articles to address the topic, John Lee’s Wall Street Journal commentary “China’s Fake Carbon Tax”, published earlier this month, is particularly striking. In this confusing diatribe, Lee puts forward his personal theories about China’s motives. But these have no foundation in reality.

Why is China preparing to introduce a carbon tax? Taxing carbon is an effective market-based method for cutting carbon-dioxide emissions and tackling climate change. Many countries, both developed and developing, are considering a carbon tax, while some have already introduced one. The details of the tax differ from place to place, but the essential aim is the same: reducing carbon emissions; speeding up economic transition; promoting...


Chinese waste: the burning issue (Jan 26)
The state remains unprepared for the pollution and protests its ambitious garbage-incineration plans could generate, writes Yu Dawei.Since early 2008, China has seen a frenzy of investment in controversial garbage-incineration plants. In the words of Zhang Yi, head of the Shanghai Environmental Sanitation Engineering Design Institute, the sector is experiencing an eight-year golden era, set to continue through the 12th Five-Year Plan period, which ends in 2015.

China creates more than 360 million tonnes of domestic waste each year, of which 150 to 160 million tonnes is generated in cities, and the quantity is growing at a rate of 8% each year. Dealing with these rapidly advancing heaps of rubbish is a challenge for all levels of government.

Most of China’s garbage meets with one of three fates: around half is placed in landfill, 12% is burned and a little under 10% used for fertiliser. The rest is mostly left untreated, much of it simply dumped. However, plants that burn waste – ...


Food versus water in Colorado (Jan 25)
High commodity prices are complicating aquifer protection in the San Luis Valley, which – like northern China – faces a groundwater crisis. Brett Walton reports. 0 0 1 1502 8562 University of Westminster 71 20 10044 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-GB JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-style-parent:""; font-size:12.0pt;} This article was first published by Circle of Blue. It is used here with permission.

At an average altitude of 2,350 metres, Colorado’s San Luis Valley, in the western United States, is the nation’s highest agricultural region and one of its top potato producers. Almost by definition, water dictates the patterns of life and land.

With it, valley farmers have turned this sunny, high-desert rift into one of the most densely irrigated expan...


Living landscape (Jan 24)
As the need to reduce the amount of energy and materials used in manufacturing processes becomes more urgent, architects and engineers should look for inspiration in nature, writes Michael Pawlyn.At the start of the industrial revolution, people were scarce and resources were abundant. Today, the opposite is the case: we have a burgeoning population and dwindling resources. This shift, along with the growing challenge of climate change, suggests that we should develop design approaches that use fewer physical materials and more human resources.

Biomimicry achieves radical reductions in energy, uses physical resources sparingly and offers the potential for greater human input in terms of design and manufacturing ingenuity. It aims to draw the best out of biology, learning from products that have benefited from 3.8 billion years of research and development. Living organisms, because of the ruthless refinement process of evolution, are remarkable models of efficiency.

Some of the mo...


Dominating the urban horizon (Jan 23)
Skyscrapers are costly to erect and permits are tough to get, so why do architects keep trying to go higher? Tall buildings have always been about ego, say Edwin Heathcote and Ed Hammond.Cass Gilbert, architect of New York’s early 20th-century Woolworth Building, called skyscrapers “machines for making the land pay”. But skyscrapers were always more about ego than profit.

At the southern end of London Bridge, early 2012 will bring the topping out of the US$1.1 billion Shard, the tallest building in the European Union. Across the river Thames, The Pinnacle, the loftiest tower in the City of London – London’s main financial district – is being built. This year, the construction was announced in Jeddah of the world-record-breaking Kingdom Tower, which at over one kilometre high would top Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.

Costly to build, hard to negotiate: why do developers keep trying to go so high? “You have to pay a lot more up front but you want it to be an iconic design, one that people wan...