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May, 2008:

Asthma Sufferers Can Breathe Easy, Says Expert

May 7th, 2008
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Karolos Grohmann in Athens – Updated on May 07, 2008

Athletes suffering from asthma faced no greater health risk at this summer’s Beijing Olympics than other competitors despite the city’s pollution problem, a European anti-asthma organisation said yesterday.

Beijing has been under increasing pressure to improve air quality ahead of the August 8-24 Games after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said there was some risk to athletes competing in endurance events lasting more than an hour.

“I don’t see any greater danger to the athletes suffering from asthma who will be competing in the Beijing Olympics than the other athletes,” said Nikos Papadopoulos, vice-president of the European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (EAACI). “We want to stress that having good diagnosis and treatment means that any athlete suffering from asthma can reach his or her full potential.”

Beijing’s pollution has already claimed its first high-profile victim, with twice Olympic champion Haile Gebrselassie, who suffers from asthma, withdrawing from the men’s marathon fearing pollution could damage his health.

The IOC said it would consider rescheduling events that require physical activity of more than an hour if the air quality on the day was not satisfactory.

Past studies have shown about 20 per cent of summer sports athletes have asthma, with cyclists, runners and swimmers reporting a high number of cases. “But we believe diagnosis and the right treatment can lead to gold,” Papadopoulos added.

Reuters

Beijing’s Skies Will Be Clear For August

May 6th, 2008
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Lee Kuan Yew forecasts Beijing’s skies will be clear for August – SCMP

Beijing will curb pollution in time for the Olympics, based on past efforts to clear the air for landmark events, Singaporean Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said. Recalling a parade celebrating the 50th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing in 1999, Mr Lee said he had been surprised at the clearness of the sky – a consequence of city officials shutting factories for two weeks.

As well as closing factories for the Olympic Games from August 8 to 24, the city will halt construction and take about half its cars off the roads. “I have no doubt it will meet world standards,” Mr Lee said, referring to air quality, in a Bloomberg Television interview. Bloomberg

Sustainable Development Deserves Highest Attention

May 5th, 2008
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Updated on May 05, 2008 – SCMP

The Council for Sustainable Development stands out among advisory bodies to the government. That is because it studies issues that will shape the future of our city and issues reports that are widely debated.

Lately, however, the council has become concerned about its own future. Since last year’s ministerial and bureau reshuffle, it has found itself under the Environment Bureau. Previously, it came under the chief secretary, who is responsible for policy co-ordination. Understandably, as we report today, council members feel it has been downgraded.

This would be regrettable if there is any substance in it. Officials say this was not the intention. In fact, the council is now under a bureau with policy responsibility for one of its main concerns – the environment. However, it is arguable whether that serves the broader community interest.

Thanks to its title, many people do associate the council with protecting the environment, because that is now an abiding issue in development. But the council has a wider brief of integrating economic, social and environmental perspectives in development strategies. While everyone supports the protection of our environment, the challenge is to balance that goal with economic development and improving livelihoods.

The council has engaged the public widely on this brief. Soon after it was founded in 2003, it launched a consultation on urban development, waste management and renewable energy, which detected a shift in public opinion towards environmentally sensitive development. More recently, it consulted the public on population policy in an ageing community. This revealed support for later retirement to bolster the workforce, and paternity leave as an incentive for families to have children. These are all ideas that call for consensus among policy bureaus with different priorities.

It is also true, however, that the council’s biggest consultation, and the most extensive ever in Hong Kong, was on a purely environmental issue – air pollution and how to tackle it.

The question – and the issue that worries council members – is how its advice and the public opinion it reflects can have an effective impact at the policymaking level. Because sustainable development is about more than just the environment, it has to be reconciled with the interests of other bureaus. Given that policy bureaus can be overprotective of their own turf and objectives in policy debates, the chief secretary is arguably better placed to resolve inter-bureau differences.

In practice, however, Hong Kong’s developing ministerial system is such that every bureau chief is directly answerable to the chief executive. There might therefore be some merit in the suggestion that the council should come under the Office of the Chief Executive. There is no question that sustainable development is very important. This should be reflected in the status of the council’s access to the government at the highest and broadest level. It would be asking too much of the Environment Bureau to push other bureaus to take the views of the government’s advisers on sustainable development seriously.

In any case, it is now imperative for the chief executive and the administration as a whole to demonstrate the political will to take sustainable development seriously. Only then would it dispel the perception that it has turned the Council for Sustainable Development into just another committee on the environment.

Beijing Must Curb Vehicles

May 5th, 2008
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Updated on May 05, 2008 – SCMP

There is no longer any sign of blue skies in Beijing.

Vehicles and all different kinds, some manufactured in factories in Guangzhou and Shanghai, are polluting the capital.

If we want to gain a competitive edge over the US or Europe, Beijing and China’s dollar-eyed businessmen should do more about this problem.

The Olympics will soon get under way and the eyes of the world will be on Beijing. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the Beijing authorities to take concrete action. They must make efforts to improve Beijing’s air pollution index.

What is essential is to pass legislation limiting the manufacture and ownership of those low-cost vehicles that are such a major cause of pollution.

The solutions are obvious and the authorities in the capital know what needs to be done.

Beijing can only gain from lowering the air pollution index.

Jennifer Ho Kwan-tai, Hung Hom

Fukuda Urged To Press Hu On Smog

May 4th, 2008
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Lawmaker calls on prime minister to push acceptance of Japan’s plan to cut emissions

Chow Chung-yan in Tokyo – Updated on May 04, 2008 – SCMP

A Japanese Social Democratic Party legislator has called on the Fukuda government to use the opportunity of President Hu Jintao’s visit to persuade Beijing to accept its proposal on cutting pollution emissions.

Nobuto Hosaka, a member of the Japanese Diet, says environmental issues should be given top priority when Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda meets Mr Hu.

“We need to tell the Chinese leader that while we admire China’s rapid economic growth, we also hope such development would not come at the expense of the environment,” Mr Hosaka said.

“We see China is doing a lot of work to ensure good air quality in Beijing during the Olympics. But these are only temporary measures.” He said Japan needed China to come up with a long-term strategy to address pollution.

China has overtaken the United States in greenhouse gas emissions. A quarter of the country is now desert. More than three-quarters of its forests have disappeared. Millions of people are deprived of clean water and hundreds of thousands die annually from the effects of pollution.

The horrifying environmental fallout also affects its neighbours.

Acid rain caused by China’s sulfur-dioxide emissions severely damages forests in Korea and Japan. The dust storms from Inner Mongolia affect Seoul and Tokyo. The surge in untreated waste and agricultural run-off pouring into the Yellow and China Seas have caused frequent fish die-offs and overfishing is endangering many ocean species.

Mr Hosaka said Japan was eager to express concerns over these issues with Mr Hu. He hoped the two sides could have serious discussion on the issue and jointly design a plan to tackle the problem.

China stands as a major stumbling block for Japan’s proposal to reduce emissions worldwide. Last month, the United Nations decided to postpone discussions of Japan’s plan for cutting pollution by limiting emissions, after China and other developing nations opposed it during climate change negotiations in Bangkok, Thailand.

The industry emissions limit will be debated at a UN summit in August, instead of in June as planned, according to a deal reached by the UN. Japan, supported by the US, wants industries including utilities, steelmakers and cement producers to adopt technology that would slash the output of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

But China, India and a further 77 developing nations believe developed nations should accept a greater share of the responsibility, as they caused the heat-trapping gases to build up.

China and other developing countries resisted calls that would have made them limit pollution as their economies expand.

Mr Hosaka believes Mr Hu’s visit this week would present an excellent opportunity for the two sides to bridge their differences.

“There are a lot of issues we can discuss and there are many areas where we can work together,” said Mr Hosaka, citing a discussion on how to build an emissions trading system as an example.

And as Beijing is seeking to increase its reliance on nuclear energy, Mr Hosaka said the two sides could discuss how to reduce and treat nuclear waste.

The environmental issue will be a key topic at the Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido in July.

“We hope world leaders will have extensive discussions on climate change and emissions reduction,” he said. “China’s view is important. We need to have more dialogue now because this is an issue that will affect our future generations.”

Exporters Confront Rising Environmental Costs

May 1st, 2008
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GUANGZHOU, May 1 (Xinhua) — Chinese manufacturers have seen their costs for environmental protection rise, in many ways, since the government raised the standards over the past year.

Companies that were identified as violating environmental laws were barred from the Canton Fair, or the China Import and Export Fair, during a penalty period, said fair spokesman Xu Bing.

One such company was Jilin Fudun Timber Co., Ltd., a timber company, which was placed on a blacklist by environmental regulators last year.

The Canton Fair is the most important channel for Chinese exporters to expand overseas, so a ban means big losses.

China has conducted special campaigns against polluting companies since last year. And violators have lost more than just export opportunities: blacklisted firms find it difficult to get loans. The State Environmental Protection Administration, now the Ministry of Environmental Protection, along with the central bank and the Banking Regulatory Commission, jointly issued a “green loan” policy in July that banned loans to blacklisted companies.

In addition, the government stated that the worst violators would face shutdowns of up to three years.

A senior official with the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner, said that “all these measures made it clear that companies must establish pollution-treatment facilities. Only paying fines for degrading the environment is definitely not enough.”

As supervision strengthened, some companies had to shut down.

Fuan Textile Mill, a Hong Kong-listed company, shut down last March as it was found to be discharging wastewater directly into underground pipes. The company was fined 11.55 million yuan (1.65 million U.S. dollars).

During the spring session of this year’s Canton Fair, which concluded on Wednesday, Minister of Commerce Chen Deming said China would maintain strict controls on polluting and energy-wasting companies, despite a tougher export situation.

Appliance giant Haier introduced a “green strategy” at the fair. It showed off more than 100 new products, such as washing machines that don’t require laundry powder. The company won orders worth 850 million U.S. dollars.

Sales manager Yang Hong said that a Spanish customer had decided to buy more than 10 million U.S. dollars worth of environmentally-friendly products in less than 15 minutes. “It was a surprise to us,” said Yang.

Other products at the fair, such as furniture, decorations and toys, also emphasized an environmentally-friendly trend. Products using recycled materials were especially popular.

Liu Zhenyi, president of Shandong Luyi Wooden Product Co., Ltd., said their wood and woven-grass products all used recycled materials.

“Our products were made to European standards, although the cost was much higher,” he said. “They do not contain any lead or toxic chemical materials. We are confident about our products.”

Xu said Chinese companies were following stricter rules in designing, manufacturing, recycling and selling their products. “To promote energy-efficient products is to save resources for the world,” he said.

A Mexican buyer said that consumers in his country believed Chinese products were low-end only a couple of years ago “but now nobody would worry about quality.”

He said: “China is our major import country. Last year, we imported one to two containers of goods every month, but now we need to import at least two containers.”

Air Quality Worsens In Delta

May 1st, 2008
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Air quality worsens in delta, monitoring network finds

Cheung Chi-fai – SCMP – Updated on May 01, 2008

The Pearl River Delta was hit by poorer air quality last year, with ozone pollution worsening in most cities covered by a cross-border air quality monitoring network, according to a report released yesterday.

The report found the delta suffered from bad to worst air quality 33.81 per cent of the time, up 2.19 per cent from 2006.

The hardest hit city remained Foshan , a major construction materials and ceramics production centre, which had the worst grade of air quality 18 per cent of the time.

Individual pollutants generally recorded a rise in average concentration of between 2 and 7 per cent, with the exception of nitrogen dioxide, which dropped 2 per cent.

The monitoring network, jointly operated by the Environmental Protection Department and the Guangdong Environmental Protection Bureau, covers 16 places including three in Hong Kong, and measures the concentration levels of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, respirable suspended particles and ozone.

Data gathered from each monitoring station is used to compile the regional air quality index. Based on the mainland air quality standard, the index is then ranked from Grade I to V, with Grade III to V being bad to worst air quality.

It was the second full-year report since the network started operating in November 2005 to provide a tool for environment officials to gauge the effectiveness of emissions control measures. These measures were implemented after Hong Kong and Guangdong agreed in 2002 to cut emissions of four pollutants by 20 to 55 per cent of 1997 levels, by 2010.

However, the report does not conclude whether real improvement has been made.

While nine of the 16 monitoring stations’ annual nitrogen dioxide readings improved last year, 13 stations’ ozone readings deteriorated. For sulfur dioxide, half of the stations recorded an improvement, but for particulates, 10 stations showed a worsening trend.

The environment department said the lack of rain last year made air pollution dispersion difficult, and higher temperatures and more sunshine made the formation of photo-chemical smog easier. “Short-term air quality is mainly affected by meteorological conditions, and two years’ data is not sufficient to assess the changing trend of air quality.”

It said Hong Kong’s ambient air quality, which was also affected by regional air quality, remained stable last year, with only a slight increase in the annual concentration of nitrogen dioxide, ozone and respirable suspended particles.

Improving Air Quality For The Sake Of People’s Health

May 1st, 2008
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A clean sweep

Updated on May 01, 2008 – SCMP

Joining things up into a coherent whole is never easy but it is a mark of competence. First of all, you need to have a clear focus of what the endgame is and then you need to understand what needs to be done to get there. The rest is about implementation.

New reports last week noted Hong Kong’s very poor roadside air quality. Despite a decade of effort, conditions remain a daily threat to the public health of this city’s people. Government spin focuses on “achievements” – that there have been some reductions in pollutant levels, based on levels of a certain year in the past. In reality, absolute levels remain very high and, when compared with the World Health Organisation’s recommended air quality standards, Hong Kong’s street-level air quality is positively dangerous.

Instead of recounting how well officials rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic, the government may want to ask itself how it could have averted the roadside air crisis over the past decade. There is no point repeating what it has done – we know officials switched taxis and most minibuses from diesel to LPG, and ultra-low-sulphur diesel has been made available, for example – but the measures have not been enough. So, with the benefit of hindsight, we should ask: if our officials had to do it all over again, what other steps would they have taken?

The answer is that they should have taken numerous, related steps that affect roadside air quality. If the government wants to have any chance of cleaning up our roadside air, it needs to not only focus on what comes out of exhausts but also to change direction. Measures include taking the oldest, most-polluting trucks off the road, and converting buses running along urban routes to run on natural gas.

A more challenging solution is to reduce vehicles on our roads altogether. This means investing in railways, which is finally happening now but, until relatively recently, the emphasis had been on building roads. It also requires officials to co-ordinate road and rail interchanges so people opt to take the train into denser urban areas, and fewer empty buses. That kind of co-ordination requires a clear focus on the public health endgame.

That hasn’t happened, because officials were focused elsewhere. Their priority was roads. Even though some corner of the bureaucracy knew that Hong Kong must follow a rail-led public transport policy – which had been articulated – it was not followed in practice because some other parts of the administration built roads and were sympathetic to providing cheap road transport. The government could just as well have provided cheaper rail transport by subsidising rail construction to keep fares down, which it seems to be finally doing.

The city’s topography poses another challenge. Urban areas are dominated by tall buildings and narrow streets with heavy traffic. Emissions from vehicles gets trapped in “street canyons” that become extremely polluted and endanger public health. The solution for cleaning the city air should have involved a change in urban planning, in which vehicles were removed from the picture through massive pedestrian schemes. Again, officials have been too timid. There have only been small-scale schemes here and there. Instead, officials have allowed the “walled-buildings” phenomenon to spread across the city. In addition to street canyons, we now have massive buildings blocking air circulation in many places.

The failure in all these policy areas to fight roadside pollution is the reason for this crisis. Our officials continue to avoid admitting publicly that our roadside air quality is extremely poor. If they did, pressure would mount on them to take action. But they cannot connect all the dots for what needs to be done because there is no policy focus or priority for improving air quality for the sake of people’s health.

Things won’t get better until officials adopt a new outlook. When will our political leaders take the lead and speak out, for the sake of our health?

Christine Loh Kung-wai is chief executive of the think-tank Civic Exchange

cloh@civic-exchange.org

Climate Strategy – US-Sino Co-Operation

May 1st, 2008
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Warming ties

Climate change challenges cannot be met without Sino-US co-operation

Peter Ogden and Matthew Rogier – SCMP – Updated on May 01, 2008

US President George W. Bush gave a major address recently about the need for America to curb its carbon emissions. The speech has been roundly derided as being “too little, too late”, and deservedly so. It is also characteristic of much of the energy debate in the United States in that it failed to mention an integral part of any successful energy and climate strategy in the 21st century: robust US-Sino co-operation.

Politicians and policymakers in Washington today are caught up in a largely domestic debate over the future of US energy policy. Yet US energy and climate security ultimately requires winning China’s support for a new international, rules-based energy system that works for developed and developing countries alike. The US and China are the top two emitters of greenhouse gases and two of the three top oil importers. If they cannot work together to create a sustainable global energy environment, there is little chance of averting the ill effects of climate change or building more efficient and transparent international energy markets.

That is why the US cannot afford to lose sight of the steps China is already taking to address its energy challenges and, in doing so, allow its own domestic energy debate to take place in a vacuum.

China’s political leadership is beginning to realise the importance of cleaning up the country’s energy and environmental act for the sake of the Olympic Games, China’s economy and, ultimately, perhaps even the Communist Party’s own survival. At the recently concluded National People’s Congress, China’s leaders took new steps to meet environmental challenges stemming from the country’s voracious appetite for fossil fuels. One notable development was the establishment of a National Energy Commission, responsible for creating, implementing and monitoring a new national energy policy, which includes promoting nuclear energy, alternative fuels and conservation.

China’s leaders also directed the NPC to upgrade the State Environmental Protection Administration to full ministry status and rename it the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Of course, this is the same agency that, under a variety of previous names, failed to rein in the country’s billowing pollution. One of China’s biggest energy and environmental failures has been its inability to ensure national policies are implemented by local party officials, whose primary concern is meeting immediate economic growth targets.

Significantly, however, the vice-minister of the newly upgraded Ministry of Environmental Protection, Pan Yue , is one of China’s most famous environmental activists. In 2005, Mr Pan surprised local and provincial authorities, and the people, when he closed projects worth US$14 billion that failed to file proper environmental-impact statements.

While no clear consensus appears to have emerged about how to solve China’s energy and environmental challenges, there is broad internal agreement among the political elite about the threats of failing to do so. One is that environmental degradation will dampen the country’s economic growth, which has been the party’s primary claim to political legitimacy.

A second threat comes directly from the anti-government protests sparked by China’s failed environmental policies. For example, 10,000 People’s Liberation Army troops had to be deployed to a village in Zhejiang province in 2005 when as many as 60,000 rioters swarmed nearby polluting chemical plants. More recently, in May last year, up to 20,000 protesters peacefully took to the streets in Xiamen to object to the construction of a US$1.4 billion petro-chemical plant near the city. According to Elizabeth Economy, of the Council on Foreign Relations, protests like these “represent the Chinese leadership’s greatest fear, namely, that its failure to protect the environment may some day serve as the catalyst for broad-based demands for political change”.

Moreover, as desertification exacerbated by global warming affects 400 million people in China alone, internal migration may cause civil unrest.

Perhaps this is why Premier Wen Jiabao appears ready to provide political backing for these and other reforms. Last year, at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, he said: “China is committed to saving resources and protecting the environment … We take climate change seriously and have formulated the national programme on tackling climate change.”

Creating a new Energy Commission and a more-empowered Ministry of Environmental Protection are signals that China is attempting to come to terms with its intertwined energy and environmental challenges, but more reform is needed. Many analysts in the US, as well as some in China, believe the commission itself ought to have been upgraded to ministry status, to enforce compliance at the local level.

The US, however, must itself address the energy challenge responsibly, and by doing so it will be able to demonstrate the leadership necessary to build and bolster the international architecture that the world needs to achieve greater energy and climate security.

China and the US can together help lead the world towards more sustainable energy policies that promote global economic growth and combat global warming, but they will never make significant progress towards their goal until they are willing and able to work closely with one another on these issues.

Peter Ogden is a senior policy analyst for national security and international policy at the Centre for American Progress. Matthew Rogier is a researcher at the centre

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