The environment and China

Among the scheduled topics for discussion this week in meetings between Vice President Gore and China’s Premier Zhu Rongji is cooperation on the environment, clean energy and sustainability. Undoubtedly, this is a significant opportunity for both countries to affirm that these issues are national and global priorities. Such an affirmation would please environmentalists and others who for years have been seeking a coordinated global strategy for addressing climate change and other environmental concerns.

This is not incidental: China and the United States are the two largest energy users in the world and the two largest emitters of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas. Further, China is in the midst of unprecedented economic expansion, with a growth rate of 10 percent a year over the past ten years – as much growth in one decade as the industrial world experienced in nearly a century.

WRI’s recent research in the areas of climate, health and energy use in China has shown that the results of such massive and rapid development have so far come at a high cost to China’s natural environment and public health. The question is whether China can begin to follow a different course – with benefits to her own citizens and the world – which presents an extraordinary challenge for environmental policy. Decisions Chinese government and business leaders make in the next three decades about energy and transportation will shape the local and the global environment.

WRI’s team of experts, at the request of both the Chinese and U.S. governments, have been involved on the ground in evaluating, analyzing, and in developing solutions to what are some of the foremost environmental problems of our time. These researchers will be available for interviews by journalists, or to provide background for the potentially historic meetings. This includes WRI’s President Jonathan Lash, who is a member of the China Council and co-chair of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, and experts in the areas of climate, energy, health and transportation.

Our research, for instance, shows that under international agreements that address climate change, the approaches of the two countries to development and the environment must be treated differently. Indeed, the U.S. and other industrialized countries have primarily been responsible for the increase in atmospheric concentrations in CO2 and other greenhouse gases:

• Over the past 100 years, the U.S., and other highly industrialized countries, have contributed 65 percent of the concentrations of CO2 above the pre-industrial baseline.

• Even though China’s population is three-and-a-half times larger than that of the United States, the U.S. has contributed four-and-a-half times more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere this century.

• On a per capita basis, Americans emit 7.5 times more CO2 than the average Chinese.

• And, most significantly, a recent report on the Chinese electric power sector by Battelle Memorial Institute and two Chinese research centers estimates that since the late-1970s China’s economy grew twice as fast as its energy consumption. China would be emitting twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if not for an unprecedented “de-coupling” of carbon emissions and economic growth.

But despite dramatic improvements in energy efficiency, China is still contending with some of the most serious environmental threats in the world. These include:

• Over half the population (nearly 700 million people) lacks access to clean water, and consumes drinking water contaminated with animal and human waste that exceeds the applicable maximum permissible levels. Overall only 5 percent of household waste and about 17 percent of industrial waste receive any treatment before entering local irrigation ditches, ponds, lakes, and streams.

• All of China’s bodies of water are polluted to various degrees. Serious pollution has been documented in the country’s seven major watersheds: Huai, Hai, Liao, Songhua, Chang (Yangtze), Zhu (Pearl) and Huang (Yellow).

• China faces severe deforestation problems, which contributed to the devastating floods during the summer of 1998.

• Air pollution in some Chinese cities is among the highest ever recorded, averaging more than ten times the standard proposed by the World Health Organization.

• Air pollution threatens public health and welfare on a large scale. China’s six largest cities - Beijing, Shenyang, Chongqing, Shanghai, Xian, and Guangzhou - rank among the most polluted in the world.

• In Beijing, 40 percent of autos surveyed – and 70 percent of taxis – failed to meet the most basic emission standards.

At this critical juncture in China’s development, the U.S. has an unprecedented opportunity to collaborate in reducing pollution in China, and helping the Chinese to avoid some of the problems of development that have plagued North America and other regions. For any additional information, or to set-up interviews, please feel free to call or e-mail Frank Dexter Brown, Director of Media Relations, at (202) 729-7745 or frankb@wri.org, or Media Coordinator Mary Houser at (202) 729-7744 or maryh@wri.org.