Authors in this issue of the China Environment Series examine many of China's environmental health challenges, with emphasis throughout on potential steps to address these problems through regulation, better research, greater NGO involvement, and international assistance. This issue also includes a special report from the USAID-supported China Environmental Health Project.

Forward:
Jennifer L. Turner, Editor

In terms of environmental news stories coming out of China, this year of the fire pig would not appear to be a particularly lucky one. This year, China most likely surpassed the United States as the leading emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world (although the latter remains a bigger emitter per capita); the central government admitted that China had not met the previous year’s laudable energy efficiency goals; Lake Taihu (the country’s third largest lake) turned a florescent green with a toxic algae; an environmentalist who had for years had been advocating Lake Tai’s protection was arrested and subsequently sentenced to three years in prison; the International Olympic Committee announced that while Beijing’s air is cleaner than seven years ago it may not be good enough for endurance sports at next year’s Olympic Games; and huge riverbank landslides occurred near the Three Gorges Dam, prompting the Chinese leadership to announce the need to relocate an additional 3 million people. What is striking about these stories is that most were reported in the Chinese as well as the western news media, which I see as a positive sign.

In this spirit, this CES delves into the issue of environmental health, which parallels a major new China Environment Forum (CEF) initiative— the USAID-supported China Environmental Health Project (CEHP), which began in October 2006. Our primary task under CEHP is helping Western Kentucky University scientists Chris Groves and Wei-Ping Pan do community outreach and disseminate information regarding their environmental health work on coal in Anhui Province and on karst water issues in China’s southwest. Under CEHP the CEF team has been producing numerous research briefs on environmental health issues in China that are posted on our website. Moreover, this year most of our monthly CEF meetings have focused on environmental health and/or “green” public participation in China. Please see the special report in this issue for more information on CEHP activities.

Another new CEF initiative—Bridge to Safety: U.S.-China Partnerships on Food Safety—began in the fall of 2007, thanks to a grant from Waters Corporation. Under this initiative we are putting on a series of meetings and creating a special report focused on China’s food safety challenges, which are not simply due to poor food processor monitoring, but also linked to the country’s growing pollution problems.

This year also marked the beginning of what CEF hopes is an ongoing partnership with Circle of Blue (www.circleofblue.org) to design and produce multimedia web-based stories on freshwater challenges in China. This issue’s Feature Box, “Driving Through the Desert of Sand,” introduces the first of these collaborative stories.

For those of you who are wont to skip around journals, I would strongly recommend you to at least first read the opening feature article by Xiaoqing Lu and Bates Gill, for it anchors CES 9 by providing an important overview of current policymaking, NGO activities, and scientific research around the issue of environmental health in China. They see incredible challenges for China to address environmental health problems, but provide some direction on important next steps. Kaleb Brown and Stephanie Renzi take their environmental health analysis down to the provincial level, pondering whether Guangdong has the potential to be a vanguard for addressing pollution and related human health threats in China.

My assistant Linden Ellis and I wanted to refocus some of the current attention on China’s food safety problems away from exports to what we believe are bigger environmental and health concerns within China stemming from unsustainable and unsafe practices in the country’s animal husbandry and aquaculture sectors, areas ripe for international cooperation to make China’s food production more sustainable and safe. ...

Visit China Environment Series 9 (2007) Web Page

China Responds to Environmental Health Challenges
Surf and Turf: Threats from Aquaculture and Animal Husbandry
Guangdong: Protecting Ecological and Human Health?
Clean Water, Clean Coal: Reports From the China
Environmental Health Project
Plus: Notes From the Field, Spotlight on NGOs

Download China Environment Series 9 (2007)

PDF format, 4.11MB, 172Pages.

The China Environment Forum:

For ten years the China Environment Forum (CEF) has implemented projects, workshops, and exchanges that bring together U.S., Chinese, and other Asian environmental policy experts to explore the most imperative environmental and sustainable development challenges in China and to examine the opportunities for business, governmental, and nongovernmental communities to collaboratively address these issues.

The networks built and knowledge gathered by meetings, publications, and research activities have established CEF as one of the most reliable sources for Chinaenvironment information and given CEF the capacity to undertake long-term and specialized projects on topics such as environmental health, food safety, water management, nongovernmental organization (NGO) development, and municipal financing for environmental infrastructure.

The Wilson Center’s Asia Program periodically cosponsors meetings with the China Environment Forum. The China Environment Forum meetings, publications, and research exchanges over the past year have been supported by generous grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Waters Corporation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Jennifer L. Turner has directed the China Environment Forum since 1999.

Environmental Change and Security Program

Population growth. Water scarcity. Degraded ecosystems. Forced migration. Resource depletion. Pandemic disease. Since 1994, the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) has explored the connections among these major challenges and their links to conflict, human insecurity, and foreign policy. ECSP brings policymakers, practitioners, and scholars from around the world to Washington, D.C., to address the public and fellow experts on environmental and human security. ECSP publishes and distributes 7,000 free copies of two annual journals—the Environmental Change and Security Program Report and the China Environment Series—in addition to publishing original research.

ECSP’s core activities are made possible by the generous support of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health. ECSP also receives support from the UN Environment Programme, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and private individuals. ECSP is directed by Geoffrey D. Dabelko and is housed in the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Division of International Security Studies, headed by Robert S. Litwak.

The Asia Program

The Asia Program was created in 1977 and has grown over the past two decades into one of the Wilson Center’s largest and most active programs. It strives to provide a forum for examining current and important Asia-related policy questions in their broad historical and cultural context. The Asia Program’s activities focus on China, Japan, the Koreas, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Since 1999, Robert M. Hathaway has directed the Asia Program.

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