by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 1, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Six years after the Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji, was declared “functionally extinct” by scientists, another marine mammal appears on the edge of extinction in China’s hugely degraded Yangtze River. In less than two months, 32 Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis), a subspecies of the finless porpoise, have been found dead in Dongting and Poyang Lakes in the Yangtze, reports the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The porpoises are suffering from many of the same impacts that pushed the baiji to extinction: illegal electrofishing, strikes by boat propellors, poisons, and possibly pollution and food shortages from lower water levels linked by officials to climate change. Autopsies show that at least two of the animals were killed by electrofishing and boat propellers.
“This tragedy shows that Yangtze finless porpoise is facing enormous challenges,” Lei Gang, head of WWF China’s Central Yangtze program, said in a press release. “The porpoise deaths illustrates that without effective measures to fundamentally reverse the trend of ecological deterioration, future of the incredible creature is far from certain. We have to act immediately.”
Researchers believe that around 1,000 Yangtze finless porpoises survive in the river with the population in dramatic decline. Currently, the IUCN Red List is evaluating the subspecies to see if the situation warrants classifying the population as Critically Endangered.
Breakneck development, including a series of dams, with little environmental regard has left the ecology of the Yangtze River in shambles. Aside from the baiji’s extinction, many of the river’s key species are vanishing. The Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), arguably the world’s biggest freshwater fish, is listed as Critically Endangered with only two fish confirmed since 2002. Scientists fear the fish may be soon gone for good, if not already, after a 2009 survey couldn’t find a single fish. In addition the Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis), the Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus), and the Yangtze soft-shell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) are all listed as Critically Endangered.
Still, a controversial new hydroelectric project, the Xiaonanhai Dam, is moving ahead despite concerns that it will finish off a number of the river’s endangered fish, many found no-where else in the world.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 18, 2012 | Climate Change
By Fiona Harvey / The Guardian
Britons’ consumption of goods such as TVs and mobile phones made in China has “outsourced” the UK’s greenhouse-gas emissions, and is leading to a net increase in global emissions, according to a report from an influential committee of MPs.
While the UK’s own greenhouse-gas emissions have been tumbling, people and businesses have been buying an increasing proportion of manufactured products from overseas, where regulations on carbon emissions are often much weaker than within the EU. As a result, the increase in carbon emissions from goods produced overseas that are then used in Britain are now outstripping the gains made in cutting emissions here.
Tim Yeo, chairman of the energy and climate change committee, said: “Successive governments have claimed to be cutting climate-changing emissions, but in fact a lot of pollution has simply been outsourced overseas. We get through more consumer goods than ever before in the UK, and this is pushing up emissions in manufacturing countries like China.”
However, while China has become the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse-gas emissions, it has also become the world’s second biggest economy on the back of the enormous exports from its vast manufacturing sector. This means that, in effect, consumers from developed countries have paid China to take on responsibility for more greenhouse-gas emissions.
The Chinese government is reluctant to deal with the problem, insisting that China is taking on voluntary emissions-reduction targets, but is resistant to moves that would force Chinese manufacturers to obey stricter emissions limits.
This can put developed-world manufacturers at a disadvantage, which encourages the production of goods in areas with lax carbon controls, and thus pushes up emissions globally. Simon Harrison, chair of energy policy at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said: “It’s about how you price imported goods – do you take account of the emissions involved in their production?”
When goods are manufactured in the UK and other European countries, the companies that make them are subject to strict emissions controls. For instance, they have to pay for the carbon they produce, and pay a surcharge on energy to subsidise renewable forms of generation. But overseas exporters in countries such as China and India are not subject to such stringent regulation, and often their manufacturing processes and energy generation are more carbon-intensive than the same processes here.
The government is in a quandary over what to do about the situation. Though importing carbon-intensive goods from overseas helps the UK to cut its overall emissions, it does not help to cut emissions globally, but just shifts the problem elsewhere. However, to slap import tariffs on goods from overseas that are produced in a carbon-intensive manner – which some UK manufacturers have said they would welcome – would be difficult under the World Trade Organisation’s rules.
Some green campaigners are urging the government to take responsibility for the emissions produced in the manufacture of imported goods. Andrew Pendleton, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth, said: “One of the main reasons why nations such as China have soaring carbon emissions is because they are making goods to sell to rich western countries. This report highlights the UK’s role in creating this pollution. The government can’t continue to turn a blind eye to the damaging impact that our hunger for overseas products has on our climate. We need to tackle the problem, not shift it abroad.”
Read more from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/18/britain-outsourcing-carbon-emissions-china
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 3, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation, Repression at Home
By Tania Branigan / The Guardian
Rural residents protesting against land grabs have clashed with police in north and south-west China, according to accounts posted online, in the latest cases to be sparked by one of the country’s most potent sources of unrest.
Villagers in south-western Yunnan province were arrested and injured when police broke up a a three-day blockade of a highway over the death of a rubber farmer who complained her land had been illegally seized, according to an account posted by an unknown user.
An officer at the Xishuangbanna police station confirmed that officers had dispersed farmers whose protest had blocked the road for several days last week, but said he did not know if there had been arrests and denied that anyone had been beaten.
The local government could not be reached on Tuesday, a public holiday in China.
Land grabs are the primary source of rural unrest in China. Earlier this year the international land rights organisation Landesa, which surveys Chinese farmers annually, warned: “The pace of land takings continues to accelerate, often leaving farmers poorly compensated and embittered.”
According to the online account, rubber farmer Li Xuelan committed suicide on 24 March over the land grab.
The following day her relatives and colleagues held a memorial in the road, resulting in tailbacks up to 3.7 miles (6km) long. The account said numbers swelled into the thousands. But two days later, around 300 riot and special police forcibly dispersed them, injuring and arresting several people, it said.
Photographs posted with the account showed large numbers of police and villagers, with one showing an officer carrying a woman away.
Separately, an overseas rights group said police had detained 22 ethnic Mongolians after hundreds of them protested against the seizure of land in the northern region of Inner Mongolia.
Although the area has generally been seen as peaceful, last year saw the biggest wave of unrest for two decades after the death of a herder who had tried to stop a convoy of coal trucks.
There has been growing tension over damage to grazing land. More than 80 police used “brutal force” on Monday to break up a demonstration of Mongolians from Tulee village near Tongliao city, the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre said.
In a statement emailed to Reuters it said five protesters were seriously injured after trying to block a bulldozer from a state-backed forestry company from working on their farmland.
“Police violently beat up the protesters with batons. Some were bleeding, some were beaten down on the ground. Women were pulled by their hair and thrown into police vehicles,” the group said, citing a protester.
They were reportedly seeking the return of about 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of land which they said the forestry company had stopped managing.
Police in the region said they were unaware of any protest, and a man who answered the phone at the Tongliao public security bureau said offices were closed.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/03/chinese-police-land-grab-protests
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 29, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Lucy Hornby / Reuters
China’s Three Gorges Corp. on Thursday marked the beginning of construction for a dam that will flood the last free-flowing portion of the middle reaches of the Yangtze, the country’s longest river.
The 30 billion yuan ($4.75 billion) Xiaonanhai dam is decried by environmentalists because it will flood a nature reserve designed to protect about 40 species of river fish.
Completion of the dam would turn the middle section of the Yangtze into a series of reservoirs, leaving “no space for fish”, said environmentalist Ma Jun, who has been active for over two years in trying to prevent the dam.
“This is the last one, the last section in 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) along the Yangtze that was left for endangered or local fish species. This would be their last habitat,” Ma told Reuters.
A ceremony was held to commence early-stage preparation, including building a road and laying power lines and water pipes, said Zhu Guangming, news department director at Three Gorges Corp.
“Construction of the dam itself will begin only after we get final approval,” Zhu said, declining to give cost estimates.
“The government will give due consideration to all aspects including environment impact before issuing a permit.”
The Xiaonanhai dam would be the last in a series of 12 dams along the Yangtze, the rest of which are all completed or under construction.
The series will stretch inland from the Three Gorges Dam, which has created an inland reservoir more than 600 km long that has allowed the city of Chongqing to develop into an inland port. When completed, Xiaonanhai dam is designed to produce 1.76 gigawatts, a fraction of the 22.50 GW that the Three Gorges Dam will produce when it reaches full capacity.
AWAITING FINAL APPROVAL
The Chongqing municipal government is currently embroiled in a power struggle after the ambitious party secretary, Bo Xilai, was sacked earlier this month. The mega-city’s hard-charging police chief was also taken into custody by central authorities after spending a day in the nearest U.S. consulate.
Preliminary approval for the dam was issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top planning agency, which also has the authority to issue final approval.
The boundaries of the nature reserve were earlier re-drawn to allow the construction of the even larger Xiangjiaba and Xiluodu dams.
According to NGO International Rivers, which opposes the construction of large hydro dams and has been critical of China’s ambitious hydropower plans, the Xiangjiaba dam will be 6.4 GW and the Xiluodu dam 13.86 GW.
China wants to raise installed power capacity by 470 gigawatts (GW) to 1,437 GW by 2015 — the largest in the world. At least 110 gigawatts of the new capacity will be from hydro power — equivalent to five Three Gorges hydropower projects. Current hydropower capacity is 216 GW, also the world’s largest.
The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s biggest power project and was controversial well before it began construction in 1994.
Objections ranged from the destruction of rare species to the flooding of historic towns and displacement of millions of people, to concerns that it would quickly silt up and lose its efficiency in generating power.
It produces about 2 percent of China’s power.
Subsequent audits of the Three Gorges project showed that many of the flooded communities were never properly resettled while the steep banks of the reservoir have been plagued by dangerous landslides as the water undermines the hillsides.
In January, China’s environment ministry told hydropower developers they must “put ecology first” and pay strict attention to the impact of their projects on local rivers and communities.
From Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-china-dam-idUSBRE82S0GG20120329
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 2, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Agence France-Presse
A major river in India’s northeast that originates in Tibet has suddenly dried up, triggering speculation that China might be responsible, a local official told AFP on Thursday.
The Brahmaputra has its source in China’s southwestern Tibet region where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, and it enters India in the mountainous, remote northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, where it it is called the Siang.
The 1,800-mile (2,900 kilometre) river then descends into the plains of adjoining Assam state, where it is vital for agriculture, and ends in Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal.
“It was shocking to find the Siang river drying up and patches of sand visible on its bed in a very large stretch close to Pasighat town,” local state lawmaker Tako Dabi told AFP by telephone, referring to a town in East Siang district.
“We suspect the sudden drying up of the Siang could be a result of China either diverting the river water on their side or due to some artificial blockades somewhere in the upper reaches,” added Dabi, an advisor to the state’s chief minister.
He estimated the flow was about 40 percent of its normal strength.
Video footage from the scene shows the Siang — which is normally a gushing torrent several kilometres (miles) wide at Pasighat, according to Dabi — reduced to flowing in narrow channels in the large sandy riverbed.
“Locals are worried as the river is a source of livelihood,” Dabi added.
The problem with the river came on the day the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jeichi held talks in New Delhi with his Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna.
India is extremely nervous about the danger of its giant northern neighbour diverting rivers that originate in Tibet and flow into India, or disrupting their flow with hydroelectric plants.
The two countries have held frequent talks about the issue at the highest level and Indian Premier Manmohanh Singh assured as recently as last August that there was no danger.
“We have been assured that nothing will be done which affects India’s interests adversely,” Singh told the upper house of parliament.
Energy-hungry and water-deficient China is building a hydroelectric plant on the Yarlung Tsangpo, but the Indian government says it has been assured this is a “run-of-the-river” project rather than a dam which would disrupt the flow.
Read more from Physorg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-river-china-dries-india-lawmaker.html
